Favorite Backup solution poll.
 

I just suffered a major harddrive crash. I would like to start backing up my workstation. There are a few routes to go, so I would like to see what everyone else is using.

Let me know of your experiences and what sort of soft/hardware you are using. Also let me know if I should add any poll options.

Thanks

Those should be tick-boxes instead of radio-buttons...
networked + removable media ...


Cheers,
Tink

Hi, I use Backup Exec and Dell's PV32T library, they saved my life a couple of times. Formerly i used DDS4 tapes units, they worked fine but you have to chage the media continuously, well it depends of the amount of data you are going to back up. Cheers.

My server uses a software raid-1 for everything except my mp3 and video collection and backups.

I wrote a simple script to make a snapshot of /home, /etc and a few other choice folders every night using rsync and delete all the snapshots older then 50 days.

Once a week I backup the backups and mp3/video collection to an external drive, the mp3/video collection is pretty static so doesn't need backing up more frequently.

if your data is very important, attach with network and u have anther machine to backup use rsync and cron to backup.

novice06

Bacula to a central remote storage server. Then burned to removable media and taken off site. Redundant redundancy :)

I usually dont backup and when i Do , i write cds mostly 2-3cds of same data
Just recently i had to fomrat entire drive so i did same .......... made 2 copies of all data I needed and bang !
I usually prefer 3 copies but made 2 coz of time constraints ...
thats coz if one cd gets broke, i have other or sometimes just a certain file cant b copied from a cd :D

I've got rsync as a cron job backing up to a remote computer. Works flawlessly.

At home I use a 500GB external hard drive for my backup needs, actually the drive is mainly for backing up my music collection. For more important stuff, like my password lists, I usually keep copies scattered across multiple drives and machines.

I personally like to rsync critical files/directories to an offsite location. Doing it frequently reduces how long it takes each time.

I have been using software RAID-1 for years. Before that I relied on floppies, but my $HOME stuff became too much. I now have tens of gB in my $HOME. I am designing a new system for work which will have a 400 gB drive on USB to backup /home and my stuff with it. I will do periodic complete backups and daily snapshots of new files. I did look at the advanced backup systems, but they seem very complex. I prefer to simplify my system rather than complicate my backup... ;) The new system will have four terminal servers with /home mounting via nfs from a two server failsafe cluster with heartbeat and drbd (RAID 1 over network) with backup scripts running. My own stuff lost would be a few days of anguish for me, but the new system will have 500 users so I would be publicly executed if anything goes wrong with their picture collections.:cry:

tar separate filesystems to external usb drive and lock it up in a fire resistant safe.

I have a Cron Job that runs rsync every 10 minutes, to a server on my LAN. This way, I will only lose a small portion of work in the event of a disk crash. This also prevents a loss if I accidentally delete a file - I simply copy the version off the server.

On a semi-regular basis, I backup the files on the server to DVD.

--Ian

I didn't respond to the poll like I suspect others didn't, because (as some said) they should be check boxes rather than radio buttons to give correct answers.

I have a LAN and do the following to safeguard data and downloads:

1. Copy the "topic" directory structure to a NASlite server (a floppy initiated, and then run in memory) multiple large HDDs archive SMB server accessible to all users (two of us) as read-write. This can be a slow process, so is usually done while doing work on yet another computer.

2. If it's stuff others in the outside world might like to share (interesting downloads etc) I'll post it into one of several vhosts served by apache on one of the LAN machines, which has appropriate holes punched through the firewall. I'll probably duplicate the NASlite storage there anyway (for my own safeguard).

3. The originating computer will always have a spare data storage partition or HDD so that with a minimum of fuss a disaster can be overcome. This can also be slow.

4. Several of the LAN machines use plug-in HDD racks for the booting HDD, and a few less also have plug-in data storage HDDs.

5. Every bootable drive (obviously customised for specific computers) has its operating system archived; with reiser I have found my Norton Ghost is not succesful. This seems to work with earlier ext file systems, though, and of course MS Windows. The .gho files and downloaded .iso files for OS testing occupy a large proportion of the NASlite storage. .gho's are also kept on a seperate partition or drive on their own LAN machine.

I believe that this is a foolproof system and the advantage it has (for me) over CD or DVD storage is that unless you are very disciplined and destroy superseeded CDs or DVDs kept as backups, you can be in dead trouble lol!

I suppose each of us "rolls their own" to suit their MO. Don't know how useful my thoughts are.

I manually run some simple rsync scripts to backup files--FROM the file server TO local hard drives.

All of my "live" data is on my file server. That way, all data on all workstations is always "in sync"--it's all shared on the server.

That leaves a lot of free space on the local hard drives of the individual workstations. Thus, I have rsync scripts to maintain copies of various file server folders on the local workstation drives. For some of my particularly irreplaceable precious data, I have triple redundancy--quadruple redundancy if you include occasional backups to USB drives (portable media player).

I'm pretty old-fashioned, I guess. I just burn my stuff to a CD-R.

I now use a redundant drive and rsnapshot, see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=401176

I'm still open to suggestions concerning simultaneous redundant saving of files...

Then we can rephrase the question: Which backup technology do you primarily use?

I suppose the NAS-Lite is primary although it is obviously on another LAN machine, and normal practice is to use the "local machine" backup partition (in some cases) or drive (in other cases) where the initial copy of the saved file goes.

That local backup partition is ALWAYS FAT-32, in case the drive has to be pulled and recovery done in a machine that doesn't read reiser (for example, MS Windows, some Unices and OS/2).

I've added some useless (useful?) information about NAS-Lite. Please read on...

It boots off a standard floppy, although the latest version will also run from a CD or a USB plug (if the BIOS supports booting that way). The OS resides in memory once booted, I think 8Mb.

It uses ext-2 as its native filesystem, and reads a maximum of four IDE HDDs (which can be very large - even if you use an older machine whose BIOS does not support them).

My existing backup and archive machine is a quite old IBM PC300GL pre-Aptiva in an Aptiva look-alike case with a Celeron 300MHz processor and two 64Mb RAM modules... it runs comfortably on 64Mb but I built it out to 128Mb so I could use the PCLinuxOS live CD to run a GUI on it for maintenance when necessary.

The CD drive was left in for that reason. It therefore has only three 80Gb HDDs, rather than four.

If you install larger drives, I found the major issue is the time it takes to check the HDDs when starting up.

In the event of an unclean shutdown (brown-out, black-out, or finger trouble turning the power off on the wrong computer) these 3 80gig drives take a good half hour or more to self-check, before they are available to the LAN... and this may well be influenced by the clock speed and processor on an old machine.

Currently, I'm (slowly) building a second NAS-Lite machine, with some spare 40Gb drives; this is a "real" Aptiva with an AMD K6-2 500 processor. I'll use a similar philosophy with RAM and retaining the CD drive.

Like someone else, I discovered that my music archive takes up a *lot* of space :)

So also do digital photos and scanned prints.

NAS-Lite is a very inexpensive server because you can use all recycled components for the box; it can be configured as FTP or SMB for extremely simple operation. There is a more recent version out now, than the one I have. Have a look here and make your own mind up :)

There isn't any internal security, and that would likely be why it can't be accessed remotely. I'm the only one that uses it, although anyone on the LAN could, with read/write privileges inbuilt. I don't know about execute, haven't tried that.

Feel free to ask any more :)


Richard in Australia

Where go the newer copies? I don't quite understand your scheme -- incremental backup?

Why don't you migrate that to ext3? It's just a single command (tune2fs)...

Yep. I spent years producing shop and other construction drawings. You *never* keep earlier versions of CAD files where anyone can get their hands on them. They have a nasty habit of getting used in building whatever they refer to. That can be very expensive, particularly if the customer loses any income as a result.

Anyway I'm retired, now, and I don't need earlier archives :)

I'm happy not tinkering with it, lol. If it takes me half an hour to use after I've powered it on, so be it :D

In any case it routinely checks one drive every so often.

But thanks for the suggestions :)

Periodically, I just copy the files in my /home directory onto an external HDD.

With the laptop, I try to have more or less a clone of the PC.

Once or twice a month, I burn a CD of all the datas that I have in my /home directory.

Sometimes, I believe I am some freak doing all of these files backup. But then again, I think better once too much than too little. I prefer not having to start over some of the work I am working on.

I never do a system backup. If anything happens to the OS, I just reinstall it. It takes a few hours and I am back on track.

What type of fire resistant safe did you get?
They seem very expensive, if you can find them at all.
I thought the price would come down and more people would be buying them.

Thanks.

What it usually comes down to is some insulation and thicker walls of the safe. A "homegrown" solution is to incorporate the safe into the (concrete) floor, preferredly in a dry basement. Even better is the floor of an external cellar with no building of inflamable material above the cellar for obvious reasons. You might have to regulate the humidity in the safe itself, though.

I just use a file drawer sized "Sentry" Fire/Water resistant safe/lock box. About $200us at Bigbox-mart. Less worried about theft, although it is really heavy and would be hard to carry out. Hard drives are more heat tolerant than magnetic tape I think.

Ideally you would want to store off site backups, but at the house, off site is the barn.

As far as the issue of incremental, I would definetly go differential. Complete restores and locating single files on backup are much easier. Storage capacity difference is minimal usually.

I have a linux fileserver I rsync to through a cronjob.

In addition every month or two I backup my important & personal information (photos, finances, etc) to a DVD and keep a copy in a safety deposit box at my bank.

i am not aware of what truely a security hazard it would be to tell all this on an open forum .... but isint it a security hazard?

Yeah, because all I have to do is go to any bank and ask where Fudam's safe is.

I use a combination of tar, sshfs and encfs to put an encrypted backup of important files on a remote server - some free webspace my ISP gives me. I put it all in a bash script and run it from CRON.

Keith

@ keithwedell Neat :).