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Favorite backup solution?

alostpacket

alostpacket

Over Macho Grande?
Hey gang :)

I've looked around a bit and have always used synctoy in the past, but I recently decided I need to really get a solid, reliable backup system going.

I'm currently trying out SyncBack (free version) and it seems pretty good, but I was hoping for some suggestions too.

I was also hoping people would share what their "backup plan" is. I think part of what I need to do is com up with a good idea of what I want to back and what I want to sync, what I want encrypted, etc.

I currently have a NAS storage of 6TB usable space in a RAID configuration (RAID 5 IIRC)

So, while some of the sync stuff has been nice, I find myself accidentally bogging down my network considerably more than I think I need to be.

Part of the problem is probably that I have nearly 2TB of data on my local machine. I should clean it up a bit for sure. :D

Anywho, any thoughts appreciated!



Edit based on some suggestion here:

1) DirSync Pro - Link: DirSync Pro. For my NAS backups. Toying around with this now
Update: Was ultimately disappointed with this app. It had much potential though.

1a) Sykron - testing this for minor sync jobs such as video library/music library, and using CrashPlan as the backup solution.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synkron/reviews/


2) Crash Plan - For encrypted off-site backups or really important stuff (work, etc). Probably will get this setup when I have the NAS backup sorted.

Update: testing now for local NAS backups

3) Zipped/archived old folder to reduce the insane number of files I have done -- this helped a lot

4) Testing/Learning TrueCrypt (in progress)

5) Will likely do a full backup monthly, and have specific folder backed up/synced more often.
 
i have three external hard drives

important stuff like documents and photos i back up onto the drive as soon as they are on the pc

other stuff i do now and again things like tv shows etc


i dont have a constant backup plan
 
I'd be interested to see what you come up with, too. I've been looking for a good file-level backup. I don't want to constantly image the local drives, just update changed files.

I tried Iomega's QuikProtect but it requires admin rights to run even if you are backing up only files for a single account. Plus it seems to have a problem connecting to the NAS on our domain. I have a RAID1 NAS on my home network and it works semi-decently with that, but definitely not ready for the enterprise.

I'd really like something very simple where I can select what get's backed up on a daily schedule.
 
I manually copy from my laptop to the external HDD. The main desktop comp has 2 drives that are mirrored. My changes happen weekly, if I had multiple changes daily then I'd find a different, automatic solution.
 
I have two external HDDs, one is at work and one is at home, each one has a copy of everything on my computers. All my photos additionally backed-up and viewable online with MobileMe or iCloud or whatever Apple is calling it now.
 
I use USB harddrives. I generally copy and paste, but in the past I've used rsync.

Important things (photos) I have backed up in several places. (flash drives, hard drives (2) and on a server that the whole family has access to (so I guess 3 harddrives))

Here's a backup plan for ya:

Ever week on sunday make a full backup. Each day after that, make a differential backup. Each sunday alternate disks.

(S1 - d1 M1 -d2 Tu1 - D3 ..... S2 - d8, M2 - d2.....) like that (hope it makes sense).

Basically, eight disks (or more, if you need two per day....?) and you alternate the 'full' backup disk so you always have this weeks full backup and last weeks full backup.

;) Not really practical for a user, but for a business it works.

You could do bi-weekly backups..?
 
The problem is backup software always chokes on my insane amount of data. Mostly because of the number of files. So a weekly backup would slow my home network to a crawl for almost a whole day each week.

I think I'm starting to form a plan though.

1) Initial complete backup to NAS (Done)

2) Going through all my old archives and zipping anything really old I am unlikely to need often. (in progress)

3) cleaning old files out (in progress)

4) New complete backup

5) Start using True Crypt and testing on duplicated/dummy data.

6) Look at offsite backup solutions (in progress)

7) Try to determine which folders to sync often (work related/other sensitive data), which to sync periodically (every week? ex Video/Photos/Music ) and then how often to backup everything (monthly?)

Any software I use will do diff backups, or at least only the modified files.

One problem I'm still wondering about is how to deal with things like code repositories. These folders have thousands of files in them.

I may have the software ignore .svn folders, but it does leave a gap in the protection....


Still thinking... Thanks for all the suggestions so far! More always welcome :)
 
When I had Windows, I used a triggered event to run a .bat on my.SD card. That was then included in a scheduled event running a similar .bat to backup to my NAS.

Don't see the point of all these apps. Xcopy is still the best IMHO.

Now I'm on ubuntu, I haven't looked into the cp command switches yet but I'm convinced ill do something script related
 
SUroot said:
When I had Windows, I used a triggered event to run a .bat on my.SD card. That was then included in a scheduled event running a similar .bat to backup to my NAS.

Don't see the point of all these apps. Xcopy is still the best IMHO.

Now I'm on ubuntu, I haven't looked into the cp command switches yet but I'm convinced ill do something script related
Click to expand...

You don't think Xcopy would choke equally on nearly a million files? That was where I seem to hit snags with most of the programs. Basically there were so many files for it to look through, rather than a large amount of data.

That, and that I was disorganized as to what I wanted to backup and how often :)

I do like the GUI of some of the programs. Nothing wrong with a GUI as long as it doesn't sacrifice performance.

I also wonder if Windows would fail on long file names. Synctoy used to have this problem (though they mostly fixed it), not sure if Xcopy suffered the same issue. They basically had FAT rules even though the NAS and local drives were all NTFS.
 
alostpacket said:
You don't think Xcopy would choke equally on nearly a million files? That was where I seem to hit snags with most of the programs. Basically there were so many files for it to look through, rather than a large amount of data.

That, and that I was disorganized as to what I wanted to backup and how often :)

I do like the GUI of some of the programs. Nothing wrong with a GUI as long as it doesn't sacrifice performance.

I also wonder if Windows would fail on long file names. Synctoy used to have this problem (though they mostly fixed it), not sure if Xcopy suffered the same issue. They basically had FAT rules even though the NAS and local drives were all NTFS.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... I am not very familiar with the various switches for these, but is there perhaps a switch that'll limit that apps useage...? Maybe you could have it limit the bandwidth to say 30%....

-- hypothetical --
Code: 
xcopy /dir/to/copy /location/for/backup -l 25
where -l is [limit to X%] ??? Something similar to that?
 
Aye -- I actually took a look at RoboCopy, Xcopy, SyncToy, and RichCopy (newew version of robocopy)

They all looked good. Rsync also looked good. But I fourd DirCopy simple and fit my needs for now, and its Open Source and cross platform, so we'll see how it performs :)

Definitely one of the most important things I did to speed backups was to zip a lot of old directories (I just did this with WinRar-- it has a batch zip thing that works pretty well)
 
I used to use robocopy and loved it. It is much much better than Xcopy IMHO. Unfortunately, the last time that I checked robocopy does not work with VISTA or Windows 7. So I also am looking for something to use. I've heard that robocopy is built into Windows 7, but if so I don't know how to get to it.
 
I use old style copy & paste on my external drive. In most cases when something went wrong it became total disaster so I just save important files but I have now DesktopBackup named folders and sometimes there is more versions of one file, so I am looking for Duplicate copy or something similar to help me with my files..
 
Windows Vista and 7 have built in multiple copy reversion - via Shadow backups. If you right click on a file and select properties, one of the tab will be for previous versions.
 
I've based my network architecture around a Windows Home Server (WHS).
It acts as a central store for over 400 digitised DVDs, photos and music files and has a unique user share for each user in the house.

Backup regime..

Windows machines (1 laptop, 1 headless Zino)
- imaged nightly to WHS (multiple days, weeks, months on standard cycle)
- data backups (using Syncback free) to user shares on WHS

iPhone 3GS
- backed up to iCloud & via iTunes (replicated to WHS via Syncback jobs)

Asus Transformer
- Foldersync nightly backup of core files to unique WHS user share
- backed up to Google Account
- Apps list synced to AppBrain

Samsung Galaxy Nexus
- Foldersync nightly backup of core files to unique WHS user share
- backed up to Google Account
- Apps list synced to AppBrain

Ubuntu Laptop
- not backed up (shell machine used for RDP, VNC control of others & web browsing)

WHS
- All data replicated to NAS in weekly Syncback pro jobs
 
johnlgalt said:
Awesome. Now I know who to come talk to when I finally get around to building my own WHS. Lol.
Click to expand...

Well I'll help if I can (just start a thread and PM me) - but I have to say it's been one of the easiest things I've ever had to setup since my ZX Spectrum when I was 11 ...
I jumped into WHS because we had a power outage that fried my Bubba One. I looked at building a WHS up, but came across an EX490 from HP that was being discontinued - I got a
 
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