How do you backup your files?

[GreyHippo]

Just wondering how eveyone backs up files, and what software or hardware they use?

I currently backup the entire active drawings once a month and I make an incremental backup everyday.

The backups get burned to two sets dvds or cds.

[Andre Baros]

12 users
We use Backup Exec with a DAT Drive. Incremental backups every day, plus weakly backups that are stored off site.

It's worked great every time we needed it... but seams to fail and not back up every few weeks which leaves us unprotected. The last time we had problems we went 3 days without backup, the fourth day we got it working again (replaced a bad tape) the fifth day our server crashed. We had our backup but it was a bit close for comfort. We shopping again, but haven't seen anything that can beat the DAT tapes.

[slayer913]

Hello,

I'm about to deploy an auto backup system using an external 120 GB hard drive. The USB external drive will spend most of its life in a fire proof safe, out only once a week for backup. Daily backups will be archived backups to a server dedicated hard drive. A DVD will be burned once a month and taken off site.

I think that an external drive beats a DAT system hands down, personally. I've never preferred DAT's because of their sensitivity, error prone nature, and cost. At least, that's for my application - other's have different opinions.

My next challenge is to rig a fire proof safe with a USB port in the side wall (other side connected to drive) so that we can have a protected, always connected drive for daily backups that would still be safe in the event of a fire or other damage.

Albert

[rclayton]

We currently use a 240Gb DLT Tape drive to backup our entire server. We do a Full Backup on Wed. with Incrementals every other day to a single tape. Every week we change the tapes, and once a month we send a tape to our safety deposit box as an archive.

The archive has proven instrumental in being able to go back several months to retrieve a project that may have been archived and removed from the server only to have the Archive CD disapear. I have had to do this several times in the last year to recover lost projects data for various purposes including once for a project that was in litigation and required that we show the status of a set of project drawings at a particular date. Thsi one instance alone proved the worth of this system

As for cost .... what would be the cost to try and recover all that data. For us we are talking the loss of millions of dollars of data. Tapes cost around $100.00 each We have 4 onsite at all times (the tape rotation for one month) Each month we take a tape out of service for the offsite archive so that is an over all cost of $1600 per year .. peanuts in the grand scheme if you ask me for the level of protection this provides.

As for the ascertation that tapes are error prone, I have not seen this personally. I have restored tapes several times each time without error and was fully able to recover the lost data.

[robert.1.hall72202]

The IT department in my office creates a drive image that is attached to the existing network. If I lose something, all I need to do is go in explorer, right click the file, check properties, and I will see a previous version dialog. I can roll back to an earlier dated file. When I am missing a file, I can also roll back an entire directory. Gives me the option to preview the files before I accept and keep them. Works like a charm.

[Maverick91]

Just wondering how eveyone backs up files, and what software or hardware they use?

I currently backup the entire active drawings once a month and I make an incremental backup everyday.

The backups get burned to two sets dvds or cds.
It's just me here doing CAD work. I try to copy all of our active files onto CD once a week. Also our IT guy does a regular tape backup of my entire hard drive.

[G_Sarver]

Just wondering how eveyone backs up files, and what software or hardware they use?

I currently backup the entire active drawings once a month and I make an incremental backup everyday.

The backups get burned to two sets dvds or cds.

We were previously using 120/240 GB DAT drives. Full backup performed once a week with daily incrementals.

However, the end of this month we are setting up a new server with a new backup system. We will have a USB 120 GB external that is a mirror of the server. This will remain in our fire safe other than when doing full backups. Incrementals are burned onto dual-layer DVD's. We have 7 users saving to this backup system.