[bbales]

I'm fairly anal about backing up weekly (and since I have a home-based business I should be even more frequent), but recently have been mulling whether I need a different strategy. Part of this is because I know I probably need another drive (I have a 20 GB internal that came with my G4 400, plus 2 80 gb drives. One is used for backup and extra space, the other is for backing up the PB, and, again, for extra space!) Another drive would be strictly for backing up, probably both computers. I just haven't decided if I should go internal or external.

Anyway -- I was doing some reading about something else and saw mention of a perfect office setup requiring X number of drives, b/c backing up is so important. One drive is stored off-site, in case of fire, etc. In case of fire or burglary, I'm pretty much SOL, b/c everything is here.

So this whole thing has me thinking about people's backup STRATEGIES. I know people use various softwares -- CCC, Retrospect or Retrosepct Express or even BounceBack which is what I use b/c I have a CMS/ABS drive. And I know there are various hardware configurations.

But how about some advice on storing off-site, or how many copies of your important information do you have installed on how many drives? What's prudent and what's over the top? I DO keep my financial information in several spots, including cyperspace storage, b/c I want to make absolutely sure I have backups of that. But I can't store my main documents folder on, say, .mac, because of space constraints. (Probably I could get some cheap storage elsewhere, though, now that I think about it.)

I think this is the right spot for this question. It's not software, it's not hardware. It's just seeking information on how people back up what's important to them. (And if you don't back up, well, while I've never had a drive fail on me -- knock on wood -- I did have a near disaster based on operating system failure a few years back. I had a backup, so while I was seriously inconvenienced, I wasn't dead in the water. I know there are people out there who don't back up. I'm not one of them.)

[bleuvixen]

I have nightly backups of every computer on to a networked external drive, them the most critical files are sent to my web-space in a secret location so they are stored offsite, I created a simple applescript for this.

I just backup my quickbooks, quicken, e-mail data and safari bookmarks offsite.

If you have .mac you can schedule nightly backups to your iDisk and feel pretty confident, I believe it is encrypted but am not sure.

The first thing I would find out is how much critical data you want to store offsite.

or you could do monthly backups to DVD and store those offsite, better to have a month's loss than 10 to 20 years :-)

Hope I said something helpful?

[Randman]

bluevixen had some good tips.

I use an external drive with CCC as the primary backup. I also use .Mac for certain things I want access to when away from my computer. I use my iPod (a 40) to store things such as design pieces I'm working on as well as clips and cv-related stuff.
And finally, I have a couple of discs (first a CD, then DVD once I got my external DVD burner) with backups and copies of libraries, photos, documents, etc, that I keep stored at work in case there's ever a fire (or robbery, though it's very safe where I live).

[CatOne]

I do two things:

1) I have a job (I use You Synchronize, but rsync (or its rsyncX equivalent) from the command line (plus a cron job) or the rsyncX GUI will do just as well) that synchronizes my home folder with a remote (network share) folder once a day. These apps do "differential updates" which means only changed files are synchronized. So for 40 GB of data, only about 20 MB is copied every day. And I have it operate in "archive" mode, so if I delete a file off the source, it is "archived" at the source, and not deleted, which can protect you from those "whoops!' moments.

2) I do weekly backups. I use a utility called "Impression" for this -- I don't archive my entire home folder, just ~/Documents, ~/Desktop ~/Library/Keychains, ~/Library/Mail, and a folder ~/Installers which has all the apps I've downloaded/own/etc. This is about 2.5 GB of data. I copy this to my iPod, and to a network share. Once a month or so, I also burn it to DVD and store it away.

So that's a lot of copies -- but one's an offsite that's up to date to 24 hours, and another's something I can access from anywhere, at any time, as I pretty much always have my iPod. Both backups (rsync and on the iPod) are stored as encrypted disk images, which means if someone breaks in and steals the server, or someone rips off my iPod, they can't access the data without knowing my password. It's the same technology as FileVault.

This would be "high maintenance" to do for 50 users, but for me it works great. The DVDs are the longer-term archival storage -- I can access them if I need them whenver I want, going back monthly for years.

[Brass]

My general rule of thumb is this:

"If losing all the data which is not currently backed up would create more hassle than backing up that data, then you should back it up."

This can be extrapolated to how often you back up, and how reliable your backups need to be (eg, how often they need to be taken off-site).

[bbales]

Thanks for all the great insight and input. I'm going to work on my own strategy now, but it's become very clear to me I need to come up with something better than my current practice of making sure I have at least one copy of my hard drive! Yes, it's better than what a lot of people have (never have understood people who never back up at all), but it's not good enough.

Thanks again.

[JMII]

This is my system... I developed it along with a co-worker when part of my job description was to be able to relocate our entire design department to another location and be up and running in 48 hours. This came about we had to evacuate our building during a hurricane and wondered if we would ever get back in.

Software used: Retrospect
Hardware used: Quantum DLT Autoloader & Apple RAID

General: Our xServe is running Apple RAID set to mirror, thus anything that changes on drive "A" is automatically mirrored (or backed up) to drive "B" this provides us with 100% uptime for the server 24/7 without any effort or input from us. If a drive goes down we simply have to rebuild the RAID.

Weekly: Once a week (on Saturdays) we run an archive in which all the old jobs are moved into an archive folder. Retrospect scans this folder and backs it up TWICE. We use two sets of tape media in case of tape failure. Once this tape collection grows to size that becomes slow to search (about 16 tapes or 1,280GBs) we start a new set.

In addition, we run a system wide backup (on Sundays) of all the networked machines (workstations plus the servers). This backup contains FOUR sets of media that are rotated. This provides us with approixately a month's history of weekly updates. The older sets are kept in a fireproof safe on site. However at my previous employer these tapes were sent off-site using a service called Iron Mountain.

Daily: Each night Retrospect does an update or incremental backup, where only the files that changed that particular day are updated. This saves media and time while still providing a history of all the files modified throught the work week.

Worst case using this system is you could lose a week's worth of work if the building burned down and best case you can restore ANY file revision as old as month within mintues. Of course the older archive tapes go back for years and years, but it does take some time for us to pull them from storage. The system is completely automatic, the only user input (other than swaping/moving media sets) is that once a week we have to manually move files into the archive folder. We could create an AppleScript or have Retrospect automatic select files (by date for example) but given our workflow the manual move is actually the best solution.

Now my home system is far simpler... I just copy my home folder off my G4 MDD to an external Firewire drive once a month. The only file I really must have is my Quicken data so that gets copied to a ZIP disk atleast once a week. All my iTunes stuff is on a CD somewhere, same with my applications, nothing else is that important in all honesty.

- John

[capuchin]

We run Retrospect on our two main file servers, backed up to a Sony AIT-III tape drive.

We have three sets of backup tapes - we run a set a week as a recycle backup (full backup of everything on all our file servers) which we let run over the weekend. Each backup set also runs an incremental backup every three days. It's pretty involved, and not tremendously easy to explain, but very effective - one tape set lives at work in a fireproof safe, one lives at home in another fireproof safe, and one is locked in my briefcase.

No matter what tragedy should befall the office, we'll lose more than 24 hours worth of work.