Hi, I'll keep it simple.

I have four Windows XP SP2 PC's, one of them basically running as a print server, I use a router for everything else. Might implement a domain at some stage, then again I mightn't.

Basically looking for a utility which will perform full weekly backups (storing perhaps 4 weeks into the past at any particular time), plus a backup which is updated daily incrementally.

Looking to have the three PC's pass this information over the network (all configured) to the server PC which would store.

So I need to know:
a) what file sizes am I looking at?
B) what program should I buy (or even freeware if it's good enough)?

I'm just getting sick of having PC's die left right and centre so now I'm going to be proactive and keep full system + MyDocuments backups in a remote location


Cheers for any advice. And don't be too religious about doing backups as I said, I'm also interested in knowing how you would backup a PC, how often, etc. Obviously looking at an automated program which will pass the data to the server PC! Thanks!

depends on how much data you want to backup.

You may find the easiest solution, for such a small network, is simply running multiple hard drives in each computer, and running them in a mirrored RAID configuration. Possibly using ghost? Not sure.

Yeah using raid isnt a bad idea untill you get a massive power surge that blows the f*** out of the PCBs on all of your HDDs - then the only way to get that data is to pay through the nose for data recovery or to try track down an identical HDD and steal the PCB off of that (and thats a pain in the bum let me tell you - been there done that bought the post card).

I personally reacon you'd be better setting up a 'nix box as a proper server with domains and DHCP etc and use that as the print server you can get very good backup programs for nix (i cant think of any off the top of my head.) I would also look to making a back up of the PCs to a local disk on the server incrementally then to an external HDD (USB prehaps) once per week or month or so. this way if there is a fire or something you can grab the HDD and get the hell out of there. Im currently looking into a similar thing but also using a webhost that I upload to so that I have an offsite copy of my important data also. once per year I grab a HDD that we keep at my grandparents place and do a backup of all our digital images and the last 2 years finacials incase there is a fire while we are all out and no one manages to grab the removable thats why im looking to the offsite solution using a web host because my grand parents are actually moving onto our property in the next year or so. plus im paying $20 per month for 5 gig of space I may as well use it and I con only see web hosting getting cheaper and cheaper over the enxt few years so I have about a gig of important files that I'd be kicking my self if i lost so these are the files im looking at keeping on this webhost (under a password protected and secured subdomain of course). Also the webhost if going (and does i know for fact) to have a far superior backup facility to what I could implement at home realistically.

I got this idea from the last company I worked at we actually had servers in 3 countries that were all live updated via secure VPN tunnels then the melbourne office also sent that data to a building in the outter suburbs that had fireproof rooms and all sorts of fancy monitoring systems and automated backups etc. so i figured if its good enough for a company turning over big $$$ every year its good enough on a smaller scale for me.

Hmmm I've got about 5GB storage too. very interesting idea you have there!

After all the key with data backups are simply that the backups don't die at the same time as the originals do, isn't it. So even if your super-secure room has a fire and everything is lost, as long as you've got your own local backups you just send them off again somewhere else.

Thus my point being that even if your webhost lost all your info, as long as it didn't happen on the same day that you had a house-fire I reckon you'd be ok, pretty low-risk there

Thanks Komodo

Easiest thing to do? Have each machine run "ntbackup.exe". Comes free with windows. You can set it to backup system state, and any other drives / directories you like. Then tell it to save it to a mapped network drive on your server. If you have a different backup job for each week, you will only over ride the last months data (cause the file name wil be different). I could go into much more detailed explaination if you like, but it might not be needed. Let me know if you do, and I'll step ya through how I would do it.

Or you could go out, spend $1k on Varitas (actually it's Symantec now yuk) Backupexec 10. It's an enterprise based backup solution that I use on a daily basis. Backupnt is windows "version" of it, and it works well enough.

Cheers,
Valkyrie

Yup I like Valkyries idea too I've also used Varitas previously (pre Symantec) and it is an excellent yet expencive option

Acronis True Image is your friend
Best backup / imaging software in the world.

if u r serious about back up forget any imaging/software.

really u have two options.

1) use tape (way toooooo expensive. ok if u r running a bank tho)

2) do wat i do, use say a 300GB maxtor external HDD as a backup. plug her in and away we go. thats how i backup my terabyte of data me and a friend have on a server

problem with things like imaging software is they simply aren't reliable enough when storing large amounts of data.

RAID isn't really backing up, unless of course u say move ur server to a different location and use it as a backup for the other computers, but seeing as we dont have a real server thats not much of an idea either.

so i use option 2) for a number of reasons.

a) i can unplug the HDD and take it off somewhere else
B) is simple to use, the HDD comes with all the software to make it all automated
c) using a HDD as backup is cheap compared to other media
d) hell using the external HDD is cheaper than using all this other software which relies upon having seperate hardware @ different locations
e) almost unlimited amount of backup storage available

man thats a pretty good start i think

Might use that idea actually Scorpion, this whole imaging process isn't exactly speedy

You backup 1000Gb of data on a 300Gb drive? Scorpion's idea is simplest since you could just make a script that will copy your data to the HDD and only copy newer files. No need for fancy software. Just good old command-line. Don't ask me how to do it Windows though lol.

sure do. i use a single folder where i save all the data that i want backed up to. alot of the data is actually music and music videos which are all burnt to CD where i can play them in the car so no need for backing that up. the only stuff i back up is music that i haven't burnt and stuff like work and homework to!!

can u imagin moving a 1000GB of data around tho. it just wears out components way to fast for no real reason. lol

sry, i forgot to mention the downside to all of thise is that when a computer does fail u dont have a copy of ur OS backed up (you can if u want to but i wouldnt recommend it). some people find this a disadvantage but i reckon to backup an OS is silly because most of the time its the OS @ fault. why backup and run the risk of backing up the problem to? rendereing all ur data lost.

Use Linux.

I reckon you'd do it in two parts. I'd have the OS/Programs on one partition, and your data on another. Use ghost (or similar) for the programs, and use a backup program for the data. A program that backs up only data that has changed would be the best - less traffic/wear/downtime while backing up - after all, if you've got a copy of something that has not changed, why waste resources backing up that file again?

y bakup ur OS @ all? generally i will rebuild the OS 3 or 4 times a yr because of registry corruption and errors. thats the only way of ensuring stability of ur OS.

Well, it would be just fine to ghost the OS straight after a fresh install, that way you know that there is no crap in it. And yeah just make sure that when you backup it only copies files that were created or modified since the last one.

SCorpian, As Gray said, Ghosting (Assumingyou made the image when the PC was freshly installed) will do the same thing. And even if you add new programs, it takes less time and hassle to ghost the OS, and then load any extra programs.

linux box with rsync is easy, and free (except for hardware), any raid mirror for the drives to protect data.
how important is the data?
if it's just docs, configure the desktops to use the server (Samba) as the mydocs location.
don't need a domain - very messy, unless you implement bind/sso

meh, or u could build urself a new Windows XP startup disc with all ur drivers on it. that way wen u install XP u install all ur drivers. then u have a much much much more reliable form of reinstallation!!

You dont know much about ghosting, do you? ghost simply copies data from a CD to a hard drive. just because that data happens to be an entire OS, and possibly programs, its still just copying. if you INSTALL windows, you've got steps to go through, drivers to install, options to choose. a LOT more things to go wrong, to get to the same place Ghost takes you. Except that its taken you 4 times as long to get there. Now if you've got the time, and dont mind doing it, I guess a full windows install every time is cool, but personally, I'd rather do other things than watch my Operating system install

lol, i know wat ghosting is. we used to do it but i became pissed @ it when my so called 'new' install still had registry corruptions in it. thats why i have my little disc. takes me about 1.5 hrs to get an 80GB HDD reinstalled now. doesnt take long at all. i always say, do it once do it right.

ghost is good for those who just want to eliminate errors, but it wont eliminate driver errors 100% of the time. the only way to properly eliminate registry errors is to delete and start again

KickerCat,
I use a fully automated windows install DVD
it has some programs such as office and mozilla, all the drivers for the hardware and all the registry tweaks and settings (including user accounts) already on it.. all I do is put it in, and away it goes.

but ghost is much much much easier.

^^^^ exactly wat i do. everything on it, installed in the correct order. its really really good for getting the most performance out of ur computer.

How do you do it?
like how do i make one of these DVD that just does it all for me?

its not hard, but then again whenever i say that and i am talking computers to someone then bam. confused look everytime

so

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windo..._slipstream.asp

i couldnt be fagged reading that whole article but from the looks of things, its on the right track.

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

and that one will answer ur every question. i think that may even be the thread i learnt how to 'slipstream' from.

Beautiful im going to look into that seriously cause I must do a software rebuild on my PC every 2-3 months as im forever playing with different softwared for work and you end up with crap everywhere. I reacon in the last 12 months i would have installed and uninstalled over 200 programs on my PC for testing new CAD software etc.

Any way
I'm a very confused with linux. I havent used 'nix since i was in school and even then I never really cared much. (Ive always been into hardware and never cared much for programing etc - thats for the geeks ) Any way I want to setup a Linux box as a server to do back ups but going through all the builds i just got confused as to which one would suit me best.... Any one got any ideas?

Ubuntu is a pretty user-friendly distro. Slackware would be good for a server.

linux is good but the way i see it, if we wanted to use linux we wouldnt have gone away from DOS would we?

might just be easier to use microsoft's server OS?? its wat i use and since i cant use Linux to save myself

somebody else might be able to give u some tips on how to use it?

Well many of us still use dos for a start. But most distros seem to have a good GUI.

I think the problem with MS server OS is $$$$

it is expensive. i was lucky coz a friend also trains ppl in the use of Microsoft server OS and i got it for not much,

We use a program called Veritas (by symantec) at work. This is a very very good program to use for backups (not sure on the price). It can do all sorts of backups (from Exchange backups, to linux box backups, Novell, SQL) basically it can backup anything (including system states).

What is also good about it is you can backup to tape and to hard drive aswell... and you can schedule it to any time of the day and it'll do it. Also 100% sure it works with removeable media too (eg USB Hard drives etc etc).

The only problem i have with it, is it's a fkn battleship to control. Once it's going it's ok... to change direction or stop.... good luck...



Depending on what sort of computer u want to use, and how easy you want stuff to install etc...

Debian is good for nix distro's, seeing as it's probably the fastest and also the most secure. Problem is... unless you know ur way around in command good luck trying to get it working easily... heh

Fedora core is probably one of the easiest ones to setup (and we use on as our proxy/dns server at work). This is by far the easiest to setup (with alot of software for it and also very very user friendly), again, only problem is that it's bloated with extras which u can remove anywayz, but if you dont' know how to.... can be a pain.

I'd say that fedora core is probably one of the easiest ones to use and can be quite good.

Another thing for backups in linux, crond services is what you should use to do the backups. Get it to execute a script file, and you just paste the windows links you want to backup (generally back up to a fat32 partition *you can't use NTFS in linux (well you can but it's too hard to setup and usually corrupts data more often than not)*

Fairly simple to do and is quite efficient. Also a hell of a lot cheaper than an MS box running third party backup software (such as veritas)