How Do You BackUp your System?

[bdgbill]

I was just reading this thread on the Developer board cautioning everyone to backup their systems.

I had a laptop stolen in 2003. From time to time I still go looking for info that I then realize was on that machine. Just last month I lost 6 months worth of email from outlook. Not the whole inbox just everything between Nov 06 and May 07.

I just bought a Seagate 320GB external drive. I'm using Acronis to image all the drives on my network to the external drive. The Acronis images can be browsed and individual files copied off them.

I guess I should be backing up the external drive to optical media from time to time but don't see myself sitting down to burn 10 dvd's every week.

Just wondering what everyone elses backup scheme is and if my setup sounds safe.

[fender]

I have an incredibly poor backup system...

but I do back up most of my important digital media (avi's, mpeg's, etc) to dvd-r's.

Keeps the drives somewhat usable.

[martint123]

I use Ghost to create a clone once a month and a daily dump of changes. This runs at 03:00 to a 320gb USB drive. Every couple of month or so, I delete the incremental dumps, just leaving a monthly backup. Once "every so often" I dump data (only) to DVD's.
I've recently got a 500gb USB drive and use the free "allway sync" to mirror the two external drives.
For really current stuff I use GMAILFS that makes one of my gmail accounts appear as an explorer folder.

I've had problems on two laptops being unable to boot Acronis - never found out why or persued it further. Ghost always seems to work, V8 anyway.

[elite]

No backups on the pvr front - hey it's only TV! (though the WAF might fall through the floor)

Our two laptops get dumped to DVD (data only) every month or so (nothing very important on these for very long as all data tends to be stored on my file server...

File sever has RAID1, plus nightly tape backup, I drop a tape off at a family member's house every week in case of fire etc...

Email is stored on remote server (IMAP) (so it can be read from laptops or from internet cafe etc), the server has a daily backup stored off site.

[Ted the Penguin]

I have batch files that copy all important data to my file server (well I used to, now its just a different physical drive in my system) and I have some extra hard drives which I got enclosures for to back up all of my truly important data and bring it to work, in case of a fire or other disaster... but I havnt gotten around to doing that yet

[herrmannj]

I use a nas box, 2 hdd with raid 1. from time to time, usually before installing a new release I create a pvr-disc image with acronis - very handy tool.

[lajams]

In my basement server I use RAID1 mirrors for redundancy (1 pair for the OS and apps, 1 pair for the data). I have a 5th stand-alone drive in the system and use Microsoft Backup to do 1 full backup and 6 incrementals every week. I take a copy of the data offline every three months (or so).

The workstations I worry less about, so they get standalone drives. We don't keep important stuff there...."My Documents" is redirected to a personal share on the server. Email gets backed up to the server once-a-month (but I try not to keep anything important in there either).

[pcostanza]

I make image files regularly for home use. At my office, I use a 500GB portable drive connected to the server with image backups nightly. Each week one is made and taken off site.

[csmaster2005]

raid cards FTW!

[psycik]

My PVR is backed up with Acronis daily (only the system partition < 10 gb). I have a batch file which .tar.gz the gbpvr directory and copies it to another machine.

My other main system where all my dev is done, it's C drive is backed up weekly (acronis). The Documents and settings drive is backed up (acronis) daily.


Then at 11 Am each day I run microsoft's synctoy, to synchronise the backups from the pvr machine to the dev machine.


Lately, after reading zehd sorry story, I've been thinking that I should do something extra with my code. I'm covered for a machine dying, localised fire in one room, but not the whole house (dev machine also holds all digital photos I've taken).