Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: Bakup solutions

  1. #1
    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Looking down & checking on swearing
    Posts
    19,378
    Thanks
    2,892
    Thanked
    3,403 times in 2,693 posts

    Bakup solutions

    There have been a number of recent threads about the merit of RAID 0 arrays against single drive solutions, and reliabilty and RAID 1 setups. The debates have been interesting, but regardless of the best solution for a particular solution, the bottom line has always been the need for regular backups.

    This got me thinking about my own backup strategy, which to be honest is pretty hit and miss. I back up critical data that I can't afford to loose as and when I think about it, but I don't generally back up my whole hard drive on the basis that I can realtively easily re-install my OS - but then I think about the pain of reconfiguring it, reloading and reconfiguring the applications and so I have been thinking about it some more.

    There are some important decisions to make - which are inter-related. These are what to back up, when , the backup media, and the strategy. Really these things need to be considered at system build as partition layout can be optimised for backing up.

    I am running a Linux system, but the principles are OS independent. On a Linux system, the minimum required is a backup of /var /home and /etc and possibly /root to capture application and user data and configuration data. That is a sizeable chunk of data, so possibly the backup solution is to just copy the whole hard disk to a USB hard drive, and then do incremental backups of the three directories mentioned on a regular basis, perhaps to DVD or CD. Another possibility is to take a clone of the root system disk when the system is built and configured and lock it away until the day the main system HD fails - a simple swap over and the system is back up.

    On a windows machine I guess the minimum would be my documents, but again a clone of the built system on completion of the system build and application installation would again minimise a lot of the pain of system re-installation. Keeping user data on a separate partition makes back up of user data a little simpler.

    tape solutions look the cheapest long term bulk storage, but the hardware is expensive - tape drives starting at about £250 up (perhaps Scan might like to do a Today only on some tape drives?) but the media is relatively cheap for the capacity.

    Those are my thoughts on what is a complex subject - what do others think, and more interestingly, do for their backup solutions?

    "A hard drive is a mechanical device - it is guaranteed to wear out and fail, the only unknown is when."
    (\__/)
    (='.'=)
    (")_(")

    Been helped or just 'Like' a post? Use the Thanks button!
    My broadband speed - 750 Meganibbles/minute

  2. #2
    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Internet
    Posts
    19,168
    Thanks
    735
    Thanked
    1,607 times in 1,045 posts

    Re: Bakup solutions

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    "A hard drive is a mechanical device - it is guaranteed to wear out and fail, the only unknown is when."
    Knowing when its going to fail isn't always an unknown though. Ever since SMART was introduced, I honestly can't remember when I had a HD just die without warning (apart from one I dropped down the stairs, bouncing about 6 times before landing on the cat). Sadly I don't think there any any technology's in place to stop human stupidity to that degree.

    Anyway, my point is that backing up onto another HD is actually fairly safe. The chances that both drives are going to die at the same time causing total data loss is statically small. Of course if one died and you didn't remake a backup of the working one, that's as good as having no backup at all.

    Remember that tapes are not fail-safe either. They can snap, become demagnetised, ect. Granted, both of those can be recovered from to a degree, but there is no such thing as a 'perfect' backup solution.

    I backup onto another drive using Acronis Image Drive. This is under a windows install of course. I don't bother backing up my Ubuntu install, as there is nothing of any importance on it. It's mainly just my learning OS for a (Hopefully) permanent Linux platform in the future.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 24-10-2006, 02:03 PM
  2. Revolutionizing Digital Video Solutions
    By Bob Crabtree in forum HEXUS News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 27-01-2006, 09:29 AM
  3. comms room/enviro monitoring solutions
    By Neo_VR in forum Help! Quick Relief From Tech Headaches
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 30-11-2005, 04:14 PM
  4. Replies: 10
    Last Post: 25-05-2005, 06:53 PM
  5. HELP! Cooling solutions.
    By Galant in forum PC Hardware and Components
    Replies: 14
    Last Post: 17-12-2003, 06:49 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •