Computer junkies I need help.

[HunterCO]

I had the worst @$$%^&*@ day of my life. I got to my shop and the comp that has everything from every damn car I have worked on and what I did to it as well as my entire customer data base crashed. :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

I back it up but get busy and sometimes I forget and it go's too long. The hard drive took a $hit and really really screwed me. Well I had a Forensic lab off I-25 and Arapahoe road get me what I needed off of it for $1100 :cry: They are supposed to have it to me tomarrow.

I need to know what I need to have my network automatically back it self up every 24 hours. I will pay you to help me set it up so this can not ever happen again. My shop is growing faster than I can keep up with and this really cost me a ton of money in down time.

I would rather give one of the members here the money if you can do it than somebody I don't know. If you can help me let me know.

The next time I go up shooting I have a hard drive that is going to experience the full wrath of my M16. I don't care if it takes me all day to clean the mess up. :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

[chrisguy]

BUMMER! Been there... sorry for the headache man.

I'm an IT admin by trade but have never setup backup infrastructure myself (100+ IT types in my group doing different things). What I can tell you is what we use... EMC's Retrospect:
http://www.emcinsignia.com/products/smb/retroforwin/

My loose understanding is that it's a fairly solid application - we've been on it for several years now with varying backup schedules. You'll need a dedicated server with LOTS of hard disk (probably a RAID-5 config), and the faster your network the better, natch. If you click their "Buy" link on the right, you'll see another link for "...Local Solution Provider" i.e. a local outfit that'll do it for you. Put in some basic location info and you'll get a list of providers. No idea what they'd charge though. If you click the link above that one for "...Direct Marketing Reseller" you'll see vendors. Price at CDW for single server, unlimited clients (pretty sure that'd do it for your needs) is about $600.

Dang. Wish I could offer more. Feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to talk to the guys that run our system and share/consult.


If you can wait til the next North shoot to blow away the hard disk I'll happily toss you a mag worth of .223 out of sheer sympathy. :evil:

And honestly, good on ya for practicing backups in the first place. You might be surprised how many folks don't even think about it. You even knew how to get the data recovered professionally! <hi-5>

[newracer]

I bought a CD/DVD burner that included a copy of Nero. You can set Nero to back up the hard drive or just portions of it at any interval you want. I also bought an external HD to store the backup on. Very easy to setup and will be less than $200.

[Scott]

I bought a CD/DVD burner that included a copy of Nero. You can set Nero to back up the hard drive or just portions of it at any interval you want. I also bought an external HD to store the backup on. Very easy to setup and will be less than $200.

+1. Tim, this will probably be the best bet for you (I'm assuming that you don't have a huge network). let me know if you need some help. I have an IT degree, although it's never been put to any use at all.

[thedave1164]

Western Digital and Seagate sell some decent external hard drives with software to automatically backup your files, XP/2000/2003 all have decent backup software builtin for simple file backup scheduling.

I would setup a decent external HDD for daily/nightly backups and a DVD burner for a monthly archive.

Remember 2 is 1 and 1 is none.

Sorry you had this issue. As with the rest I will be glad to help you out.

dave

[KarlPMann]

You may also want to consider a RAID setup on your next computer so it saves everything twice every time you save anything and EVERYTHING! Sorry for the problem. Karl.

[7idl]

You may also want to consider a RAID setup on your next computer so it saves evverything twice every time you save anything and EVERYTHING! Sorry for the problem. Karl.

my thoughts exactly... for less than the cost of retreiving your data, you can build a new computer (faster too, I'll bet)

get a system that supports SATA, get two identical drives and run a RAID config.

[PsychoI3oy]

Remeber to make it RAID 1 or better.

RAID0: 2 or more drives striped together to form one big drive. A pair of 250GB drives will become one big 500GB disk. If one drive fails, you lose everything. Advantages: more space without seperate drive letters, faster read speed than one 500GB disk. Disadvantages: Lose one drive, lose it all.

RAID1: 2 or more drives mirroring eachother. Two 250GB drives are represented as one 250GB drive. If one drive fails, the other still has everything on it. Advantages: redundancy, faster write times. Disadvantages: Double the cost for the same ammount of space.

RAID2-4: various combinations of the above and something magical called 'parity'. I don't really remember what the various specs are for 2-4, but I'm sure something like Wikipedia can tell you if you really want to know.

RAID5: 3 or more drives striped together with parity. 3 250GB drives will give you about 500GB of space. 5 250GB drives will give you about 1000GB (1TB) of space. Lose one drive, just replace it and wait for the controller to rebuild the array. Advantages: Great redundancy, really fast read times, not so much investment for space returned. Disadvantages: Sometimes slower write times while parity calculates (but usually not noticeable), the disks may not be readable on anything but that particular controller card/chip, still expensive (3 disk minimum and some space used by parity).

RAID 0+1/1+0 (sometimes called RAID 10): Various strategies of mirroring and striping, combining RAID0 and RAID1. Depending how it's built, it can be quite fault tolerant, or quite fast at either reading or writing. Usually not necessary for anything less than a major datacenter environment. Advantages: Incredible fault tolerance, darn good speed. Disadvantages: holycrapexpensive. (minimum 4 disks, and you only get 2 disk's worth of space). Not recommended.


Most SATA controllers out there will support RAID0 and RAID1, so get a pair of identical disks and make them a RAID1 array. Some of the more expensive controllers support RAID5, and there's software out there that'll run RAID5 on any controller, but the 3 disk minimum makes things get more expensive.


So. My recommendation: Get a SATA card that supports RAID1, a pair of SATA disks, set up the array, and get a CD or DVD burner that you can backup to regularly. You should be able to schedule backups, but you'll have to manually swap disks to burn to. The RAID will generally keep things sane, but in case of major explodage in the computer, you'll have the backup disks. I suggest taking these disks home with you, as offsite backup is better than onsite (think fire or similar). Remember, now that I mention fires, that 'fire proof' safes generally mean that they won't let the internal temp get high enough to have paper ignite, but that optical media and floppy disks melt at much lower temperatures.

ETA: holy crap I'm a geek.

ETA2: I guess I might have just volunteered myself to take on the job. I'm more than willing to do so but work nights and wouldn't be able to swing by till Friday. PM/email me if you wanna talk about it.

[2ndChildhood]

RAID 1 sounds pretty good.

Like automatic mirroring without ever having to manage backup software or hardware.

And hey - hard drives are ridiculously cheap these days.

[The1andOnlyKC]

When I used to do that stuff I would always run RAID 1 on all my file servers.

I had 1 network that I managed that had a tape system on it. I did not install the system and me and another guy never could get the damn thing to work right.

RAID 1 saved my butt more than once. That is what I would recommend along with a good DVD burner to do monthy or Bi-monthly backups to.

Note: These were small networks less than 50 computers. Which I asume you dont have more than 50 comps. in your shop.