5punk

After my rather half arsed backup solution saved me from hulk-smashing after a moment of stupid earlier today, I figure I should probably get something a bit better sorted. At the moment im making a copy of important things on my server manually, when I remember to. Obviously, thats a bit of a shit solution.

Documents and the like are sorted, as I have a gargantuan amount of dropbox space so I just throw everything that way.
My video collection is just too huge to reasonably back up. Im not buying a bunch of extra hardware just in case, im perfectly happy with having to just download stuff again if it goes horribly wrong.
Which just leaves other stuff: mainly a handfull of ISO's that were a pain to find in the first place and, most importantly, my comics. All told its probably about 100gig: bit too big for dropbox, not so big that I cant find space for it on the server.

Ideally, what I would like is for my computer and the server to wake up every night in the wee hours, and everything that is in certain locations on my computer get mirrored on the server. I'm just looking at redundancy here, rather than a proper backup, with the option to roll back to what it was 2 days ago or anything fancy like that.

Im sure I could work out some way of doing it, but do any of you know of or use programs that would make something like this easy?

Windows has a built-in backup tool, otherwise, I've heard good things about CrashPlan for managing local backups.

I would just get a couple of external hard drives and have whatever software you choose back up everything to them weekly or whatever.

Right now, I sync my media files with our WHS box using SyncToy, and I also have WHS set to make actual backups of my documents and stuff. Lastly, the files that I absolutely can't do without are stored on Dropbox for me so they're completely safe.

I just have a batch file scheduled to xcopy my user profile to an old internal drive, and make sure I keep everything I like in My %. It runs on a sunday night along with a virus scan. Of course I always forget to leave it powered on overnight...

Dog Pants wrote:I just have a batch file scheduled to xcopy my user profile to an old internal drive, and make sure I keep everything I like in My %. It runs on a sunday night along with a virus scan. Of course I always forget to leave it powered on overnight...

I've found robocopy to be more reliable than xcopy, but good plan is good.

If you go down the robocopy route, remember to add /e /w:0 /r:0 to it (basically, copy all folders including empty ones, wait 0 seconds between retries (if file is in use etc) as default is 30s and retry 0 times (default is 1000000))

xcopy is awesome since about Windows XP - I use it a lot, but then I've always loved batch files (except I save them as .cmd files now)

xcopy sourcedirname destdirname %args%

Args:
/e - do subdirs including empty ones
/c - carry on even if there's an error
/d - do a difference copy (saves time)
/h - include hidden and system files
/k - copies attributes
/o - copies permissions (super-useful on servers)
/v - verify everything is copied
/y - doesn't ask to overwrite (essential for scheduled tasks)
/f - shows full filenames, not especially useful, save for remembering the command line by heart: xcopy A B /f/e/c/k/y/d/o/h

Top tip is to create a scheduled task (that runs even if not logged in) that points to a batch (or .cmd) file that contains the instructions. That way you can tweak the actual commands in the task without having to supply credentials each time you edit the task itself.


Even better though, is Windows XP's (and earlier) old backup program the mighty ntbackup - it can be scripted up the wazoo and is surprisingly aware of many filetypes - even Exchange databases. Copy ntbackup.exe, ntmsapi.dll and vssapi.dll from an XP box to an ntbackup directory on every single drive you possess. The XP Volume Shadow Services implementation doesn't actually work in later (or possibly 64bit) versions of Windows, but you need the file. Create backup jobs setting all the settings (ie: diff/inc etc, no volume-locking), schedule them, then go into Task Scheduler and copy the command line. Delete and recreate the tasks pointing to a (you guessed it) batch file containing the command line - which you need to tweak to include the ntbackup.exe path. As long as your PC is switched on it will backup on schedule - none of this "backup did not complete succesfully because I'm a massive spaz and you had like one file open" nonsense.

Forget Win7 home's inability to do a full image backup and even Win7 Pro's half-arsed attempt at a friendly backer-upper, use the old tool which works ten times better and actually lets you see all the files you are backing up/restoring.


Also get GameSaveManager - it finds all your save game locations you never knew you had and backs them up. Can be scheduled, too.


For local backups of huge amounts I want replicated around my machines, I used to use Windows LiveSync which was brilliant - however this is now dead and replaced by the Win7/Fista-only LiveMesh - utterly useless to me as I only have one out of my five machines running anything above XP. Fucking dicks.
I replaced it in part with PureSync, which is a bit wonky, pretty flaky and unlike LiveSync only works with drive-mappings/network shares instead of magically over the interwebs, but it's in practice free unlike all the other solutions I tried.

I just keep to using DropBox for all my essential files, rather than LiveSyncing my whole 55GB+ between work and back as I used to.


My schedule is roughly this:
DropBox/Puresync automatically whenever two machines are turned on.
Win7 backup on default settings to external drive, often fails.
Daily incremental+differential ntbackups of everything except game drives to external drive.
Scheduled GameSaveManager runs every week to two different external drives.
I periodically dump all my internal drives to external ones I reformat and swap out every six months using xcopy. (2xtwo 1TB externals, one for games, one for data in a hot-swappable drive caddy)
Occasionally run Datakeeper to archive all changed content to an external drive.
Win7 full image to external drive about every six months.
Once a year, copy external drives to other, networked external drives.

On my main PC, I have four internal drives: 76GB OS, 1TB Data, 320G Fast Games, 1TB Other Games, with 1TB+1.5TB external drives attached, plus 4x1TB hot-swappable drive archive drives.
My other PCs are relatively small, but I have five network-attached drives which all the PCs can access and are basically my old external drives, ranging from 300GB to 1TB - they are my last line of defense if it all goes wrong, there should be copies of everything on there somewhere.

Things like downloaded TV shows and DVD rips only exist on that last line, but I figure I can always get them again if need be. "Documents" I've paid to download, such as educational videos the sites for which my subscriptions have elapsed, I back up at least twice.



So, yeah - I have like a terabyte of actual, irreplaceable data, but around 10TB of backups. Pretty anal. But then, going back a few years I lost some pics due to a hard drive crash - and even if it wasn't the case that the pics were of someone who's no longer with us, I couldn't have gone back and taken them again... so, yeah.

Also, Flickr.