Back-up software



I use Time Machine for local backup (mac), DropBox for cross-machine sync, and BackBlaze for automated cloud backup (scales *way* better than Mozy in my experience).

JungleDisk/S3 is pretty sweet too but their metering gets pricey if you have a lot of digital media.
 
Rage9 said:
I'm not sure if your looking for an entire OS backup or just to store some files. If the later take a look at Jungle Disk - Reliable online backup and storage powered by Amazon S3 and Rackspace - JungleDisk
Click to expand...

I vote jungle disk for off-site backups. The interface is as intuitive as they come and recovery is painless. The client is lightweight enough, altho I think Mozy is slightly less resource intensive.

I hear BackBlaze is also good for off-site.

https://www.backblaze.com/index.html

If you want to back up to an external HD/network drive then I recommend MirrorFolder.

MirrorFolder Screenshots
 
Mozy's free for <2GB. Go with that if you just want to keep your spreadsheets/etc. safe.

Code/spreadsheets/text files are my main concern. I don't remote back up my media. I keep a Time Machine and a perfect mirror of that Time Machine backup as well.
 
Question for all of you: how many of you were actually put to the test and had to RESTORE from your backups? I did approx 4 months ago with Carbonite, which backs up everything offsite and does it while you're away from the PC which kicks ass. When my HD crapped out, restore was quick, easy, and worked flawlessly.

If you have yet to test your backups, you could be in for a rude awakening one day...
 
Roundabout said:
Question for all of you: how many of you were actually put to the test and had to RESTORE from your backups? I did approx 4 months ago with Carbonite, which backs up everything offsite and does it while you're away from the PC which kicks ass. When my HD crapped out, restore was quick, easy, and worked flawlessly.

If you have yet to test your backups, you could be in for a rude awakening one day...
Click to expand...

I do every few months for one reason or another, but I just back up all my sensitive data to an external hard drive on a regular basis, not that hard and relatively cost effective. However if your lazy you should have a backup solution in place.
 
Dropbox is great for saving files, but if you want a real backup, as in a drive image, it doesn't do that shit.

I really recommend getting three drives. Partition one if you need to.
Put nothing but your OS on one. Programs go on the second. Videos, music, and loose working files go on the 3rd.

Drive 3 can be backed up using Dropbox, no worries.
Drives 1 & 2 you'll want a proper image of that you can just reinstall by inserting discs into your drives and playing Nintendo for a few hours while it reinstalls itself.
Norton Ghost is half decent at this, but I recommend DriveXML.
Makes an XML file that you can just put on an NTFS networked drive and reinstall from that, or multi-part file if you're disc splitting it.
 
We've been doing IT support for local companies for years and have always come back to one of two things for windows backups.

If they don't require hot backups of MSSQL or other databases, we stick with the free tool from M$ called Robocopy. They have a little GUI for it to make your life easier too. The command line options for this one are pretty nuts so the GUI really helps. With this one you basically select your paths to backup, generate the batch file and then create a scheduled task. I have it backing up my workstation to another onsite box, and to two external USB drives that I swap out to another location ~150km away or so.

Robocopy GUI:
Utility Spotlight: Robocopy GUI

or the newer alternative, RichCopy:
Free Utility: RichCopy, an Advanced Alternative to RoboCopy

Robocopy is part of the 2k3 toolkit, which'll work on XP, Vista, 2K3, and maybe WIN7:
Download details: Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools

If you need crazy backup shit, we usually go with BackupExec, but it's expensive as hell. It'll handle hot backups of MSSQL or other databases and other stuff that Enterprise might need.

BackupExec:
Backup Exec: Data Backup, System Protection, Windows System Recovery | Symantec

If you want completely offsite backups, you can use something like Rsync.net or a similar service, or just run it out to your dedi or colocated server so you have "Free" offsite backups.

Rsync.net:
rsync.net - Secure Offsite Backups, Offsite Data Storage and Remote Encrypted Filesystems, Offsite Backup

I generally like to keep things in two places incase the office burns down I still have some relatively recent backups somewhere offsite.

I may sound anal about backups, but I've had shit in the past happen that warrants it, as I'm sure anyone in IT can attest to :).
 
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