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portable backup

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by bob

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I am looking for a fast and convenent way to back up customers servers that do not have a back up plan in effect.

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by james r linn

If they won't spring for a "real" backup system, and I were the only one making configuration changes to the system, here is what I would do.

Use Symantec's ghost to make an image of the system disk, so that I could restore the OS and applicationsettings easily. If this fits on a CD or two I would use a CD burner to make the image - keeping two copies - one for them and one for you. Then I would separately look for a way to back up the data - add a second hard disk and make a cron job to shut down the application, copy the data to the other drive, start the application up again.

James

by jklein

If you dont feel comfortable using Ghost get a portable DVD (4.7 GB capacity)or CD burner(650 MB capacity)and copy the volumes or just the important data files. DVD might take a long time to burn and require lots of cache space. Weed out the programfiles from the data and only copy the data.

You have to emphisise how important a backup is and not having one or more backup sources is reckless. Your company is only as good as your last backup!

Ive visited a client last month who was using 1 backup tape in a drive for 4-5 years. I tried to get them to upgrade their network and they would not spend the $$$ to secure there data. If this is where your at walk away.

by alanmcrae

Imaging to DVD is about to explode onto the Disaster Recovery Market. For years we IT consultants have waited for a low-cost, high capacity, random access, high reliability, long shelf-life storage medium that could quickly store compressed hard drive images for future disaster recovery. Like most folks I have relied on a portable tape drive to cover my butt, but as Windows O/S & application software have gotten larger and larger my tape solution was no longer workable. So, I've been imaging toan external USB hard drive utilizing Acronis TrueImage or PowerQuest's various imaging tools. The problem with this solution is where to store these huge image files when you have lots of clients? Backing them up to tape is okay, but restoration of images from tape is not supported. Now, along comes DVD with over 4GB of space, USB 2.0 with high speed connectivity, and promises of DVD support from HDD Imaging Software vendors. This could be good... very, very good!

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