Smart way of doing backup?

[vsloth]

Hi guys,

I recently started my own graphic/photography business!
I'm getting quite busy, and that equals filling up my harddrives in no time!


I thought of an idea to do the backup, but I'm not sure if it's possible, and I hope you guys can help me out here!
Here goes:

I would get 1 internal drive, and 1 external drive. I then want the external drive, to do backup of the internal at all times. In addition to that, I want the backup to go both ways, meaning that if I take the external drive, and plug it in my laptop to get the days work over, I want that data to be synced with my internal drive.
I hope it makes sense! Is that even possible?

 

[apache_lives]

perhaps a server? or a raid array?

Sounds better if you had a server to store all your data onto (internally some sort of raid array depending on requirements etc - RAID5?), and say weekly backups onto some other device (All comes down to requirements, and importance of data).

Also note RAID arrays protect against hdd failure, most only protect against single hdd failure (2 or more means total loss etc usually), and wont do anything to protect against accidental deletion, corruption, virus's etc

If you want something more simple then yes internal + external hdd will work (look at a piece of software called allwaysync, or robocopy if you can work it right with the /mir command etc) - always keeping two physical copys etc

Hope this helps

 

[vsloth]

I thought about a NAS or so, but my problem is that I don't wonna lay ethernet cables all over my appartment, and the wireless will simply be too slow for me to mess around with the big files!

It sounds quite complicated, and that wasen't the intention!
Perhaps x 2 internal harddrives combined with one external, that you then to some weekly backup with, will infact be the best solution?

 

[sirv]

A raid only makes sense if the data must be available all the time. It's a bit of a lazy man's backup but the only thing it protects against is a hard drive failure. It won't save you from over voltage (lightning), fire, theft, ...

The ideal situation is probably one with a Raid 1 (mirror) of 2 internal drives, and a 2+ (external) drive rotation where each week you use a different drive. That way you have at least one weekly backup, even if something happens while you're backing up. More drives in rotation would help against data corruption in the past (virus occurred last month?) or against the external drives failing. It goes without question that any external drives not currently in use (currently backing up or you needed something from them) should be stored off-site. Bank deposit box, mom's cupboard, ...

It's up to you to decide how far you want to take this by comparing how much data security you want against how much you're willing to spend on it.