Backup Options

[Murphie]

Hello! We have a small, small business network--4 PC's. I've been backing up to CD's for a while, but since a regular backup of just documents and the most necessary stuff is over 3GB, it takes way too long. I know large businesses have very expensive tape drive setups, but what about those of us who are too small to afford several thousand dollars? Is there an intermediate solution?

Thank you!
Murphie

[RobAnt]

A tape backup system doesn't have to be expensive.

Why not consider Novell's Small Business Suite 6 running on a central server and having a tape drive installed on that, along with a copy of CA's ARCserve or similar.

A suitable server wouldn't need to be more than about £1000, Small Business Suite 6 - the five user, two server version, is free and budget about another £700 for the tape drive, and sufficient tapes for a year.

Installation on an already existing network would't be more than £1000 - so you could cover the whole lot for under £3k, have change, and significantly improve the facilities available on your current network.

[Murphie]

Hmmm..well, interesting, tempting, but unfortunately a little above the budget.

I did some homework myself, ended up with 2 USB external hard drives and using, for now at least, Microsoft Backup in Windows XP. Only $300. Good enough for our itty-bitty business workgroup.

Thank you anyway!
Murphie

[bhafner]

OK here is a simpel answer - though sort of a Rube Goldberg

1) Get a Big Portable drive (big enough to handle several of yoru machines) - OR one for each

2) purchase Norton Ghost

3) 'Ghost' The entire disk image - it is vey fast - maybe 20 minuts or less for a 30 gig machine

4) Now if anything goes dead you can build the entire machine super fast to it previous backup state

5) Make sure you use the appropriate commands in Ghost - it is easy to copy over a hard drive instead of backing it up

After 2 HD failures last year - Ghost was a life saver.

[RobAnt]

That isn't a very good solution in the long term, especially if you have more than one PC on a network and file server(s).

A proper backup solution will catalogue all your files, and provide a single point of backup - while your office is closed.

Next day, simply whip out the tape - which will be marked with a reference/date, and stow it somewhere safe, offsite.

[gpeer]

I have the same situation. I use The Backup Solution from Connected Corporation. 10 gigs for $24.95 month. It backs up through your internet conection.

[RobAnt]

Not very secure, though, you could find your data ending up in the wrong hands. Okay for most, but for those where prying eyes might be an issue, I'd steer clear of storage systems which aren't 100% invisible to others.

[msbackup]

You mentioned that you purchased a USB hard drive to use as your backup media. Centralizing your backup data is a smart way to save money and time.

Your situation exactly describes why we created the Backup for Workgroups product. Over time, we kept running into backup needs that required more more horsepower than personal backup products but we could not cost justify traditional tape-based enterprise backup products.

Backup for Workgroups www.backup-for-workgroups.com can backup all your networked Windows computers and store the backup data to a single, centralized storage device, such as your external USB or FireWire hard drive. It also comes with a mirroring feature so you can mirror all the backup data to another storage device, which if portable can be taken off-site. The smallest configuration is for 3-clients, with quick volume discounts at 5 and 10 clients.