RE: Re: Will I ever learn !! - doing backups...

["Lee Varga" <lee@xxxxxxx>]

>Spend a little more and go for a RAID (mirror) system (or upgrade to
one)
>since at least this provides a decent level of fault protection and
gets
you
>up and running after system failure in a small amount of time with very
>little effort towards the backup on your part.

Raid isn't any use if you get hit by a virus!

>If you have the cash, invest in a multi tape system then you can have
an
>"automated" tape changer for streamed tape backup. You then
just have the
>system constantly dumping itself to tape so the potential loss is down
to
>hours or even minutes at the expense of restore time. But unless you
are
>really unlucky and lose both (or more depending on your chosen
>configuration) hard drives in hardware raid, chances are you wouldn't
need
>the restore from tape anyway.

Hmmm, nice. But a bit expensive.

>For a budget system, only use hard drives that are reasonably small.
This
>will force you to dump files to CDR or similar in order to maintain a
>reasonable amount of free space. By ignoring the OS and applications
since
>the chances are you would have reinstall abilities, smaller disks would
then
>mean that most of your long term (rarely used but you do not wish to
delete)
>data is backed up to conserve disk space, leaving only the smaller
amount
of
>current files requiring supervised backup.

Not enough space :), and fiddling with the server in the cupboard is a
pain...

My solution, a spare 40Gb harddrive (£68) and a drive caddy
(£12). Once a
week, stick the backup drive in the server, and do a full backup, then yank
it out again. Then occasionally (but admittedly not yet : ) stick the
backup drive in the main machine and do a load of CDRs that will be stored
offsite. Just in case.

>To bring this completely on topic... have your HA system announce
loudly at
>4am that you have not backed up for a month and if HA can't persuade
you to
>do it, SWMBO will on threat of the PC being used for target practice.
:)

Now there's a thought, but maybe not 4am...

Lee