Backup regimen suggestions

[Keya]

Is anyone here really happy with their current backup system? Im not, and ive decided today is as good a day as any to change that. Tomorrow night i want to go to sleep knowing my data is properly backed up - automatically (preferably every 2 days) and efficiently. Im not familiar with whats the latest and greatest software so i'm all ears! (Windows the source OS)
I have an external HDD via USB3 for the backup destination with enough space for a full mirror. Im not a hardware person so i dont think i want to get involved with RAID drives.
Thankyou very much for any suggestions

[heartbone]

Is anyone here really happy with their current backup system? Im not, and ive decided today is as good a day as any to change that. Tomorrow night i want to go to sleep knowing my data is properly backed up - automatically (preferably every 2 days) and efficiently. Im not familiar with whats the latest and greatest software so i'm all ears! (Windows the source OS)
I have an external HDD via USB3 for the backup destination with enough space for a full mirror. Im not a hardware person so i dont think i want to get involved with RAID drives.
Thankyou very much for any suggestions

I am very impressed and pleased with Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free Edition .

If you want a very simple and efficient solution to system backups,
then install Paragon B&R Free on Windows® and use it to create a bootable archive and restore environment on a CD/DVD, or USB flash drive.
After booting from the created media, the Linux based interface that you are presented with is simple and easy to use.
From the Paragon B&R boot environment you can either save an entire drive partition or restore a previously saved partition.

The default standard compression usually shrinks the amount of data by almost half, and if your OS image is small enough,
then you can save the archive image onto the same USB drive that you booted the Paragon Backup & Recovery from.
My 32 GB WinXP installation and the 64 MB bootable Paragon B&R environment both fit on a 32 GB flash drive,
with plenty of room left for an UBUNTU backup.
I've never made a external USB hard drive bootable, but I'm sure that Paragon allows that.
I always boot from the flash or a CD when using an external USB hard drive for archive storage.
You can also save the archive to disc(s).

Because I already have Acronis True Image 10 installed on my XP, I never use the Paragon B&R from Windows®,
only from the bootable media interface where it works very, very well.
Why I mention Acronis is because, from within Windows® the True Image (paid software) allows one to access the files within the saved archives,
and as I haven't needed it, I haven't bothered to investigate whether the free Paragon restore utility provides the same functionality from their Windows® interface.
I just checked the Paragon web page and apparently it does allow "Recovery based on need - an entire disk, separate partitions or specific files".

[mhs]

For a properly backup, you have to think about a backup plan, with at least two (or more) external hdd drives.

- One external drive connected to your computer/server for regularly backup every day / 2 days / once a week (how often you need and prefer)
- Second external drive disconnected in the cupboard, preferably in another room / house / safe

You have to swap the two external drives every week / 2 weeks / month, so that there is a backup in a safe place, thats not connected to a computer or the electricity.

[RSBasic]

Is anyone here really happy with their current backup system?

Yes
I'm using my own backup software: http://www.rsbasic.de/download/#Datei
My program is a real time backup software and it recognizes and stores the new and changed files automatically without manual backup. Everything is automated.
I have two backup operations:
1. D:\ (data HDD) and C:\Users\Ray\Desktop\ -> E:\ (2. HDD) = real time backup
2. D:\ (data HDD) and C:\Users\Ray\Desktop\ -> G:\ (external HDD) = auto backup when HDD is connected

And the application creates file versions.

[Danilo]

Im not a hardware person so i dont think i want to get involved with RAID drives.

Nonetheless, in my opinion RAID is a good option. I'm using a DiskStation DS2414+ currently,
after using other RAID configurations before, over many years.
Don't be scared, it's really easy to setup. Insert some drives, and create a RAID array using a web interface. That's it.
And, it is extendable for years to come.

Additionally, you should consider using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

To prevent mechanical head crashes (on power failure or at end-of-lifetime), using SSD's may help.
Newest generation SSD's usually have an average life span of 15 to 20 years (and more), even if you write many GB's every day.

Endurance Testing the Samsung 840 EVO SSD

Samsung has not given any official P/E count or TBW rating for the EVO series.
On their global site they claim 10GB writes per day will make the 120GB version last for 28 years.
This roughly translates to 100 TBW.

[Fangbeast]

I backup to a QNAP TS420 NAS (8TB but will get bigger one day) using NetBak Replicator and also run duplicate backups with Replicator to an external 3TB USB3 HDD and also store documents and dev tree to a USB key.

Replicator isn't the best but it can do real-time monitoring, scheduled and instant. And I have access to the files directly, no compression, no strange files that need backup programs to access, can read it from Windows, DOS, Linux etc.

Since a NAS supports concurrency. the entire family use it as a primary backup and they all (I made them do it) have secondary, local backups as well.

I especially threatened my daughter to start backing up or the next time she had a technical issue, she could go and pay someone!!

[HeX0R]

I'm using more ways to backup my things:
1.) A backup software (can't remember the name) which has different backup plans for different paths and stores all on my NAS
2.) I'm using Cubby (cloud) for synchronizing my source codes with the cloud.
Each of my different pc uses Cubby, so whenever I work on one of them, it will automatically have the current sources (=> Sources are stored on more than just one PC if one get's destroyed, I will still have all of my stuff on one of the others)
3.) I'm using history viewer as IDE tool and a decentralized postgresql database (on my webserver).
This makes also sure to have a backup somewhere.

It's almost impossible to loose my source codes, which are my biggest treasure.

[blueb]

I'm as paranoid as the rest... I have 4 USB backup drives (two are for my laptop)
and my main computer has two drives set as: RAID 0 (striped)

but...
Most programmers make use of disaster recovery tools, such as Norton Ghost, etc.
They are very good at making mirror images of your hard drive, etc. but they're
not very good for programmers who wish to go back in time to recover an older
version of their current project... or maybe find the last 3 versions, where they
might see where they went wrong!

I started working on such a program... nearly finished it, busy got side-tracked.

It works, but needs to be polished. It saves too much info and I need to parse
the zip files, and haven't finished that part.

If anyone has an interest I can post it on BoxDrop and make it a community affair.

I tried a screen shot, but no luck.

[mhs]

... but they're
not very good for programmers who wish to go back in time to recover an older
version of their current project... or maybe find the last 3 versions, where they
might see where they went wrong!

For this is the version control systems such as SVN, GIT, ... responsible and not the backup.

[heartbone]

Keya, based on your given scenario and requirements,
the Paragon B&R Windows® interface will most certainly fulfill your desires
when you use the Backup Scheduler - plan your regular backup function.

Depending on the amount of changes you may want to use the
Differential Backup - backup only changed data
function if it is more efficient, but I much prefer to create whole images.

No additional hardware or software cost would be required to implement this solution.
What's not to like?

[HeX0R]

but...
Most programmers make use of disaster recovery tools, such as Norton Ghost, etc.
They are very good at making mirror images of your hard drive, etc. but they're
not very good for programmers who wish to go back in time to recover an older
version of their current project... or maybe find the last 3 versions, where they
might see where they went wrong!

I started working on such a program... nearly finished it, busy got side-tracked.

It works, but needs to be polished. It saves too much info and I need to parse
the zip files, and haven't finished that part.

If anyone has an interest I can post it on BoxDrop and make it a community affair.

I tried a screen shot, but no luck.

That's exactly what history viewer is for.

[Keya]

i came across this free and open-source program called ZPAQ http://mattmahoney.net/dc/zpaq.html
It's fast (if you want), excellent compression, and its JOURNALING so you can 'rewind' files, and for me it's made everything as simple as running a .bat file which ive also added as a bi-weekly Scheduled Task, so it's exactly what i personally was after!

zpaq is a free and open source incremental, journaling command-line archiver for Windows, Linux and Mac OS/X. Incremental means that when you back up your hard drive, for example:

zpaq add e:\backup.zpaq c:\*

then only those files whose last-modified date or size has changed since the previous backup are added. For 100 GB of files, this typically takes about a minute, vs. an hour to create the first version. Journaling means that the archive is append-only. When you add files or directories to the archive, both the old and new versions are saved. You can recover old versions by specifying the date or version number, for example:

zpaq extract e:\backup.zpaq c:\Users\Bob -to tmp -until 2013-10-30

will extract all the files and directories in c:\Users\Bob as of the last backup on or before Oct. 30, 2013 and put them in a directory named tmp.

zpaq is faster and compresses better than most other popular archivers and backup programs, especially for realistic backups that have a lot of duplicate files and a lot of already compressed files.

want maximum compression AND high speed!?!? ok! benchmark tests with just about every packer on the planet ...
http://mattmahoney.net/dc/10gb.html

Code: Select all

 Size       Compress  Extract Sys  Program version  Options
 ---------- -------- -------- ---  ---------------  --------
 2720359988    43888*   45359*  1  zpaq 6.41        -m 611 -th 1           <- Its the #1 compressor, but obviously slow at this level
 2726432291    12491*   12816*  1  zpaq 6.40        -m 610 -th 4
 2761115298    35500    19466   1  nanozip 0.09a    -cc -m16g
 2767789726     3402*    3617*  1  nanozip 0.09a    -cc -m20g -p6 -t16
 2791243335     4060     2926*  1  zpaq 6.40        -m 6                   <- But it can also be very FAST while still compressing well!
 2917361916     1306*     852*  1  zpaq 6.40        -m 5
 3009174091     1734      277*  1  nanozip 0.09a    -co -m16g
 3066519365      476*     251*  1  zpaq 6.40        -m 4
 3307719332      821       78*  1  nanozip 0.09a    -cD -m16g
 3399589497      241*     115   1  zpaq 6.40        -m 3
 3594933877    10003      519   1  7zip 4.47b       -mx                    <- even better than 7zip's best!
 ...-snip-...

[jack]

one thing that concerns me is the use of SHA-1 hash in determining what 64k block to save, however remote the chance of a collision it's still not zero.

Deduplication

When adding files, zpaq uses a rolling hash function to split files into fragments with an average size of 64 KB along content-dependent boundaries. Then it computes the SHA-1 hash of the fragment and compares it with saved hashes from the current and previous versions. If it finds a match then the fragment is not stored.

see http://web.archive.org/web/201107250851 ... babilities

[tj1010]

Clonezilla for partitions, and hardware RAID 1 with UPS. BlueRay for important stuff. USB 3.0 thumb drives for tools and code.

I've been using Faronic's Deep Freeze for a long time too with it's hashing functions. It basically writes the validated image on reboot.

When NAND and NOR get better I'm going to PCIe storage.

[J. Baker]

I have two hard drives on my PC. I use NTI Shadow (version 2) to back up my Documents folder to my backup drive on every change. I also back it up on a USB drive. I like this method.

http://www.nticorp.com/shadow.asp