What backup software are you using?

[hhscr]

I am needing a good backup software product that I can depend on to work and not cause other problems. I am wanting to keep an ongoing backup from my data to a NAS Drive.

What are you using and what does not work?

[jamiewallace]

SyncBack is free and works great for me: http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html

[kachina]

I use Ghost and Veritas Backup Exec. I am going to check into the Internet backup route in April.

Edit: that is Symantec Backup Exec (spent too many years calling it Veritas)

[engstrom]

I use Ghost and have had no problems with it either.

[DJ.]

Been using Acronis Trueimage for several years. www.acronis.com
It is similar to Ghost and you can back up to just about anything from a shared drive on another computer, network attached storage, usb or firewire drive, CD, DVD, and on.

You can backup partitions, drives, files or folders and restore same. One of the features I like is that you can perform differential or incremental image backups. It also clones drives.

One of the things I like is the universal restore. It allows restoring to completely different hardware. I recently did this when I upgraded my motherboard, cpu, video cards, etc.

Sorry to ramble. I don't have any connection to the company but I have had great luck with backups and more importantly the restores.

[JRW]

I use the following free utility: http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

It is feature rich and enable you to build backup jobs by folder, so I use it to back up both work and personal to different spots.

[bburton]

Originally Posted by DJ.

Been using Acronis Trueimage for several years. www.acronis.com

Me too. Very simple to use, and the one time I had to use it to restore everything to a new hard drive which replaced my failed main drive, the program performed perfectly. Strongly recommended.

[Arnor]

Hi Darrell,

Originally Posted by hhscr

I am needing a good backup software product that I can depend on to work and not cause other problems. I am wanting to keep an ongoing backup from my data to a NAS Drive.

You don't say if you are using PC or Mac, so if you are using Mac, please disregard.

I use file copy backups, i.e. I do not ghost drives so I have exact copies etc. So if that's what you are looking for, again, disregard<g>

I use two programs to do our backups. My main work is in software development and my wife does graphics so it is important for us to have reliable backups. I have a single 250GB drive that I backup to from various machines. Then I have one 120GB external USB drive that I use for photos only. Finally I have two 360GB removable drives that we swap out semi-regularly and keep one in a bank depoit box for offsite backups.

To copy from individual machines to the 250GB main backup drive, I use a program called Second Copy 2000 (http://www.secondcopy.com/). It's simple to use, easy to set up and works very well. It is light enough during copying processes that you can easily work on the computer while it's copying. It can be set to copy or synchronize and is very configurable when it comes to set times to backup.

For copying from the 250GB drive to the 360GB drives and the 120GB photo drive I use a program called Insync from www.dillobits.com. It is very good and is much heavier on the CPU while it's copying but since that machine is mostly used for backup only it's a big advantage as the copy processes finish quickly. It can be set to copy or synchronize and it's backup schedule is set up through the windows scheduler.

The removable drivebays I got from Altex for something like $30 each. They come with a bay for a 5.25" drive slot and a drawer for the drive. You can get 5-600GB drives now for <$200 so with removable drives it is not a big deal to create very reliable backup systems. The bays I got are hot-swapable, but I found that it was not always 100% reliable that XP would detect that the drive had changed or would throw an error. So I swap them when the computer is off.

Hope this helps:)

Best regards,

[cwford]

These days as cheap as drives are use two. Consider using a weekly offsite rotation of external drives. That way if main HD get damaged from power spikes, water, fire , children the offsite copy will be safe. Give the other to a friend, take it to work etc. Worst case you've lost a week of data not a lifetime.

[AndrewCCM]

For my photo biz. I use MS Backup.. Free and already installed. Works fine.

I also keep offline storage as well on CDs/DVDs.

At my day job, we use Veritas Netbackup Datacenter (or whatever the current name is.. LOL)

[kachina]

Consider storing important off site archives more than 50 miles from your place of business. That is, if they are important for business continuity. You may not be able to gain fast access to a bank vault next door to your house if both the bank and your home are destroyed by a tornado. I know, paranoid, but remember Katrina.

[JRW]

If you are really looking for offsite archive, take a look at PhotoShelter: https://www.photoshelter.com/signup/signup/subscriber.

I personally do not use it yet, but find it very attractive.

[peteg]

I second SyncBack; I use it for my office backup system. I have a Western Digital MyBook 1tb, configured so that the two 500gb drives mirror each other--I use Syncback to back up to the WD Mybook from the D: Drive on my computer. I am going to get a second WD Mybook soon and rotate the two, taking one off-site periodically.

Costco has the 1TB WD MyBook for around $400...whether you RAID 0 the whole drive for the entire TB, or RAID 1 for 500gb of mirrored storage, that's less than $.50gb, which is a steal for piece of mind. Hard drive failure isn't an "If" proposition, it is a "When"

I use Photoshelter for my offsite backup of my absolute must keep files, as opposed to my entire archive. Photoshelter is rad and worth the look.

[hhscr]

Hey, Thanks for all the input. I had not even consideded the need to keep an offsite backup. This is a good idea.

I have got the hardware setup, I picked up a linksys nslu2 to make two of my USB externals into NAS. I have two 300GB Seagate USB2 drives. This is not hot swappable but so far no problems with the shutdown and reboot process. This should make it fairly simple to get another 300GB and put in the cycle to keep an offsite backup.

Now I will start checking out the software side of the equation and find what works for me.

Arnor,

If you were using only one of the products Second Copy or Insync which do you think is the most user friendly and capable.

Pete,

Is SyncBack an on the fly mirroring or do you have it setup to copy the drive on a daily basis?

Thanks again for all the ideas.
Darrell

[Arnor]

Hi Darrell,

Originally Posted by hhscr

If you were using only one of the products Second Copy or Insync which do you think is the most user friendly and capable.

They are both very good, but also very different. InSync is very heavy on the CPU while it's working and get's done fast. SC is much lighter and you can easily work on the computer while it's working, but for very large backups that is a definite disadvantage and the reason I got Insync as well.

There is one difference: each project in SC can only have _one_ source folder. For my photos that's easy as it's my C:\Camera folder<g> and include all subfolders. in InSync each project can have multiple source and destination folders. SC on the other hand has more options and is easier to use to include or exclude files based on filenames or extensions. InSync can do one of 3 modes, backup, which copies from source to destination. 1 way sync which syncronizes the destination to be as the source, and 2 way sync which copies everything in both directions so you end up with destination and source that are the same even if there were files in the destination that weren't in the source when you started, i.e. it copies both ways. SC can also do this, but it can also compress to a zip file.

Both programs are available as 30 day trial software and I don't think there is any limit to how much you copy etc. I'd try out what has been suggested and pick the one that works for you:)

I use two because SC was too slow to copy from the 250GB drive to the 360GB drive. I set this up as a once a day operation and realized it would take 10-12 hours to complete and at that time the 250 drive only had about 200GB on it;) Of course once the initial copy is done, the rest is just copying what has changed and Insync does this in about half an hour for the 250GB to 360GB drives on a normal workday. SC would probably take couple of hours. I use SC on the computers that copy to the 250 drive and since they deal with less volume it's not an issue. I also spread the SC backups over about 2 hour period from 6pm to 8pm. Insync starts at 9 so when it's done I have a complete backup of everything I've done on my 360 drive.

Best regards,