Suggestion for home back-up?

[pgrogan]

I am looking for a cost effective way to back up my digital pics,
videos & music collection. I currently have 2 PC's at home and a
laptop that all need to be backed-up. More specifically

PC1 = XP Pro, 74GB Raptor Drive (O/S and executable files)& 400GB SATA
Western Digital (Has music, videos & other data files)
PC2 = XP Pro, 200GB ATA Western Digital & 400GB SATA Western Digital
Laptop = XP Pro 60GB, ONLY HAS USB 1.1

Here is what I envision for back-up:

- 74GB Raptor is imaged and stored on PC1 400GB Drive
- Laptop is plugged in to network and imaged to PC1 400GB Drive once a
week
- PC1 & PC2 will synch with each other overnite (so that they are
mirrors of each other)
- Once a month I copy PC1 400GB Drive to Exteral Drive (do not have at
this moment, but will be buying) and take off-site.

My questions are this:

What software will do this for me? Will Acronis True Image work....and
how many copis will I need?

Anyone else have a better idea or suggestions?

 

[Rod Speed]

I am looking for a cost effective way to back up my digital pics,
videos & music collection. I currently have 2 PC's at home and
a laptop that all need to be backed-up. More specifically

PC1 = XP Pro, 74GB Raptor Drive (O/S and executable files)& 400GB
SATA Western Digital (Has music, videos & other data files)
PC2 = XP Pro, 200GB ATA Western Digital & 400GB SATA Western Digital
Laptop = XP Pro 60GB, ONLY HAS USB 1.1

Here is what I envision for back-up:

- 74GB Raptor is imaged and stored on PC1 400GB Drive

- Laptop is plugged in to network and imaged
to PC1 400GB Drive once a week

- PC1 & PC2 will synch with each other
overnite (so that they are mirrors of each other)

- Once a month I copy PC1 400GB Drive to Exteral Drive
(do not have at this moment, but will be buying) and take off-site.

Thats fine unless you drop stuff much.

My questions are this:

What software will do this for me? Will Acronis True Image work....
Yes.

and how many copis will I need?

Legally, two, practically one.

Anyone else have a better idea or suggestions?

A higher rate of offsite might be better, say weekly, but only
you can say much about your risk of fire and theft etc and
what would be involved if the offsite is 1 month out of date
when you need to use it.

 

[Toshi1873]

I am looking for a cost effective way to back up my digital pics,
videos & music collection. I currently have 2 PC's at home and a
laptop that all need to be backed-up. More specifically

If all you want to do is backup data files, try Second Copy 2000.
Acronis is great for system images, but I still prefer SC2k or rsync for
backing up data files. (I generally image my systems every month or
three, but run Second Copy at least once a day.)

SC2k also gives me versioning capability (I can keep from 1-N previous
versions of a particular file).

 

[Neil Maxwell]

If all you want to do is backup data files, try Second Copy 2000.
Acronis is great for system images, but I still prefer SC2k or rsync for
backing up data files. (I generally image my systems every month or
three, but run Second Copy at least once a day.)

SC2k also gives me versioning capability (I can keep from 1-N previous
versions of a particular file).

SC is a very good program, but I find it to be complementary to TI,
rather than a replacement, since SC won't copy in-use files.

I use it to back up files and directories from non-critical partitions
I don't want to image, due to size or whatever. I also use it to copy
my TI images to a network drive for a bit of extra redundancy. The
versioning is very useful for this, as well as keeping a copy of
deleted files if you want.

I needed to use the secret options in the profiles.dat file to get it
working right for me. Dunno why they don't make those available from
the menus.

 

[Toshi1873]

SC is a very good program, but I find it to be complementary to TI,
rather than a replacement, since SC won't copy in-use files.

Aye, I tend to use it in a complementary manner with TrueImage. Open
files aren't a big deal for me with the laptop. (I have a separate SC
job that backs up things like my PST files at bootup before I fire up my
e-mail program.)

I needed to use the secret options in the profiles.dat file to get it
working right for me. Dunno why they don't make those available from
the menus.

Which options are those?

....

Back in 2000-2001, I trialed and tested close to half a dozen desktop-
level backup applications. We wanted something simple for the
desktop/laptop users. It needed to be no-muss, no-fuss for the most
part. It needed to deal properly with backup destinations that might
not be there on the next run (laptop users who weren't in the office).

A lot of backup programs toss errors and annoying dialogs when they
can't find the network share. Which made it way too likely that users
would disable the software.

SC was also nice in that we could set the priority of the copy process.
That kept it from hogging the system during a backup. Users can right-
click the systray icon and suspend it at any time. And at the next
boot, SC would revert to normal mode and restart the backup schedule.

Other software liked to store the backups in proprietary files, which I
find overkill for a desktop user. Some offer to store files in ZIP
files (one per folder), but that wasn't as attractive of an option prior
to WinXP's native handling of ZIP files. For ease of use, not much
beats a simple mirroring of the filesystem.

We also wanted protection for accidental deletions or overwrites (which
SC handles with it's versioning).

Then there were the software packages that would segfault and stop
working. (I don't think I've ever managed to crash SC2k.)

The only major improvement that would be nice for SC would be if it ran
as a service in the background under Win2k/WinXP systems. Having to be
logged in isn't always ideal.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

Which options are those?

There's a hidden file called profiles.dat with options that can be set
manually, but not from the Second Copy interface. They're documented
in the help file, but I can't recall the details, as it's not
installed on this computer.

The particular options I needed to get my profiles working efficiently
on dedicated networks drives were:

Move files to the archive, rather than copy them. Normally, SC will
copy a file from the backup directory to the archive directory, then
delete the original, which was very time consuming with large files on
network drives. By setting MoveFilesToArchive=1 in the [Options]
section of profiles.dat, it moved it without copying first.

Ignore small differences in timestamps. Copying files between
different file systems (NT on the PC and Fat32 on the network drives)
caused a few seconds difference between timestamps, resulting in
recopying large files unnecessarily to my network drives.
IgnoreTimeDifference=N (N is seconds) in the [Options] section fixed
this.

I got these tips from their tech support folks, who were very helpful
and responsive.

Great program, great support.