Home PC Backup

[gloriousglenn]

Hi everybody,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this and I'm sure I'll get my virtual knuckles wrapped if I'm wrong!!

What seems to be everybody's personal opinion on the best way to back up Home PC data nowadays?

I would prefer something automated as I am a fogetfull person and I just wouldn't do it otherwise! Something to backup about 100Gb of data.

I would be interested in any ideas both onsite and offsite solutions. I don't mind if you want to tell me about internal HDDs, external HDDs, tapes, offsite/online storage, 100'000 individual floppy disks(!) I am just interested in what you lot have to say.

I value all of your opinions as you have always been helpful in the past. I would rather trust you guys than some pillock salesman at PC World (apologies to anybody that works part time at PC World!! )

I currently use Acronis True Image 10 and backup manually to an external HDD. So any improvements would be great.

Many thanks in advance
Glenn

[j17sparky]

Id grab an old PC from work, throw a few new harddrives in and install Openfiler or Freenas.

Set openfiler/freenas up to do automated snapshots (like shadow copy), and use a script to copy your data over on workstation shutdown (or whenever. Or even have your data permanently on the openfiler/freenas). You could even have it WOL/auto power up and script a shutdown once its done to save having the box switched on all the time.

Freenas even has a torrent client, so its multi purpose and saves you having your main PC switched on over night.

[mac_shinobi]

what OS is on this pc ?

xp, vista , win 7 ?

[synaesthesia]

I'd say your current solution is probably the best. External hard drives are cheap, easy and large. Acronis is arguably the best cloning solution available. Quick, easy, reliable.

[gloriousglenn]

Id grab an old PC from work, throw a few new harddrives in and install Openfiler or Freenas.

Set openfiler/freenas up to do automated snapshots (like shadow copy), and use a script to copy your data over on workstation shutdown (or whenever. Or even have your data permanently on the openfiler/freenas). You could even have it WOL/auto power up and script a shutdown once its done to save having the box switched on all the time.

Freenas even has a torrent client, so its multi purpose and saves you having your main PC switched on over night.

That seems easy enough. I don't know anything about Openfiler or Freenas but I'm sure it won't be too hard to figure out...Plus I can always post back on here again if I get any problems!!!

what OS is on this pc ?

xp, vista , win 7 ?

Currently Vista, but awaiting delivery of Windows 7 any day now!

I'd say your current solution is probably the best. External hard drives are cheap, easy and large. Acronis is arguably the best cloning solution available. Quick, easy, reliable.

To be honest that's exactly why I chose my current method but I'm now looking for something automated.

[dhicks]

What seems to be everybody's personal opinion on the best way to back up Home PC data nowadays?

External eSATA RAID-1 box. Mirrors your data on to two drives, pull one out and it just carries on:

http://www.stardom.com.tw/

--
David Hicks

[Soulfish]

Personally I use backblaze.com. Pay a small monthly fee and it works pretty well, although it did take a fair few months of 24/7 uploads to get the data onto their servers.

[_Bat_]

The most convenient setup for me was an offsite backup in a family members home. I have a file server in a family members home, which is on 24/7, and an almost identical file server in my flat. The two are connected via VPN (openVPN in my case) and they both run win 2k3 (though could be any OS really). I then use rsync (well, the windows port of it in my case) to synchronize the data changes between the two automatically each night over the VPN.

[jamin100]

Ok, here goes:

I make a bootable clone of my macbooks hard drive once a month and keep it in the safe.
I have time machine running to backup all my "valuable" data to a hard drive connected to my router (Airport Extreme)
THEN - All my Photos/Home Movies/Docs etc is uploaded to Jungle disk (amazon S3) which is really cheap. I think i paid $10 for the first 30GB upload then pay less than $1 per month for incremental backups.

[Chris_Jones]

I've got a mini-itx server, running Windows Home server - automated full disk backups on all my home pc's. It wakes them up at a specified time and shuts them down after., has support for XP and Vista, with Windows 7 support coming (beta version available I think). Plus theres a free trial version available from Microsoft.

[mullet_man]

I just use Synctoy from Microsoft to backup to an external HD, although I am only backing up my music library, but it works great.

[broc]

Another vote for Windows Home Server here. I used it last night to fully recover a Windows 7 Desktop PC that had an HDD failure. I did a bare metal recovery booting from a WHS recovery CD. It took just over an hour.

It is based upon Server 2003 and can be set up to share folders too. I really like it!

[patty04]

another vote for windows home server, im testing it out at the moment only in virtual pc tho

[Gibbo]

I backup to a USB HDD about once a month then bring it into work and leave it in the fireproof safe.

Too many people back up to a second drive in their PC or onto a hard drive and then leave it in the same place, risking total data loss in the event of a burglary or fire.

[RinSewand]

Also backup to WHS here - love the automation and the easy integration, tho I've yet to work out how to back up the OS disk of my WHS, so far that's the only point of failure I can find (aside from house fires etc)

RwD