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<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>Christmas eve morning, I woke up to a computer that
said it had no hard drive. Of course this happened during a time when the
quantity of data I need to back up every night had outgrown CDs, and you can
guess the expensive and highly unpleasant rest.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>So, my business partner and I have done a lot of
research into backup hardware and software recently (:-). We wanted roughly
what you're after, backup not just of selected documents, but the entire state
of the computer, with reasonable ease and redundancy. You'd think this would be
easy, even built into a reasonable OS, but it turns out it's fairly tricky,
especially if you have always-running databases etc. like we do.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>You may or may not agree with our conclusions, but
here's what we decided to do; sorry for the length, hope it's
helpful.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>For hardware, we're both using Granite Digital hotswap
FireWire cases, with three 250G drives in hotswap trays that we rotate
through. If you have USB2, which I don't, that's nearly as fast and equivalent
cases are available, many of which speak both.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>For the actual disks, I'm using the Western Digital 8
Meg cache drives. They're fast, reasonably cheap, and have a decent rep for
reliability. My partner went with Maxtor I think, saving a bit of money, with a
bit lower reliability I'd guess. Seagate is probably also good. Between the
three drives, I should have full backups going back roughly two months
before I have to start cleaning off older ones. If the most recently used backup
drive happens to be dead, there are backups from each of the two prior days
on two other separate drives to try before I'm really hosed.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>This is a laptop,
so backing up directly to drives that I could just swap in and boot from isn't
really a sensible option. I plan to get a another laptop drive as a spare,
and to rehearse restores without the risk I'll end up dead in the water. If
you have a desktop with a spare 5.25" bay, hotswap internal bays are cheaper
than FireWire, and in case of disaster, you can just boot from your backup
directly if you set up for that; see below.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>For software, we're using BootIt (<A
href="">http://www.terabyteunlimited.com).
BootIt is a partition and boot manager, as well as a drive imaging tool,
inexpensive shareware with great support and straight talk via a newsgroup.
It's a bit geeky to get started with, but once you've got a handle on it, it's
literally a one-step operation to back up, and another to give the files a dated
name. I have small batch files to do both those things; let me know if you
want me to send them to you. In the mode I use, the computer restarts directly
into BootIt running under DOS, backs up, then continues booting back into
Windows. This lets it back up system files, my databases, and anything else
that's always in use during normal operation. Sounds like overkill, but there's
no other way that actually works. This is how Ghost and other similar tools work
too. I have Ghost too, BTW, and besides being flaky in general, its FireWire
support is way shaky (can't see past the first FW partition,
etc.).
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>BootIt can create either compressed images, which I
use, or straight file system copies, which my partner does. The image files are
smaller, but if you can back up directly to a drive you could boot from,
straight copies are useable instantly without any restoral
nonsense.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004><FONT face="Courier New" color=#0000ff
size=2>The great thing about this setup is that
it's bone simple. No backup catalogs, expensive SQL database backup plugins,
complex ya ya, just a single coherent image of the entire state of the machine.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>Full backup of a 20G drive on a 3-year-old-speed laptop
takes about an hour and a half, including bit-for-bit validation of the image.
Total cost was about $1K.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004><SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>In the probably
obvious department, I'd suggest rehearsing/verifying your restore process
beforehand. You also want to make multiple copies of any CDs or floppies you'll
need, and print out detailed restore instructions, software manuals, software
and hardware company phone numbers, and any other notes you'll need.
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004><SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004><SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>Not to be melodramatic,
but unfortunately, drive failures aren't something that happen to Other People.
My partner learned from my train wreck without having to go through it himself.
If you (anyone, not just you Mark) haven't thought through what you need to do
to protect yourself, take the hint (=:-).
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>
<SPAN
class=484475320-29012004>Dave
<BLOCKQUOTE
>I
want to create and maintain an exact copy of my current hard driveon a
second hard drive so if the first one crashes I can boot from thebackup
and work without any delays. I thought this would be simplebut when
I started looking at all the options available, I didn't seea clear best
solution... especially when it came to software. Thoughts/ideas?
Thanks in advance.Mark
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