Best Backup Tool

[MEELAN]

Can some body recommend a good back media to use in my office?
Total data size would be less than 2 GB. But, the most critical data may be around 1 GB.

I plan to use it from a Desktop computer or a relatively high end workstation.

Which one would you suggest? Tape Backup or any other?
Data security is the first concern for me.

[admin]

I find Harddrives in raid is cheaper then tape any day and even better.

[MEELAN]

admin: Thanks for the reply.
RAID in a PC (?) is a costly one. I consider fixing a tape drive to that workstation to take the backup at the end of every day work.

Is there any other backup media in this world. Any new reliable technologies introduced recently?

[Wonderer]

http://www.promise.com/product/produ...asp?familyId=7

[Brangwyn]

I'm using DVD for some backups, I have tape as well but DVD now works out cheaper imo.

Agree with Brad about just using hardrives though I've just been adding 120Gb to my server when ever I run out of space, use a 120Gb in a USB Enclosure to copy backup files taken via Norton Ghost onto it (I have a second copy of the backup file on my main server as well). Should cover most bases unless the house burns down anyway.

Many newer Motherboards now support Raid so getting it setup isn't that costly ( a good quality 40Gb Tape drive costs a lot more + media prices are rediculous for tapes). Also don't forget that Windows 2000 and Windows XP both support software based mirroring which works very effectively.

[jmbeach]

Originally posted by Brangwyn
Many newer Motherboards now support Raid so getting it setup isn't that costly ( a good quality 40Gb Tape drive costs a lot more + media prices are rediculous for tapes). Also don't forget that Windows 2000 and Windows XP both support software based mirroring which works very effectively.

Don't forget that tape drives are sooooo slow compared to a decent HD. I just do daily backups to a spare HD in my fileserver - takes about a minute per GB in my experience, faster if you backup large files. Plus with Win2000 and XP you get the free backup utility anyhow, so there's no extra expense for decent software.

Raid is nice too, though. You can never have too many copies of your stuff - better that than to be crying when you have to ship your dead hard drive along with $1000 to try and get the content restored.

[MEELAN]

ok, do you think a removable hard drive is good choice for faster backup?

I do not want to keep the back up on the same machine.

[Brangwyn]

Yes you could use removeable drives instead of say an external USB or firewire enclosure.

[shanewtravel]

You could also try backing up to another machine on your LAN, using a program like Second Copy 2000.

[MEELAN]

Thank you all

I have decided to buy a tape drive and a removable hard drive as a solution.

BTW, somebody was telling that there several tachnologies on Tape drives and some are out dated (like DAT or something)

I do not know which one to choose. What technical specifications or technologies I should go look into in selecting a Tape drive?

[Brangwyn]

Yes there are different media technologies and different drives to go with them, the majority of tape drives are SCSI also, though you can get IDE ones as well, all drives have their own various maximum capacities as well.

I'd say go with anything that supports DAT/DDS-4 personally.

I would personally go for RAID IDE HD for a cheaper solution, at work we ahve Ultrium II tape drives, they are NOT slow, we backup almost 400GB of data every night on them.

[Brangwyn]

Make it an extrenal array to the machine your backing up though, if you simply add raid to an existing PC and say get infected by a virus, or there is a power surge chances are your still going to loose all your data ! .. same goes for disk mirroring really.

[MEELAN]

virus: A big concern for us here. We use norton antivirus on all PCs.

Thank you all for helping me on this regard

Best virus protection:
Don't run strange programs. =)