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Hard drive backup software..


HAOLE

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Some of you may remember I lost a drive about 6 months ago. That sucked!!! I since bought a Maxtor one touch hard drive. The software that comes with it will not let you back up applications. I talked to support and they said the drive was meant to back up pictures and documents not things like accounting software data files.

 

I am not worried about cost of the software(within reason) I just want a piece of mind that the job is being done. Any suggestions?

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Easiest way is to install windows on your box. Then install ALL of your programs. Then use Norton Ghost to make an image of the whole hard drive. Then you have a restore image if something goes bad.

 

Also DO NOT EVER STORE important data (spreadsheets, address books, work related e-mails whatever) to your hard drive that the operation system is on. Get a 2nd hard drive that you use just for your data storage. This way if you operating system hard drive dies you still have the important data elsewhere. PLUS you can just get a tape backup system and back up this 2nd hard drive weekly, daily, hourly.... whatever you feel is necessary.

 

Hope this helps.

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Easiest way is to install windows on your box. Then install ALL of your programs. Then use Norton Ghost to make an image of the whole hard drive. Then you have a restore image if something goes bad.

 

Also DO NOT EVER STORE important data (spreadsheets, address books, work related e-mails whatever) to your hard drive that the operation system is on. Get a 2nd hard drive that you use just for your data storage. This way if you operating system hard drive dies you still have the important data elsewhere. PLUS you can just get a tape backup system and back up this 2nd hard drive weekly, daily, hourly.... whatever you feel is necessary.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Very good trick. You can redirect certain Windows folders from their default location to an alternate location.

 

You may also look at RAID arrays (1,5,10) for redundancy on a hardware level.

 

Another option, IBackup - Online backup.

 

You could combine hardware redundancy (RAID) with onsite image based backup (Shadow Protect, Norton Ghost, Acronis, etc) and an online backup to ensure a very high level of disaster tolerance.

 

EDIT: What Trowa is referring to is imaging, which will not backup customer data. It's a good practice in case the system gets FUBAR, but you'll need to configure a backup schedule to perform incremental or differential backups (images)

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Handy Backup. Very inexpensive and works great. I have it on all my PC's. I have it set to run incremental backups on my wife's law practice PC's every night. Easy interface and reliable. Saved her on two different occasions when her PC and then her server took a shit.

 

The way I have things here at home is I have most all of my docs and databases on externals. Music on one dedicated drive, photos and video have their own too.

 

My OS and required stuff on one internal, the second is for my internal DVR system and all my programs. I would suggest using Ghost or simlilar once you are up and running clean from the start. I had to re-ghost my PC at home when it took a crap last year. Easy as heck and all my stuff was stored off on externals.

 

I like externals as when they are off they are off and not exposed to viruses or other issues. Especially important as I'm not the only user of my PC here at home.

 

Good luck.

 

Some of you may remember I lost a drive about 6 months ago. That sucked!!! I since bought a Maxtor one touch hard drive. The software that comes with it will not let you back up applications. I talked to support and they said the drive was meant to back up pictures and documents not things like accounting software data files.

 

I am not worried about cost of the software(within reason) I just want a piece of mind that the job is being done. Any suggestions?

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Tape backup is the most secure way to back up data IMO. I used to work as an admin at a small company. Every day back up the server on a tape, then make a copy of the tape. So total of 14 tapes. A tape for each day. 1 tape stayed in the office and the copy stayed at an offsite location, like a deposit box at a bank. This way data is in 2 places incase your business building blows up.

 

Tapes are large. You can easily get a tape that holds 500GB. Plus there are machines that hold 7 tapes at a time. You can set it to auto backup. Then just pull the tape out and take it offsite for safe keeping.

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RAID is a good option too but this only keep the data in the computer. If I was running a business I would want the data off site for sake of a disaster...

 

No doubting that, but if the harware were to fail, the downtime can be costly.

 

Disk is what the industry is moving to. Tape is still great for archive, though.

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