At 08:37 AM 09/21/2005 -0700, keith.kaiser27 wrote:
>OK, I have a Mac Mini connected to an older AirPort router, and it has two
>external firewire drives connected. I have a Windows XP box (my wife's
>actually), connected via Cat5 to the same AirPort, with a second drive
>inside. I have an older Mac OS 9 (not Mac OS X compatible) Mac laying
>around, and I have an old Windows 98 machine laying around, neither of
>which is in use. I also have a 400 GB hard drive, that I would like to set
>up in one of those boxes in the basement where the cable router and
>AirPort hang out to write backup from my Mac and XP box stuff to.
Is there a particular reason you want to use one of the old boxes? For
various reasons it's going to be a lot easier to do the backups on one of
the newer boxes. Faster hardware will back the backups run faster. Those
old machines probably don't have 100MB Ethernet, which makes a big
difference backup on the amount of data on newer systems (Tiger, XP).
>What kind of backup scheme should I use? I've heard that 'mirroring' is
>too slow, but pure backup can be difficult, time consuming and hard to use
>when/if recovery is necessary. But someone said something about "ghosting"
>my data from one machine to another, this sounded promising,
"Ghosting" refers to using Norton Ghost, which is just a backup program
with a really catchy name. AFAIK it's a good backup program, but I have no
experience with it.
>can someone give me their best ideas on how to make sure I don't lose
>anything next time one of my hard drives takes a nose dive?
Well, if you want a prescription, here goes:
1) Pick either the Mac mini or the XP box to be the backup server. The
backup server should have a DVD writer. (We'll still use that 400GB HD, but
remember that one backup isn't enough.) It should also have a fast
connection for the 400GB HD (USB2 or FireWire). If you don't have a DVD
writer then you can get started with only the 400GB HD, but you should
acquire an additional backup method ASAP. These computers have too much
data on them for CD to be a reasonable backup method.
2) Get either Retrospect 6 Desktop for Macintosh, or Retrospect 7
Professional for Windows, depending on which system you decide to run it
on. These are the versions which can back up a remote computer via the LAN.
They are basically the same as far as you are concerned, even though the
Windows version is a higher level. Operation is very similar. I switched
from running backups on a Mac to running them on Windows a couple of years
ago, and I hardly noticed the difference.
3) Install the main program on one computer and the client on the other.
When you set up the backups, make sure to use the method which connects to
the client; do not back up from a networked disk.
4) Set up backups for each HD using the "all files except cache files"
selector. You can exclude other files later, but don't fall into the trap
of trying to decide what to back up. The default should be everything; then
make exceptions.
5) On the 400GB HD, set up a backup set for each of the other HDs. (You
could use one backup set for them all, but this gives a little more
flexibility.)
6) Set up two backup sets on DVDs. Check the ads at Office Depot etc for
cheap writable DVDs, making sure to get the kind that your DVD writer uses.
Should be well under $0.50 each if you are in the US. Also, get a marker
designed specifically for writing on CD/DVD -- I recently found a good one
made by Sharpie; some older ones from Fellowes didn't work well. If you
can't find the special marker then use a regular Sharpie, but use the "fine
point" rather than the extra fine point; the "fine point" is actually a
pretty wide point that isn't likely to scratch the DVD. Remember that it's
the TOP of the CD/DVD that's most vulnerable to damage.
7) Schedule a backup of all HDs every night to the 400GB HD, and backups to
the DVDs twice weekly, alternating the two DVD backup sets.
8) Create whatever kind of reminder you need to force yourself to verify
each day that the backups ran the night before. This check will also
discover when a DVD filled up, at which point you'll feed it a new one;
label it when you do.
9) Find a different location for one of the DVD backups. At the least, put
it in a different part of the house. Somewhere else -- like a drawer at
work -- is better. Each day when the DVD backup runs, swap the DVD sets.
10) Nothing is going to make recovery easy. Make sure you have the backups,
and bootable CDs/DVDs for each system, and at least you can figure out the
recovery when necessary. The professional approach is to actually test out
reloading from backups to make sure it goes smoothly when required, but I
don't know of anyone doing that in a home or very small office situation.
11) Try to find a place to donate the old computers. But do a low level
reformat of the HDs before letting them out of your hands.
Edward
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http://paleo.org
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