Ntbackup with 1TB external drive

[stopa003]

Hi,

 

Need help in setting up a basic back up routine using just 1 1TB external USB 2.0 HDD on Windows Server 2K3 using ntbackup.

 

I am thinking of just backing up system state and User data daily on weekdays. Would that be enough?

 

Because we are only using one drive, do I overwrite each daily backup or try and fit on as many daily backup's as possible?

 

We have a small school, User data is currently only a few gig, with capacity to store a maximum of 500gig.

 

Just cant seem to find any decent tutorials or info at the moment.

 

Any help would be great.

 

Thanks

[ChrisP]

why not use robocopy with shadowcopies turned on?

[tarquel]

Its what I use. Cant really go wrong with the mirror option, although the shadow copies thing i didnt realise.

 

That would be handy so it will prevent certain files not copying across when they are "in use" then correct?

[leco]

why not use robocopy with shadowcopies turned on?

 

This issue sounds much the same as the one I have. How do I do that?

[tarquel]

robocopy is part of the Server 2003 Resources Kit:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

 

and probably some others.

 

Shove the robocopy in your path and away you go

 

Regards

Nath.

[CyberNerd]

we make incremental backups using hardlinks - this way we get a snapshot of the entire system each night. This link describes how to do it on *nix and I'm sure it can be adapted to use windows hardlinks.

Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Rsync

[Michael]

By the sounds of things stopa003, you easily have enough space to perform a daily backup of everything (including system state).

 

Creating full backups for Monday to Friday, so each day is overwritten weekly would be recommended.

[tarquel]

No offense to Michael but you'd need more than that.

 

You'd likely need it to go further back than that.

 

I used to get students [and staff ] come to me a few weeks after the event of it being lost, so you might want to think about having available a weekly "snapshot" that goes back 4 weeks, possibly a monthly one that goes back say 3 months or more, and a yearly one thats kept safely stored.

 

Thats what I'd do, and indeed, what we do here [well... with it going further back i.e. monthly shots over 12 months etc] with the snapshot system on our NAS systems.

 

Nath

[Michael]

None taken I suppose it depends on demands. Backing up daily Monday - Friday should be enough, but with a 1TB hard drive, you probably could extend this cycle to monthly.

[tarquel]

 

The trouble is that a student may not look for their peice of work until a few weeks later, then realise its been deleted / corrupted / etc, and then needs the backup... a mon-fri one that replaces itself the following mon-fri wont cut it. I know this.

 

Virtually every backup i restored was from more than a week in the past. In some cases, they'd noticed it wasn't there, and then still decided to say nothing until another week later.

 

So my motto... backup as much as you can, and have as many as you can.

 

After all, external storage like USB HDD's are cheap as chips when it comes to peoples data - students or teachers or any member of staff really.

 

We have a small school, User data is currently only a few gig, with capacity to store a maximum of 500gig.

 

If i were you i would go for as many backups as you feel comfortable having, as space isnt your issue with the current usage. If you need to implement another drive to compensate for usage then do so a bit nearer the time.

 

Consult the logs of the backup of the sizes of the backups every few weeks. Hell, even if you have email them to yourself somehow to give you a "report" every week of the usage and space left on the HDD etc.

 

I had daily over 4 weeks on a 0.5 / 1TB Terastation, along with a semi-working tape backup, and i was in the process of setting up a portable HDD system to replace the tapes. Restoring from a browsable disk/nas share, than from a tape is heaven hehe

 

Just my 2p

 

Nath

[tmcd35]

I'd agree, as many back-ups as possible. We have a 'Virtual Tape Library' on our 4Tb RAID-5 NAS with our back-up set to the following rotation:

 

1x1 year full backups, 3xmonthly differential, 3xweekly differential, 4xdaily incremental.

 

That way we only back-up whats changed since the last full/differential back-up. And restoring from a NAS is a dream!

[tarquel]

I used to do the whole lot to tape overnight, wiping the tape and starting fresh... Even when i ran it overnight, it took forever hehe Sometimes still going the next morning when i got to work.

 

Thankfully to NAS / Disk is sooo much quicker and robocopy mirroring is great for differential backing up

 

Nath.

[stopa003]

Thank you all for your replies. Looking at Robocopy now, will definately try and backup atleast two weeks minimum. Will let you all know how it goes.

 

Cheers!