Backup

The Zip Drive would be best suited for backup because you can set up back to run on a schedule and not have to monitor it.

It depends on how much data you will be backing up. Floppy has 1.44mb, Zip is either 100mb or 250mb ( depending on your version ),
CD Writer can copy up to 600+, Tape drive anywhere from 250mb to 80GB etc.

Then examine your backup method. Do you want to backup single files, whole directories, or the entire machine?

If it is simply data, the hard part is making it foolproof and painless for users. I write a simple batch file and put it in the root of C:\drive

xcopy c:\mydocuments\*.* /s d: ( D=zip drive)
xcopy c:\msoffice\data\*.* /s d:
xcopy c:\storage\*.* /s d:

( where the directories are those where my files are stored, yours would be different )

If you leave a zip disk in all the time, you can have scheduler invokethe batch file automatically, and it will run minimized in the background
then I make a shortcut on the desktop to the batch file. Takes about 3 minutes to fill a zip disk this way.

Other solutions are MSbackup which comes with
Windows 95/98 etc.

I would say that a CD-Writer is a great Archive solution, with its long-term stability and relatively cheap price. For backup, however, you want to be able to schedule your backups, and do them often. For that, the reuseability of the zip drive willmake that a less expensive option.

Regarding the better backup media--you may want to consider which backup software is best. Both Spressa(Sony) and Backup Exec (Veritas) are capable of doing intelligent backups, ie; full, incremental, and differential (you should familiarize yourself with these terms before you make a decision), and are pretty simple to set up and use. I personally use the Spressa on my home network, and Backup Exec at work. The Spressa is capable of backing up to CD-R, and appending subsequent backups to the same media until it is full. At work, the Backup Exec I use utilizes DLT, but I understand there is a home version that may possibly use CD-R(I do not know about that). By the way, I have a 250MB Zip drive on my home network, but decided not to use it after investigating the software options, and considering the cost of Zip disks ($12/250MB) vs spindle CD-R's (16 cents/650 MB). Some may argue that you can reuse the Zip disks, but if you want to do that, you can buy CD-RW's for a buck or so,and still be way ahead of the Zip solution.

Either a Zip Drive or a CD Writer will work. I have an internal CD Writer and an external Zip Drive. I have found that both do the job. I choose to copy files without any compression or zipping. Most computers have a CD Drive while fewere computers have a Zip Drive. If you want to make copies or back-up files to another computer, a CD Drive may be a better choice. I would not chhose a Tape Drive. Hope this helps.

dennie

For backing up your system I would use a second hard drive. I have tested two programs Norten Ghost2001 and DriveImage4.0 both work fine. You can backup 1.5Gb. in about 5 min. and restore in about 7 min. And please don't even let Tape drives be considered. Zip drives are ok for small files. CD writers are good for storing information for long periods. So for speed and cost use a harddrive.

Since you included the word network, I would recommend a Zip, Zip250, Jaz or Jaz 2gig depending on backup size/s needed. These and other removeable disk type drives can be made to look like a regular drive, be shared, use any back-up program, be sychronized(Mirrored) to a drive or folder/directory and have back-ups done from any workstation. You should also install these and any other devices including printers in/on a workstation or dedicated server for that purpose to maximize the file servers effectiveness. P.S. You would/could/should also make a second backup on any workstation.

Get yourself a second hard drive, a 2gig
jazz drive USB or SCSI not parallel, a copy
of Retrospect and a copy of DriveImage.

Make a bootable floppy that supports the
jazz and use Driveimage from dos to
make a copy of the partition to a Jazz disk.
This is the ultimate backup, everything is
there and can be restored to a
replacement drive in the time it takes to
format a drive. DriveImage recreates the
partition and all information on a bare
unformatted, unpartitioned drive. You are
up and running in no time at all. Replace
this partition backup when you make
major changes to software or system
settings. If you have to restore you can do
it from dos.

Make daily appended backups to the
second hard drive of documents and
constant changing files. Retrospect is
excellent in it's options for this, now
duplicate the daily's to the jazz. Take the
jazz off site at night for maximum
protection.

Look at the money you spend for backup
this way.If you loose all of your data how
much will it cost you. If you have to rebuild
your machines from scratch and restore
information from paper.
How much money will you loose on an
hourly basis until the system is back up
and people are productive again.
One account that didn't believe in a good
backup plan lost 10 days of productivity
for 3 bookeepers because they turned off
the air over the July 4th weekend and the
computer room got up to 112 degrees.
Fried both mirrored drives and the system
backup tape that was in the machine from
that friday. I had to totally start over with
system install and then restore
bookeeping files from two days back.

Good Luck
Lee

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