Backup software?

Discussion in 'Software' started by albertc30, Feb 21, 2010.

  1. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    Hello everybody.
    I am in the process of adding a 2U rack server here at home onto my existing 16U rack.
    I will be using NASLite-2 as I have been using it for quite a long while now and I must say it has never let me down.
    Anyways, I will have my data, photos, personal files, holiday video etc... on my local system on a 1TB HDD.
    I will have on the server a RAID 0 setup between 2 1TB HDDs.
    I know it may sound a bit extreme but if I'd lose those holiday videos and pics the wife would literally kill me, I mean literally, so, my question is what would be the best affordable home/professional ish backup software that could monitor certain folder on real time.
    Any comments well appreciated.
    Cheers
     
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  2. Bluerinse
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    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Well this was recommended a few years ago by the mighty D-Faktor and i have used it ever since with great success. Oh and it's free and easy to use..

    EZBack-It-Up

    http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,23149-order,1/reviews.html
     
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  3. SimonD
    Honorary Member

    SimonD Terabyte Poster

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    What are you going to back it up to? Don't back it up to the server because if one of those disks goes you're basically buggered. My advice would be to actually invest in a decent backup device (either tape or a couple of NAS devices with one being the master, the other a slave).

    I have two Terastation TSII Pro's with 1.5tb disks in (8 of them), I use one device as my main box (as in that's where I store or delete the data) and I use a sync app to sync between both devices (on a 3 hour turn around). My data is worth the investment I have put into the hardware, I know that I would be extremely unlucky to lose more than one disk from both devices at the same time.

    Backups are ultimately the last thing people actually think about until you actually lose your data. Invest in it wisely and you will be thankful for it.
     
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  4. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    Hello SimonD.
    I must say that you are giving me precious advice but sadly my budget won't stretch that far I'm afraid.
    I have seen that the cheapest, decent NAS, 1TB is around £350.00, now that alone is a bit too much and if I was to make it two of these, oh boy, the wife would shoot, lol.
    I am thinking of having the following setup,
    2 SATA II HDD of 1TB each on my current machine on a RAID 1 (mirrored) and the same on the server side.
    Could also be a possibility that I might get my hands on two lovely Dell SC1425 Rack Server - Xeon 3.0Ghz 64bit CPU and either bung in the same setup on each, that'll cost me, or just 1 SATA II 1TB just for backup on each one of them.
    For all of this I'll need some nice, decent backup software, one that could create newer versions of backed up files and leave like the older versions of those docs would be nice.
    Cheers you guys.
    P.S: Forgot to say that all that important data, holiday pics and videos, are also backed up to DVDs. One could never be too sure.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2010
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    WIP: 220-701 - A+
  5. UKDarkstar
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    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    Cost will depend n hw much you really need to backup but have you considered online ?

    http://www.backupdirect.net/online-data-backup-overview

    used them in the past with many customers and it was an excellent service (much better than that offered by BT!)

    You can always use the free trial to test it out
     
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  6. westernkings

    westernkings Gigabyte Poster

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    Just install another drive into your PC, put all the files you desperately need on it, then use Norton Ghost to back up that. You can space out the image files anywhere you like, on anything you like. Plug in a new external HDD every day and backup to 1 of them per day (7 in total) it.s completely up to you.

    I currently use Norton Ghost to backup my C: Drive every day (it doesn't have my movies etc on it) because I don't always shift my important files and pictures to my new drive. And I back up my DATA drive whenever I feel, I have the images on several NON raid drives attached to my PC. It is unlikely that all 4 of the hard disks they are on will fail.

    and if i ever need a restore, just double click the image, browse the drive just like My COmputer, find what I need, double click and restore. It handy that I can restore an entire drive, or individual files from an image file.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2010
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  7. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    Hello mate.
    I don't know about this particular service however I must say that I am quite familiar with BT Vault or so it's called and oh man, yeah it's ok for normal sized files like docs, xls, pps, txt and average size pics like 100 KB but most definitely NOT for video uploads. BT always comes to a halt and then error on uploading videos. One must remember that they can be quite big.
    I tend to film not more than 2 minutes at a time in the best quality so it's like 60MB ish and its hundreds of them.
    Nevertheless, I shall give this one a try mate.
    Thanks
     
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  8. UKDarkstar
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    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    Yeh, my business ditched the BT product as it's third party and support was terrible.

    Backupdirect.net is owned by Irin Mountain and is a pro product. For bus they do server backups etc and it's cerainly ok for ANY filestypes.

    Give it a try ! :biggrin
     
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  9. Toasty

    Toasty Byte Poster

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    Have you checked the spec of the Dell SC1425 rack servers, I think they can only take up 500GB of hard drive space.
     
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  10. SimonD
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    SimonD Terabyte Poster

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    You have to ask your wife whats more important, the lost data or the cost of a couple of NAS devices. Oh and ebay is your friend, I paid £140 for one of my TS2's. I would also suggest buying a empty chassis and putting the disks in yourself.
     
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  11. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    I am not sure mate, I am still doing some reshearch on them and I have also asked the person on ebay. I am still awaiting an answer.

    How do one know what's the max capacity of a SATA II HDD peer channel? Is it related to the chipset itself? Does that dictactes the HDD max size?
     
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  12. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    Just did mate and sadly it went wrong as it won't install their software on my windows 7?????
     
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  13. westernkings

    westernkings Gigabyte Poster

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    The max capacity of a SATA HDD? or the Throughput? Sata HDDs are at around 2TB right now I think and the Max throughput before you max out SATA is about 150MB/s tp 300MB/s
     
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  14. albertc30

    albertc30 Kilobyte Poster

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    Sorry mate, I haven't made myself clear. What I meant was, lets say that a given motherboard has 6 SATA II ports. What's the maxim HDD size I can have peer port? I mean is there a limitation? What governs this limitation if any? Is it the chipset?
    Hope I made myself a bit clearer now.
    Thanks.
     
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    WIP: 220-701 - A+
  15. Sparky
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

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    Should be something in the mobo documentation mate.
     
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  16. UKDarkstar
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    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    I'm sure they would support Win7 - give them a call on Monday - it's a freephone number
     
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  17. Toasty

    Toasty Byte Poster

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  18. Johnd76

    Johnd76 Megabyte Poster

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