Need ideas on backup solution

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PsychoPilot

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I would like to make my Vista Ultimate computer accessible by two XP Home computers on the network so they may backup pictures on my computer and so I can use a printer attached to one of the other computers. The best thing I can think of is to share a three drive raid-1 array in a hot swap bay and keep one drive at my sisters. When I visit her once a week I will leave a drive from my computer and bring back a drive from her house, plug it in, and let it rebuild.

Is this feasible? Are there better solutions? Are there any guides to setting this up?
 
RAID is not a backup solution. Get a USB drive and use the built in backup software to schedule regular backups.
 
download a sync program and have the other 2 xp machines sync folders to your computer. then get some kind of backup solution on your computer. could do external hard drive, could do backup to dvd, could even just throw Mozy Home on it for $55/year and have offsite backup.
 
robocopy for everything.

free, very efficient, simple.

get a couple flash drives, and swap em every week. one @ sisters, one @ home, etc.
 
setup a share on your vista machine that the other computers can write their files to. Setup task scheduler on the other machines to use ntbackup once a week and backup the important files to the share. Use either mozy or iDrive personal on the vista machine to backup all your junk onto the internets. If you don't like the idea of internet backup then use flash drives or USB HDDs. If you are going to use USB HDDs then I would recommend you get a couple and rotate them in case one dies, make sure you get something rugged. Either use windows backup built-in to Vista or some other sync program to backup from that computer to the removable drive.

iDrive or Mozy would be much simpler and easier to maintain IMO. I use iDrive for my home stuff and I have iDrive setup for friends/family. That way I don't have to try and resurrect dead drives any more . . .
 
Captain - does iDrive do SQL and Exchange backups? Price is about the same may be cheaper with my Mozy Pro and grandfathered storage pricing. Features are about the same, nothing that iDrive does that Mozy doesnt.
 
marley1 said:
Captain - does iDrive do SQL and Exchange backups? Price is about the same may be cheaper with my Mozy Pro and grandfathered storage pricing. Features are about the same, nothing that iDrive does that Mozy doesnt.
Click to expand...

From what I'm aware, not natively. You can backup/restore the entire DB file, but you won't get mailbox level backups and restore.
 
Ahh, thats how I believe Mozy does it not to sure, never had to restore Exchange or a SQL yet lol.
 
iDrive has a "super business" version that is supposed to do native SQL and Exchange backups. I don't know about the ability to restore individual mailboxes. We don't have any clients that requested that yet. Mainly we are just using the iDrive for long-term storage of files that have to be backed up but aren't mission-critical for business operation. Things like old patient records, document scans, etc. Then we don't have to backup that stuff to their tape and speeds things up, makes more room, etc.
 
I have around 700GB to back up so internet storage isn't feasible. My idea does involve raid but also includes offsite backup. With a 3 disk raid-1 array can't I remove one drive and leave it offsite as a backup and on a weekly basis plug it back in and let it rebuild? Could that be done while Im using the computer?
 
I wouldn't suggest that, constant rebuilding really works the drives and would lead to them wearing out much sooner then under a normal load, especially if done live, with the chance that you could end up with a dead drive much sooner then expected. While it might work I would advise against it.
 
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

Synctoy works with Vista - it's pretty convenient and can be scheduled (see the built-in help for steps to do that - I think you just schedule synctoy.exe -r "FolderPairName"

It supports different methods and it has very "plain english" explanations like "echo," "subscribe," "synchronize" - each different method handles copies, deletes, renames slightly differently.

If you don't want to schedule it, you can just make a shortcut to execute the sync job you created before you head to your sister's house.

A lot of the other ideas in this thread are good too -
 
There is no such thing as a "3 Drive RAID1 array". RAID1 is mirroring 2, and 2 only, drives for redundancy. RAID5 does 3+ drives, striping with parity, for fault tolerance.

Anyway, I would advise against what you are talking about doing for backups anyway. Just buy an external HDD and do backups to that drive either using ntbackup, windows backup or the previously mentioned sync toy.
 
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