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 :).