[Grip Twister]

Hey I run most of my business from this computer and if it crashed today, I'd be up the creek without a paddle and in BIG TROUBLE....

My wife and I are looking for a good back up program(possibly a free one downloadable of the net). Anyone know of anything?

Basically we want to back up a minimum of once a week.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated????

THANKS HEAPS IN ADVANCE....

:bow

 

[Tuff]

http://www.argentuma.com/backup/software/

 

[R1Budha]

Hey I run most of my business from this computer and if it crashed today, I'd be up the creek without a paddle and in BIG TROUBLE....

My wife and I are looking for a good back up program(possibly a free one downloadable of the net). Anyone know of anything?

Basically we want to back up a minimum of once a week.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated????

THANKS HEAPS IN ADVANCE....

:bow

what OS are you using?

if its widows XP, it has one built in......

Start-->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup

Works great, gives tons of option including incremental or full backups, and i would recommend backing up to an external harddrive.

Why use this if yyou are using XP? Because then if the computer dies, you plug the USB hard drive into another XP based computer, restore from backup, and you're done.
No installing the backup program. no setting anything up.
It's all there in every copy of XP.
Might be in earlier versions, and is definately in all server versions as well.

 

[fjorn]

What's your OS? There's a lot of options out there.

I use tape drives, but some people prefer to use external drives like Budha mentioned.

 

[Maxxym]

We use Retrospect at work. I used to use Veritas but their licensing is all messed up.

For small networks, I would use WIndows Backup to backup to the server and then maybe on weekly basis do external full backup to USB drive.

 

[R1Budha]

What's your OS? There's a lot of options out there.

I use tape drives, but some people prefer to use external drives like Budha mentioned.

We use tape backup for most things, but with the price of IDE hard drives, Plus the $30.00 or less for a nice case with fan and everything, it's starting to not make sense for little things.
Plus, if you are going to restore from catastrophic failure of the building, you'd need another tape drive in another computer to work with.
Hence my use of Windows backup and a rotating set of 400GB USB hard drives.

I take them offsite for safekeeping, and i know i could restore in less than a day even if i had to go buy a computer at Best buy and start from scratch.....

Having said all that, that is planning for worst case scenario.
For simple backups, i still like windows backup, cause it is lkiterally idiot proof, requires no liscensing, and is built into the OS if your running Windows.

On the Linux stuff at work, i know they use soimething called AMANDA, but i am totally unfamiliar with it. However it did require a set of 21, 80GB tapes, so it was not cheap. It also requires an dedicated hard drive in the backup machine to spool to.
My method with 400 GB drives was cheaper and more easily restored from.

For once, I actually LIKE a Windows product.
:crash

 

[fjorn]

Amanda is good stuff, and it depends upon how much you're backing up that will require the cache/spool directory. In reality, that's how all the "big boys" (Tivoli for example) do their backups: cache to a "disc pool" and then dump to tape.

You're about one of a few people who "likes" Windows backup. Most people hate it with a passion and refuse to use it.

As to my tapes backup system, I can restore to any *NIX system that has a DDS-3 tape drive. Which is far more common in the *NIX world than most people realize. :fact

For costs, I can buy DDS-3 tapes (12/24GB) for about $5 or $6 each. DDS-4 (20/40GB) are about $10 each. The drives on the other hand are about $250 for a used unit.

Backing up to both a separate HDD or tape drive are possible methods. Neither are better or worse than the other.