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On 07/10/12 10:17, Simon Avery wrote:
In our household we have reached a point where there is lots
of data, mainly photos, on several laptop hard disks. Some of
this data is not backed up anywhere at the moment!!! So I
really need setup a file server / back up box soon!.... (or
use the online options as Rob suggested)
Also, I am utterly *rubbish* when it comes to networking so I
am looking forward to learning a little about that in the
process. Also, learning a bit more bash (+?cron) to
automatically back up the data from the various laptops will
be good. :-)
I forgot a few things in my list of what my home server does. One
is act as a backup server for all the other PCs and laptops on the
network.
One that works well for me (and I also use it at several sites at
work serving around 50 PCs) is "backuppc". I just copy a folder
onto each target windows pc, which contains a cygwin copy of rsync
and an ini file, and that machine is then ready to be backed up! I
tell backuppc its ip address and it'll work it all out itself,
reliably, and has a reasonable web interface to check statuses and
even restore accidental files. It'll try each machine until it
sees it online and if it's not been backed up recently, will
instigate one automatically. It also does any other linux
servers, although at work I use a NAS in another building (fire
safe!) which backs up from various servers a directory full of
archives generated by "backup-manager". Naturally both are free
and open source.
Using cron to trigger a script is also a perfectly valid method,
but I prefer the likes of backuppc that not only do periodic
backups, but staggered ones so you have a 'version' history of
backups sorted by date, including full and partial ones - in case
a file got deleted and not noticed for a while. One thing it does
that is also very good is "pooling" where it combines duplicates
of files, replacing them with hard links. Where this really saves
* A LOT * of drive space is backing up similar machines that have
similar software. Although my work server may hold backups for 50
machines, it will only hold one copy of Microsoft Word, One copy
of Sage, etc etc. (You could argue strongly about why backup
software that can be reinstalled, but IME with fairly low-clue
level users, they save information anywhere on the drive and it
has historically been useful to be able to say; "Oh, you saved
that really important document \windows\system32 ? Oh boy, it's
your lucky day..." Of course if you have better control of where
your group saves stuff, this may not apply. :)
One thing I've found with all background (ie, automated) backup
systems is that a single core CPU will generally be quite (indeed,
very) noticable when a backup is running. Same as virus scans, but
there aren't many single core machines around now even on laptops.
I have another backup method which is a simple USB drive caddy
that fits PATA and SATA hdd's. Using old hard drives, I copy
backups onto those periodically - but as this is a manual system,
it's prone to idleness and only really a tertiary system. I then
lock those drives in a fireproof safe and try not to obsess /too/
much about 'bit rot' and how usable such backups will be in 10
years or so...
Simon
Hi Simon
Thanks for the info. I will save this thread and return to it nearer
the time....please remain available at your work station lol lol :-p
cheers roly :-)
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