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For a
Desktop, would RAID be an option?
<FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>
<FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>bOB
<FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----From: Dave Merrill
[mailto:dmerrill@xxxxxxx]Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 2:03
PMTo: amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSubject: RE: [amibroker]
OT -- Hard Drive Backup
<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.MarkSend BUG REPORTS to
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