Mxsmanic wrote:
Over the past few years the capacity of disk drives (and the amount of
space typically used on them) has greatly increased, and now it is
getting more and more difficult to figure out how to back up these
drives.

What type of hardware (and software) do you use on your systems for
backup?

Up to now, I've used HP DDS tape drives (DAT drives) for backup. But
DDS2 is limited to 4 GB, and DDS3 is limited to 24 GB, and that's
getting to be to small to hold even one backup on a single tape (or
even on several tapes in some cases).

So, what else is there? These DAT drives already cost me a fortune in
the good old days, and today they cost nearly as much as the rest of
the computer, when I can find them ... and even DDS4 is still limited
to 40 GB. DLT drives are several times more expensive at the cheap
end, although they do have capacity to hold an entire drive of data.

Are there other practical alternatives? What about external USB
drives, can that work? Old stuff like Zip drives and so on is
history, as it has even less capacity than tape. Archiving to CD or
DVD is also too low in capacity. It's getting to the point that the
only affordable option seems to be some sort of disk-to-disk copy (or
RAID for those who can afford it), but it would be nice to have
removable media that could be put in a safe place.

So what is everyone else building into their new machines for backup?
And do you just use standard backup tools like ntbackup on Windows or
dump on UNIX, or do you use special software purchased separately?

I think the most important criteria for backups is -- as you stated, it
would be nice to have reliable media to put into a safe place. This
protects you against possible theft, fire, or accidently deleting a file
and not noticing it for some time.

One issue with DAT drives is they tend to be output only media. If you
have an out of spec drive you may never notice until you try to restore
a file using a different drive. With a CD or DVD you may have multiple
drives yourself, or if not, at least once in a while you may share a
copy of something with a friend.

I back up only my own data (no program files) to DVDs using good old
WinZip as a batch process to make incremental backups of changed
directories of files (archive bit on). When the incremental becomes too
large, I backup whole directories, turn off the archive bit, and start
over with small incrementals.

It helps to organize your data so that backups are easier. My biggest
challenge is digital photos. I have a "stable" directory that doesn't
change and a "current" directory that has a lot of activity. From time
to time I copy stuff from the current directory to the stable one just
before I make a full backup. The full backups go to the bank vault and
every month or two I move an incremental backup to the vault as well.

While I may make a copy of the W/XP CD and other pricy software, I never
bother backing up software, the registry, etc. If the hard drive goes,
it is an opportunity to start with a fresh install and get rid of the
old crappy software I don't use anymore.

If you have multiple PCs and hard drive backups are what you want to do,
there is a nice free utility called Unison File Synchronizer that will
keep directories in sync. it even works across different operating
systems such as Windows and Linux.

Roger