Backups in Today's World

Published 10 June 07 06:30 PM | russnem
Like many people in today's world I have an absolutely enormous amount of data stored on my various hard drives. Aside from my 320 GB+ of iTunes music and video, there's a significant number of photographs and well over 150 gigs of captured and rendered video. There's also the code for almost every software development project I've ever worked on. The databases for my current projects will also exist and some are so large that a local backup would be far more beneficial that trying to FTP 5 gigs of data down. All this stuff needs to be backed up, but of course DVDs are out (even the dual layer ones) because they store less than 10 gigs each. Even with two dual layer DVD burners in my Mac Pro I'd have to sit here for who knows how long putting in almost 50 blank discs every month. I'm very curious. What are most people with hundreds of gigs of stuff using to back up their data? Is tape backup still around these days? Would a 750 GB or 1 TB drive in an external FireWire 800 enclosure be my best bet? Any advice would be appreciated.
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# John Walker said on June 11, 2007 12:18 AM:

Russ,

I use a combination of things. For local backups, I use Windows Vista Backup to backup to an external 500GB Maxtor USB drive. The nice part with Vista Backup is that after the first full backup, it will only back-up changed files, so the backup times will be fairly short. The downside to Vista backup is that it doesn't backup source code and databases. I have some batch jobs that run to back those items up to the external drive using Windows Task Scheduler. Another good backup utility with more advanced options is Retrospect backup, but you'll have to pay for it. Worth it, though.

I also utilize Mozy to backup all my data to the net. It is wonderful, works in the background making sure all your stuff gets backed up. It is "smart" in that after the initial backup, only changed files get backed up over time. It's a great feeling knowing that I have an external backup solution in place. Definitely check it out. Very reasonable pricing too.

# Chris Weiss said on June 12, 2007 07:58 PM:

Why eliminate online backup? The vast majority of that stuff sounds pretty static, once you get over the initial backup hurdle, how much data changes day-to-day?

Most of the online services allow single-file restore, so if things do go south, you can get your most needed files asap and DL the rest over time. In my case, I went with Carbonite.com for my PC file server - I've got ~200gb backed up to them (thought about backing up my music drive, but why bother, if I lose it, I'll just re-rip everything and to a higher bitrate this time).

It's already saved my butt on more than one occasion after accidentally deleting the wrong item (like say, a folder instead of a file).

Best of luck with whichever path you choose!

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