We currently have backup 2x each week, partial on Monday full on Friday. (Mostly CADD files and Photoshop files). Our full backup consits of about 200 gb of info. We have Lacie drives that we cycle through every 4 weeks so we can find lost data for up to 4 weeks.

This is very cumbersome and we are slowly adding more data. Our Lacie drives are currently only 250 gb so we'll soon outgrow them.

What are some other ways of backing up that might make life easier, be more bulletproof and give us more options?

TIA.

At my old place of employment, they've adopted a hot backup style system, goes to massive Independant RAID array, which is taken down at night for backup to tape. They did that after I left, and I didn't get full details the last time I went to visit.

You could always go for an autoloader, such as the Exabyte 1x10 models... Not sure if compression would get you to one tape per each at ~200 GB, but with backup software, you could set it up so slots 1&2 are one run and so forth.

Of course Tapes aren't near-time available like an external drive. I guess it depends on how much money y'all wanna spend.

(Wish I had a new style autoloader and a tape safe, our old EZ17 seems to be giving up the ghost, after 5 years..)

What's your budget?

We have a HP DL380 server (same model as 914club server I believe!) more or less dedicated to network backup through fiber channel to an HP MSA1000 autoloader with 2 tape drives.

We have a lot of servers being backed up to this system, and some of them can really take a long time, but with the 2nd drive added (pretty recently), it's a lot smoother as the godforsaken Exchange server doesn't make everything else wait for the drive.

We're using Backup Exec software, and I'd say it's ok, but not great.

If you want to know more about our setup, let me know.

I have some experience with Veritas backup exec, but most of the people I deal with dont use tapes anymore. Storage devices have become CHEAP. 1 terabyte for under $1200 in some instances.

I think we sell EMC solutions for this. Let me check!


B

Well...I really don't know much about what you guys are recommending. Any way to simplify the systems you're talking about?

Dan, I am interested in hearing more.

We need to know your budget, total amount of data with expected growth, and backup window. If you are going from Exteranal HDD (USB 2.0 I assume) then anything will be faster. I would suggest looking at a LTO3 stand alone tape drive based on the information so far. Up to 800gb compressed on 1 tape and pretty good throughput. Talking about 5 grand though with tape unit tapes and SCSI card. Also what OS are you using as that may be a cost factor as well?

HTH

Grady

Have experieced IT people do this research for you. If your business doesn't have dedicated IT help, then develop a relationship with a consultant who can implement a good bulletproof backup solution for you.

Best answer yet.

It may seem like consultants are expensive until something bad happens, or if they are doing their job nothing bad happens!

Main question is what is your budget?

Are these CAD and Photoshop files stored on a server or individual machines? If it's a server , what OS is it running? What are its specs?