Backup question

Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my photography /
graphics files. These are very important to me. I use Retrospect to guard
against problems, but obviously need a backup to another drive or archive on
CD-ROM.

I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.

Could I get some advice on best way to store a copy of these files...
external HD, CD-Rom, or other drive? Cost of storage is important, as I
stated.

Thanks.
-David

News

"News" <> wrote in news:d9rkbd$9k7$:

> Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my
> photography / graphics files. These are very important to me. I use
> Retrospect to guard against problems, but obviously need a backup to
> another drive or archive on CD-ROM.
>
> I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.
>
> Could I get some advice on best way to store a copy of these files...
> external HD, CD-Rom, or other drive? Cost of storage is important, as
> I stated.
>
> Thanks.
> -David
>

You must really be hard up for cash The most expensive solution, a 40
Gig hard drive, is worth less than $40. CDs (say a 50-pack plus a few)
could cost as little as $5 (although I would recommend instead buying top-
quality rather than no-name generic media at perhaps triple the cost). If
you already have the burner DVDs might be a better choice (less risk of
technological obsolescence than CDs).

In any case I recommend you store the backup offsite (relative, etc.) to
eliminate risks from fire, flood, etc.

Regards,

nemo_outis

Have a buddy (with a DVD burner) burn them to DVD for you (10 DVDs, $20 cdn
???). Or, pick up a burner (about $50 cdn, LG) and 10 DVDs ($20 cdn???) and
do it yourself.

> Could I get some advice on best way to store a copy of these files...
> external HD, CD-Rom, or other drive? Cost of storage is important, as I
> stated.

Bowgus

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<d9rkbd$9k7$>, News wrote:

>Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my photography /
>graphics files. These are very important to me.

"How important are they?" Translation - what is it worth to you? Side
question, what are you guarding against? Hardware failure? Software failure?
Theft? Fire/Flood/Earthquake? Fumbling fingers?

>I use Retrospect to guard against problems, but obviously need a backup
>to another drive or archive on CD-ROM.

40 Gigs can't be shoehorned into a CD-ROM. How often do these files change?

>I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.

What are you guarding against? At the least, you would want a removable
media of sufficient capacity (so that it can be elsewhere when your main
computer is crushed by stampeding yaks). Thing is, 120 Gig capacity is
huge, and even 40 Gigs is going to be expensive. Tape drives of suitable
capacity (DDS/4 mm can do 20 Gigs normal "40 Gigs" compressed - the later
unlikely if the data is already in a compressed format) are very expensive,
but we've had good luck with Seagates. DLTs are even more expensive, but
the media is "comparable" in cost. Avoid Travan drives - reliability.

For a home user WHO IS SKILLED with hardware, a reasonable solution might
be to TEMPORARILY install a second hard drive of suitable capacity, and
copy the files to that drive, then remove it and store it in "a safe place".
The TWO problems with that is the risk of constant fiddling with the disk
and guts of the computers, AND the fact that the connectors have a finite
life (admittedly measured in the hundreds of mate/demate cycles).

If not skilled with hardware, another solution would be to obtain a small
cheap computer with that large drive, and Ethernet cards for both the main
and this backup computer. Bring the backup out of storage, connect it to the
other computer, do a net copy, then back into safe storage she goes.

What ever you do, verify that your backup program is actually creating
backups that you can restore. You wouldn't be the first person who
_thought_ they had backups.

Old guy

Moe Trin

Moe Trin wrote:

> For a home user WHO IS SKILLED with hardware, a reasonable solution might
> be to TEMPORARILY install a second hard drive of suitable capacity, and
> copy the files to that drive, then remove it and store it in "a safe
> place". The TWO problems with that is the risk of constant fiddling with
> the disk
> and guts of the computers, AND the fact that the connectors have a finite
> life (admittedly measured in the hundreds of mate/demate cycles).

Actually, a USB or Firewire external hard drive is fairly cheap (per Mb),
easy to connect when needed (just plug it in - no skills required) and easy
to replace should *it* go wrong. The chances of both your main drive and
the external drive failing at the same time is remote (though not
impossible if caused by, say, a nearby lightning strike - I speak from
experience). Also, such drives are small enough that you can easily store
the thing off-site should you want only to do, say, weekly backups.

I'm currently implementing backup for my Mac (which holds around 50Gb of
digital photos). My solution is 2 USB hard drives. One stays connected to
the machine which uses a cron job to copy everything from my home dir to
the hard drive overnight. Once a week or once a fortnight, this external
drive gets swapped with one stored at a friend's house just down the road
(so if we get a flood or earthquake then I'm ****ed - but as we live on a
hill in Normandy, both are unlikely). However, all the original versions of
my images are also stored on two DVDs.

Phil

In article <> you wrote:
> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <d9rkbd$9k7$>, News wrote:
>
>>Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my photography /
>>graphics files. These are very important to me.
>
> "How important are they?" Translation - what is it worth to you? Side
> question, what are you guarding against? Hardware failure? Software failure?
> Theft? Fire/Flood/Earthquake? Fumbling fingers?
>
>>I use Retrospect to guard against problems, but obviously need a backup
>>to another drive or archive on CD-ROM.
>
> 40 Gigs can't be shoehorned into a CD-ROM. How often do these files change?
>
>>I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.
>
> What are you guarding against? At the least, you would want a removable
> media of sufficient capacity (so that it can be elsewhere when your main
> computer is crushed by stampeding yaks). Thing is, 120 Gig capacity is
> huge, and even 40 Gigs is going to be expensive. Tape drives of suitable
> capacity (DDS/4 mm can do 20 Gigs normal "40 Gigs" compressed - the later
> unlikely if the data is already in a compressed format) are very expensive,
> but we've had good luck with Seagates. DLTs are even more expensive, but
> the media is "comparable" in cost. Avoid Travan drives - reliability.

I'm going to assume you want reliable offsite storage.

Tapes are a good solution if you do a *lot* of backups - the cost per GB
of storage is about as good as you can get .

If you are willing to buy tape drives from eBay and the like, though,
prices can be pretty acceptable. Think $ 40 for a SCSI adapter (if you
do not have it already), $ 70 for a DDS-2 drive (4 GB/tape, '8 GB
compressed') and something like $5 a tape. Which, according to vendor
specs, can be reused 100 times [and, if you're willing to take the
chance, will probably last quite a bit longer]. That's pretty close to $
0.01 a GB, excluding initial costs, guaranteed to retain data for 10
years. [If you're willing to shell out more for a tape drive, this cost
will be even lower, as tapes are pretty much the same cost regardless of
capacity, up to DLT at least.]

The initial cost is worth considering, but not too high to be feasible.
The *other* thing worth considering that backups to tape are most useful
if you can read the tape somewhere after your main computer has been
thoroughly destroyed by, for example, stampeding yaks. You should also
consider getting some tapes with better capacity, as the above solution
would require about 10 tapes. (Universities may have this capacity; ask
your local operator. If you're really lucky, they might also be dumping
tape drives...)

Burning to CD is easy, but not a good long-term solution - it's
inconvenient, as it'll take about 15 CD's to do a full backup, and CD-Rs
are hideously expensive (close to $ 1 a GB, if you're willing to store
them on a spindle and use no-name media). They are also not likely to
be readable after ten years, especially if mistreated (as they are wont
to be, if you're anything like me).
CD-RW's are less expensive, a couple of $$$ per (re-usable) disk, but
are not exactly reliable, especially when re-used often. This makes them
less suitable for backups. [I dislike them, partly for no good reason,
so do not take this at face value. A lot of people happily back up to
CD-RW, and presumably those backups remain restorable...]
CD-writers can be had for about $ 50, and the drive will read CD and DVD
media at that price.

Burning to DVD is more convenient, but DVD writers are expensive. The
initial cost is in the 'tape' ballpark, and the cost in the 'CD-R'
ballpark. That being said, this isn't too inconvenient and DVD's are
likely to be readable everywhere.

External hard drives are another option, but aren't exactly 'removable
media' - the main effect of which is that, though you *could* place them
offsite, you likely won't. The cost is a few $$$ a GB; they are
pretty much infinitely reusable. Reading them should be possible on
newer machines, after some fiddling.

The last option, of course, is to get the cheapest computer you can
find, put a decent 40 or 80 GB drive in it, and synchronize data
nightly. Place it somewhere it'll not be bothered too much, and be sure
to use encryption while sending your stuff over the net. You should be
able to get the computer for free by asking around, so this will just
cost you a single drive and some time. Be sure to place it with a friend
or somesuch. You might want to look into rsync, or some rsync-derivative
that will keep old data around for a while. This is cheap, but data will
only be kept for a couple of weeks and it'll take you a while to
assemble a stack of CD's or tapes as large as a computer. Or noisy...

I have, personally, used CD's for a couple of backups, as that's what
was available, but cringed at the cost and made far too little backups.
I own an ancient 1/2 GB /tape tape drive, which I plan to use for
incrementals (and possibly the full backup as well) as soon as the
system it's attached to becomes stable (currently being installed). If
this works out, I intend to purchase a slightly more modern tape drive.
My personal backups take about 12 GB (after compression) for a full
backup, and are likely to be 15-20 GB for a full backup plus a month's
incrementals. A DDS-2 or DDS-3 drive seems reasonable.

My students' association, for which I manage the computers, has close to
the same storage requirements, but those are expected to grow. It was
decided to use DVDs here, as backups should be readable without special
knowledge or hardware. There are plans to mirror data accross redundant
servers, which would also take care of part of the backup problem
(notably, head crashes, which are not unlikely given the quality of
hardware I'm forced to work with - in fact, we've had one hard drive
stop functioning already. After it had cooled down, we were able to
restore the data on the disk in apparently good condition; the system
portion was restored from backups).

In both cases, nightly backups are written to an internal disk. Those
are not intended to guard against disaster, but are quite useful in case
of an operator error. Yes, I've used them (after 'chown -R root:root /',
'rm -rf /var/someimportantdir', editing configuration files into
un-usability, or removing important personal data).

In all cases, get some decent backup software that will let you do
incremental backups.

Joachim

Joachim Schipper

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:46:21 -0500, "News" <> wrote:

>Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my photography /
>graphics files. These are very important to me. I use Retrospect to guard
>against problems, but obviously need a backup to another drive or archive on
>CD-ROM.
>
>I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.
>
>Could I get some advice on best way to store a copy of these files...
>external HD, CD-Rom, or other drive? Cost of storage is important, as I
>stated.
>
I'd go for a hard drive in a removable caddy.
Caddies can be bought for as little as £10 off ebay - or you could
splash out on a posh one ( though in my experience they both use the
same connectors..a modified printer socket..and that's the weakest
link ).
A 60Gb hard drive won't cost too much, and would provide spare
capacity ( for system backups or images via something like Norton
Ghost ).

The chief drawback with this system is the relative fragility of hard
drives - so that means you can't afford to drop the caddy from any
great height.

It's a system I've been using for many years now without incident.

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk

Stephen Howard

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<42c2755e$0$14024$>, Joachim Schipper wrote:

>I'm going to assume you want reliable offsite storage.

Well, "reliable" should be a given - "offsite storage" is desired if
you want to protect against dangers that might take out the local area,
whether fire, flood, storm, earthquake, or that rampaging herd of
rabid yaks.

>Tapes are a good solution if you do a *lot* of backups - the cost per GB
>of storage is about as good as you can get .

and given reasonable care and preventive maintenance, they are fairly
reliable.

>If you are willing to buy tape drives from eBay and the like, though,
>prices can be pretty acceptable. Think $ 40 for a SCSI adapter (if you
>do not have it already), $ 70 for a DDS-2 drive (4 GB/tape, '8 GB
>compressed') and something like $5 a tape.

I'd be more than a little nervous buying discarded drives on eBay. While
there are people who buy the very latest gizmo because it's the very latest,
most people replace hardware when it's no longer adequate for their needs
or when it's starting to get expensive to maintain. That's how I got 3
Exabyte 8505s. I kept them for 18 months before I couldn't afford to
repair them.

>The *other* thing worth considering that backups to tape are most useful
>if you can read the tape somewhere after your main computer has been
>thoroughly destroyed by, for example, stampeding yaks.

Yes - there have been many horror stories like that. Don't forget NASA
with an enormous tape library, and in some cases, no working tape drives
left that can read those old data tapes. I ran into that buzz-saw in
1983.

>Burning to CD is easy, but not a good long-term solution - it's
>inconvenient, as it'll take about 15 CD's to do a full backup, and CD-Rs
>are hideously expensive

Well, they're better than QIC, but that's not saying much.

>[I dislike them, partly for no good reason, so do not take this at face
>value. A lot of people happily back up to CD-RW, and presumably those
>backups remain restorable...]

at least over the short time. However, how many people actually verify
that those backups actually will restore. Horror stories abound!

>External hard drives are another option, but aren't exactly 'removable
>media' - the main effect of which is that, though you *could* place them
>offsite, you likely won't.

Agreed. They also have the 'connector life' problem. The normal "DB-25"
style connector (actually MIL-C-2430 has a "required" life of 5,000
mate/demate cycles, and at one cycle per day, you are talking 13 years of
use, which should be adequate.

>The last option, of course, is to get the cheapest computer you can
>find, put a decent 40 or 80 GB drive

or larger

> in it, and synchronize data
>nightly. Place it somewhere it'll not be bothered too much, and be sure
>to use encryption while sending your stuff over the net. You should be
>able to get the computer for free by asking around, so this will just
>cost you a single drive and some time. Be sure to place it with a friend
>or somesuch.

To make the friend more cooperative, install another drive on your
computer, and offer to be the 'off-site' repository for the friend's data.

Old guy

Moe Trin

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<cv1ap2->, Phil wrote:

>Actually, a USB or Firewire external hard drive is fairly cheap (per Mb),
>easy to connect when needed (just plug it in - no skills required) and easy
>to replace should *it* go wrong.

Minor disadvantage - only one backup.

>The chances of both your main drive and the external drive failing at the
>same time is remote (though not impossible if caused by, say, a nearby
>lightning strike - I speak from experience).

Power supplies and perhaps disk controllers can also cause common
problems. We always back up to a different system just for this reason.
In the case of tapes, the tape drive is located on a different computer
to avoid the "common point of failure",

>Once a week or once a fortnight, this external drive gets swapped with
>one stored at a friend's house just down the road (so if we get a flood
>or earthquake then I'm ****ed - but as we live on a hill in Normandy, both
>are unlikely).

If the hill is high enough and far enough away from the beach, the tidal
waves won't get you, but watch out for those herds of rabid yaks, and
the tourist drivers. It's always something.

Old guy

Moe Trin

Moe Trin wrote:
> In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
> <cv1ap2->, Phil wrote:
>
>
>>Actually, a USB or Firewire external hard drive is fairly cheap (per Mb),
>>easy to connect when needed (just plug it in - no skills required) and easy
>>to replace should *it* go wrong.
>
>
> Minor disadvantage - only one backup.
>
>
>>The chances of both your main drive and the external drive failing at the
>>same time is remote (though not impossible if caused by, say, a nearby
>>lightning strike - I speak from experience).
>
>
> Power supplies and perhaps disk controllers can also cause common
> problems. We always back up to a different system just for this reason.
> In the case of tapes, the tape drive is located on a different computer
> to avoid the "common point of failure",
>
>
>>Once a week or once a fortnight, this external drive gets swapped with
>>one stored at a friend's house just down the road (so if we get a flood
>>or earthquake then I'm ****ed - but as we live on a hill in Normandy, both
>>are unlikely).
>
>
> If the hill is high enough and far enough away from the beach, the tidal
> waves won't get you, but watch out for those herds of rabid yaks, and
> the tourist drivers. It's always something.
>
> Old guy
Perhaps I don't understand well enough. I have used all of the methods
described in previous posts at one time or another. Recently I bought a
200 GB USB drive for backup for an 80 GB drive. I usually do a full
backup on a separate tape device every 6 months or so that a store in a
detached shop where I live.

Even if I were not using VMs I could store at least 3 complete backups
on the 200 GB Maxtor drive. The drive cost was about $125 on sale.

Using VMs makes backup chores much simpler for me as I only store the
base image configured with the VMware (side note I have the VMs on a
second drive in the box). In this configuration You need only backup
the base system when you patch then run a cron once a day looking for
VMs that have changed since last backup then backup the VM only if it
has changed. (Note: for those concerned about recovery of secretive
files VMs are a good solution since once the are gone someone "might"
determine a VM had been there after the free space was over written but
getting to the data within the VM I believe would be very problematic,
of course I might be wrong on this)

In reality I store the previous 2 copies of the VMs because space has
not been a serious issue (to date)since all but 4 of the VMs are Linux
flavors. The VM files can be compressed considerably before achieving
(usually more than 50% depending, my graphics VM do not compress as
well due to many of the files are already compressed). Currently I the
backups require about 100MB total for both copies. I store video clips
on dvd-rws they don't compress and they are huge files.

Perhaps someday my house and my shop may disappear in a twister, and I
would most regret losing code and pictures, but at that point I figure
to have many other higher priority concerns. I guess I will continue to
knock on wood for continued luck.

Winged

Winged