A
Al D
Before I started running Windows Home Server, I would do backups like this,
First sunday of the month I would do a full backup (I used Norton Ghost) to
external Drive, then every sunday there after I would just do incremental
backups. If you want to keep the backup process to a max of say 3 you can
use the Grandfather method I used for years, do a full backup, label this
backup father, next time you backup again do a full backup on new media,
label this one father and relabel the first set grandfather, so you have son
(on your computer right now) father your latest backup, and grandfather your
previous backup. That works perfectly if you are using external media like
DVD-RW's, if you are using an external drive just put a date on the image
and delete the oldest when you have 2 images saved.
My personal belief is if you have an old computer P3 and up with little RAM,
but have some huge HD's, buy Windows Home Server, and let it handle your
backups for every computer you own. Right now my Server with 1 TB of storage
backs up 6 computers nightly. My daughter has a nasty habit of downloading
trojan horses and spyware, and when this happens, I just put the boot disk
in, boot up and restore to the previous nights backup. Takes all of about
1/2 hour to an hour to do. The way I see it, for the price you are going to
pay for decent software to back up your system, and the storage to store the
backups spend the couple hundred more get the server software and let it
handle all backups.. If buying the Server software is not what you want I am
sure the various Linux softwares will eventually have a Home server type
setup that does what Microsoft's does, if they already don't have it.
First sunday of the month I would do a full backup (I used Norton Ghost) to
external Drive, then every sunday there after I would just do incremental
backups. If you want to keep the backup process to a max of say 3 you can
use the Grandfather method I used for years, do a full backup, label this
backup father, next time you backup again do a full backup on new media,
label this one father and relabel the first set grandfather, so you have son
(on your computer right now) father your latest backup, and grandfather your
previous backup. That works perfectly if you are using external media like
DVD-RW's, if you are using an external drive just put a date on the image
and delete the oldest when you have 2 images saved.
My personal belief is if you have an old computer P3 and up with little RAM,
but have some huge HD's, buy Windows Home Server, and let it handle your
backups for every computer you own. Right now my Server with 1 TB of storage
backs up 6 computers nightly. My daughter has a nasty habit of downloading
trojan horses and spyware, and when this happens, I just put the boot disk
in, boot up and restore to the previous nights backup. Takes all of about
1/2 hour to an hour to do. The way I see it, for the price you are going to
pay for decent software to back up your system, and the storage to store the
backups spend the couple hundred more get the server software and let it
handle all backups.. If buying the Server software is not what you want I am
sure the various Linux softwares will eventually have a Home server type
setup that does what Microsoft's does, if they already don't have it.