My Dream Backup Setup

Posted on 25. May, 2010 by in Software

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Backing up your files is extremely important, and none of us do it as often as we should.  There are also tons of different ways to backup your files; on site, off site, RAID, etc.

With all the options in the world, I thought I would outline my dream backup set up. Parts I do use now, but most of the on site solution, not yet, due to economic purposes.

On Site

On site backup is backup done on your premises, making it great for easy, quick access, but not so great in cases of natural disasters.

Storage

In my opinion, the best possible on site storage solution is the Drobo. While the price may be a bit steep, the product is brilliant. Drobo holds hard drives of any or different sizes, (lowest option holds 4 drives), and creates one large drive with data redundancy. This means that if one hard drive dies, you can simply pop it out, and put another one in and the system will “repair”, and add the necessary files automatically to the new drive. Drobo creates a larger hard drive using any size drives you have lying around, and “repairs” itself if you change drives or if a hard drive fails. Unfortunately, I have not tried using a Drobo yet, but am thinking of buying one in the future.

Networking

If I only had one Mac, I could plug in the Drobo directly to the computer and save myself the trouble of networking the thing. However, life is not that easy or fun. For networking, I would use an Apple Airport Extreme, plugging the Drobo into it. Another option would be to use the DroboShare, but given some of the feedback indicating the problems with the device, the Aiport Extreme (or Airport Express) looks like a better option. For backing up, I would simply use Time Machine networked to the Drobo.

Off Site

Off site backup is perhaps one of the easiest backups to setup. My favorite service is Mozy, because it backs up everything on your computer and everything plugged into your computer (something Carbonite doesn’t do) for $55 a year. Amazing. Because I have high speed internet, backing up large files isn’t an issue for me, but if you have a slow or capped connection, it might be. Not only do I use Mozy to backup everything on my hard drives, I also use Dropbox to keep my documents backed up, and Picasa Web to keep my photos safe.

If I had more assets, I might add another level of backup, grabbing a server and backing up to that, as well as Amazon’s S3 service.

Other Tools

What do you use to backup? Let us know in the comments!

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.


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  • RayElston

    My son bought me a Wester Digatel “My book Essential” External Hard Drive. Recently My computer crashed and I thought that I could get my data off of it. We couldn’t get any thing off of it.
    My question, Is there a program that is required to get your data off of an external backup drive ?

    • http://www.lostintechnology.com Kyle Judkins

      You shouldn’t need any additional software to get data off an external drive. You should be able to hook it up to another computer and move the data onto it.

  • http://t0rx.com T0rx

    I recently moved to a NetGear ReadyNAS, which has been brilliant. It’s marginally less flexible than the Drobo in terms of drive size, but has more features (e.g. TimeCapsule native support). Definitely worth looking at if you’re thinking of buying a Drobo. I posted some more info here: http://t0rxon.t0rx.com/2010/04/home-storage-readynas-nvx-hits-spot.html

  • t0rx

    Mozy sounds great, but it doesn’t look like the Home licence will work for networked drives – you have to go for the Pro version which is $3.95 + $.50/GB per month which will very quickly add up (especially if you keep a lot of RAW photos around for posterity or have a large amount of lossless music). Have you looked into this?

    • http://squealingrat.com Squealing.Rat

      Thanks. I haven’t needed that feature, but there are several other services like Mozy that may do what you are looking for: Carbonite (code leo for discount), Backblaze, Jungledisk, eSureIT, iBackup, Online Vault, DropBox, Crashplan and more

  • Tom

    @ RayElston: You will need a backup software to backup stuff from your computer to your hard drive and then restore it from your hard drive to your computer or if the files are in their native form all u have to do is drag them and drop them into desired location. I recommend that u take a look at Genie Timeline 2.0. it is easy to use, recommends the data you need to backup and the recommends the backup drive, it doesnt need scheduling and you can add files to the back up by right- clicking it. very easy! i use the free version for my home computer you can download it here http://www.genietimeline.com
    Hope that was helpful!