Data Backup

[catbird]

There are two kinds of people: those with a data back-up plan and those who will wish they had one.

With this in mind I've been looking at back-up software for the lab (all window's machines with a remote windows server mounted as a drive). So far I'm liking CrashPlan and Areca but was wondering if LJ had an opinion

Comments

[cos]

The thing most people neglect when they put backups in place is restoring. People look at all the backup features, and forget that the whole point of having backups is to be able to restore. Think about what situations you want this backup for (quick recovery from complete loss of data? getting old copies of files after someone notices a few files have recently been mangled?) and make sure the backup system you have in place has the *restore* features you need. And test them out.

[white_and_nrdy]

Great point. A backup program is only useful if you can actually retrieve the data afterward.

I'm amazed how far online backup technology has come. I worked for a small company from 1996-1997 that specialized in it. It was a VERY hard sell back then. People really were scared of transmitting their credit card info over the internet, never mind their (encrypted) data! No P2P, either - we had 2 dedicated data centers, one at the office and one offsite, with a huge robotic tape drive system to store your data (and retrieve it later). The software was very easy to use. I should know - I wrote all the documentation for it. :) But it could take a while to access your data during a restore if the server had to go pull it off a tape.

Not sure if this is useful or not - I'm mostly just reminiscing here. :)

[catbird]

Quite true. I need to poke at things a bit more, I have been backing up test files and the likes to see what the restore is like :P

Reminiscing is good :)

[catbird]

Quite true. We are mostly just looking for a transparent data repository (most are straight up text files). I stayed up way too late last night and found Cobian Backup which I think might end up being for the win. But ya, definitely more tweaking and talking with IT today.