NT Backup Question

[TechSupp]

As we have now run out of space for backup using our tape drives I have purchased a large USB drive to back up the system on to. The question is when using tapes we were able to do daily backups so we could always go back a few days to get a file if it had been lost. Now the question...using NT Backup (thats the only software we have) whats the best way of backing up on to the single USB drive, so that we can keep daily backups on the same drive to retrieve files from if needed? With the tapes we just overwrote anything on that particular tape, but obviously don't want to do that with the drive as that would delete all the other daily backups.

[User3204]

We run a weekly backup every monday that backs up certain stuff, and then another weekly backup every tuesday, wednesday, thurs, fri...

 

It's a pain to set it up, but then you can just set them to overwrite.

 

Actually, thinking about it, I think we run it as a two week timetable, with the Fridays being backed up once a month (but 4 of them each month).

 

As long as you call the files something obvious, like "Week1_Fri" or "monday", it becomes more obvious which file is which.

 

 

 

I think we run ours across the network to a server in another building... but the backups are no longer completely my responsibility. I just take care of the Termly/Yearly ones, which I do onto a couple of 500gb Freecom disks, which I then take home... it's an off-site backup system.

[rhyds]

I'm using NT backup to a NAS box with the built-in windows scheduler. You can set NT Backup (the standard one in Win server 2003 anyhoo) to backup to a file, and thus by putting a few folders on your USB you can have multiple backups as if they were multiple tapes. A word of caution though, the USB drive must be formatted in NTFS or backup will only back up 4Gb.

[TechSupp]

Thanks, thats just the answer I wanted. Good tip about making it NTFS though, would have probably done that anyway but not for that reason though. Didn't think about making separate folders and backing up to a file in each. That will do just the job. Now just got to set up the backup jobs for each day etc.

[eean]

We use http://www.firestreamer.com - it is a cheep application $30us or something - and it works with NT backup. It mounts as a virtual tape drive, then you can use your usb drive as if it were a large tape drive. Or you can backup to files, but it will sort out naming them for you and can delete files after they are x many days old. Also handy because you can encrypt AND compress the files - something nt backup can't do. Does email alerts etc.. aswell.

[ajbritton]

Check out BackupAssist. It's a lovely wrapper around NTBackup. Works nicely with NAS boxes (even non-AD integrated). Will do Exchange brick-level backups (using ExMerge) and email you (and anyone else) the errors or the whole log. Educational pricing means it's V. cheap. I'm finding the support to be pretty good as well.