Re: tape or hard drive?
I personally would get a buslink USB hard drive (or two or howevermany you need.) I might get some flack for suggesting this but It works great and its cheaper than tape. You also never have to change a tape. The only thing to be leary about is its extention. being yet another 3rd party extention it might not play well with some. I have tested this in two different situations and it works great. We backup maybe 60 gigs just about every day. This translates to 48 or so gigs (after 2 months) with Retros compression on. My next step is to impliment another one of these drives and start a rotating backup scheme so I can keep a copy off site. ( if anyone has a step by step for this I'd appreciate it. ) This single Hard Drive has been backing up for about two months and can probably go for about another month before I will have to either re-write it or switch to another HD. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been using an external SCSI hd for my backups for over a year, and all has been going swimmingly -- 'til a few days ago when I inadvertently shut off the external before the system had properly shut it down. The 'wrapper' and a couple of places on the 'extent' files were blown, damaged beyond fixing. I urgently need a replacement. Now that I have the option, my dilemma is: Should I go with a tape system for backing up, or stick with a hd? How long does a tape last before it gets stretched, or worn beyond useability? I'm using a G4/400/9.0.4 ... a single user, not on any network. Would very much appreciate any and all feedback from yr personal experience re: 1) tape or hd, and 2) specifically WCH tape system y'all are most satisfied with, as I've never used one before. Retrospect is TERRIFIC, and so at least ONE part of my solution is already in place. TIA, -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics "When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not, hm?" -Yoda
Re: tape or hard drive?
Hey Erik, your point about the "...6months ago..." is true!. This is why we have elected to get yet another USB drive when it comes to it. The 3rd drive will always be an old back-up. 3 drives will cost us $1200.00. We think this will provide the security we need and still for less cost than tape. However, its a pretty ambiguous decision. ie...Firetape is $800 and each tape is $250 (from pre-release article) Tapes are 50 gigs as apposed to the HD's being 60. I think you get one free tape with the Firetape. So, it would cost a total of almost $1600 (4 tapes) which would give you a bit more space. A little cheaper to go with HD's... but not much. Erik Ableson wrote: Back to the list after a long absence - the only issue with hard drive solutions is that they are not complete backup solutions since if anything truly disastrous happens (theft, fire etc) all your data is in one place. Multiple HD's rotated off-site will take care of this but in the long run, tape becomes cheaper when you start keeping redundant copies - and they've saved my bacon a few times! Combining them makes for the best of both worlds in terms of data security with a local HD mirror for the quick accidental delete/system crash restores, and tape to handle the long term issues - "umm that project I worked on 6 months ago is gone". Plus having tapes around gives you a nice archival option to free up disk space.. Cheers, ErikFeeling desperately insecure since he isn't following his own advice at home :) - Original Message - From:Donovan Brooke To: retro-talk Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 5:04 PM Subject: Re: tape or hard drive? I personally would get a[snip] Donovan
Mac File/HD backup
Hello, I received some advice a while ago from Irene @ Dantz. This is regarding a scripting scheme I want to set up to alternate weekly or every two weeks between 2 USB HD's. With my knowledge in Retrospect being about as good as my knowledge in how to say something to my girlfriend without upseting her I am hoping to get some more details on this. :-) She said: Hi Donovan, You'll want to create two new, uniquely named backup sets that are stored on the second drive. If you are not formatting the drives as removable media then the drive name is not relevant. Keep everything separate and distinct. Modify your scripts to include rotating backups to these new file backup sets. Creating another set directly from the source is better than copying from one backup set to another backup set, which ends up being a copy of a copy. O.K., how is this done exactly? "modifing your scripts to include rotating backups to these new file backup sets" Is this a new script in itself? If the correct drive isn't connected at the time of backup, the backup will fail with an error -43, file/folder not found. There is no media request as there is with other types of media. So Baskically Retrospect knows when to switch to the new backup set files but it doesn't know to prompt you for it? One just has to be aware of when to prepare the appropriate drive? Two things to remember: 1. Do not format the drives as removables. 2. There is no such thing as extreme paranoia in regards to backup data security! Regards, Irena Solomon -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
script advice
oops, wanted to post this again not under a wrong subheadding Hello retro, I was wondering if I could get some suggestions on a back-up script/system I've put together. I am backing up our ASIP server via mounted volumes on another host G4 computer to a Mac file on a USB 60 gig HD. Things are working great!!! I have two back-up set files that sum up to about 29 gigs (compressed). Daily back-ups affect the file size only minimally. ( did I express that I am very happy with this setup? :-) Anyway, I am about ready to throw a stick in the spokes of my system though. This small USB (buslink) back up drive is great. It can be unplugged and carried if needed. Here is my q: (finally) We bought a second USB (buslink) 60gig drive. Our Idea is to alternate the two drives every week. (similiar to changing tapes) We then would take the "off-drive" to an off-site location. (because of our xtreme paranoia) So, since I have a full backup on this first drive I need to know the best way to get the second drive going. My thinking was I could manually copy the back-up set files from #1 drive to #2 drive and then name the second drive the same as the first (after shutting off the first drive of course) Would retrospect recognize this as the same back-up set? If yes, in another week or so when its time to change back to the first drive, is there any problems relating to the scripts that would see the old info as a conflict? With tapes, Retro can ask you for the appropriate b/u tape. But I am not sure about alternat HD's If this is not going to work please offer alternitive routes using our goals and equipment. Thanks. - D -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
Re: 2gb limit?
dana, If you are not absolutley sure that the firewire drive is HFS+ I would double check it. (do a get info on the drive) look for Mac OS Extended. - D Shawn Welter wrote: Mac os 9 supported files over 2gb. To use retrospect you need version 4.3. I currently back up 40 mac clients and 10 pc clients to 60gb IDE drives using mac files. Some backup sets are 12gb apiece. We do massive selecting as all are software is installed by filewave. Each client averages about 100mb of data. Our servers are backed up using a separate machine to a DLT changer. shawn > > At 19:34 2001-01-11 -0800, you wrote: >>> I need to check to be sure, but I believe both are HFS +. >>> The powerbook is running Retrospect, and backing itself up >>> onto a firewire drive. >>> -- >> >> The 2 gb limit is damn annoying but you have to get used to it. The limit >> is the mac os itself, not retrospect. > >Well, that's not entirely true -- the other night I captured 54 minutes of >video at 340x240x16, and the resulting file is almost 15Gb in size, so files >bigger than 2Gb are entirely possible. > -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
Re: 2gb limit?
dana, there are several issues related to the 2 gig limit Mac File issue. first, the HD that has the back up set has to be in HFS+ format. Second, I would ask, how/what is your client doing the back up. is the powerbook a back up host that is backing up a mounted volume? or, is the powerbook running retro and backing up itself to the firewire HD? ASIP has a 2 gig limit also though I doubt you are running ASIP on the powerbook :-) dana rasmussen wrote: I have a customer with an interesting problem. On his G-4 tower, he is backing up to a firewire hard drive. The file is currently about 4.5 gb. When he tried to do the same thing with his firewire powerbook, same system (9.04), same ver. of Retrospect 4.3, same brand of drive, 25gb VST. Retrospect refuses to run citing the 2gb file limit. Is there something I am missing here? -- Dana Rasmussen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Seattle, Wa -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
script suggestions?
Hello retro, I was wondering if I could get some suggestions on a back-up script/system I've put together. I am backing up our ASIP server via mounted volumes on another host G4 computer to a Mac file on a USB 60 gig HD. Things are working great!!! I have two back-up set files that sum up to about 29 gigs (compressed). Daily back-ups affect the file size only minimally. ( did I express that I am very happy with this setup? :-) Anyway, I am about ready to throw a stick in the spokes of my system though. This small USB (buslink) back up drive is great. It can be unplugged and carried if needed. Here is my q: (finally) We bought a second USB (buslink) 60gig drive. Our Idea is to alternate the two drives every week. (similiar to changing tapes) We then would take the "off-drive" to an off-site location. (because of our xtreme paranoia) So, since I have a full backup on this first drive I need to know the best way to get the second drive going. My thinking was I could manually copy the back-up set files from #1 drive to #2 drive and then name the second drive the same as the first (after shutting off the first drive of course) Would retrospect recognize this as the same back-up set? If yes, in another week or so when its time to change back to the first drive, is there any problems relating to the scripts that would see the old info as a conflict? With tapes, Retro can ask you for the appropriate b/u tape. But I am not sure about alternat HD's If this is not going to work please offer alternitive routes using our goals and equipment. Thanks. - D -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
suggestions for scripting
Hello, I am setting up scripts for a daily back-up. I wanted to get suggestions (or reinforcement) on the appropriate procedure for doing a daily back-up that rotates between two removable drives every other week. I am backing up to a macintosh file. I have two 60gig USB drives. I want to backup to one for a week then take it to a safety deposit box. I want to use the other one to do the next weeks back-up. q: With just getting started in the world of retrospect my thinking is that I will: 1. do the back-up on the first one. 2. Copy those files to the other drive. 3. Mount the second drive and name it the same as the first. 4. start back-up on the second. Does this sound appropriate. The whole "taking the drive to the safety deposit box" thing I think is a little overkill but this is what was decided by the "higher ups" :-) Thanks in advance -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
Re: Macintosh File
Thanks Eric for your help. I didn't think of looking towards ASIP as being the problem, but it looks to be just that. Realizing now that a single file can only be a max of 2 gigs, is there a procedure for spliting up the file to back up onto? Can retrospect jump to a new file when it has reached 2 gigs or can I designate another file to copy to when it reaches the 2 gig limit??? - Thanks, - Donovan Eric Ullman wrote: According to Apple's Tech Info Library article #15460, "AppleShare File Sharing: Chart of All Limitations," last modified 11/17/2000, ASIP 6.x still has a 2GB file size limit. http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n15460 Tom Lawton [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Donovan, List, Dantz > > Sorry, no answer, but same problem ... > Donovan Brooke [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > when the Macintosh file reaches it's two gig >> limit... -- Donovan D. Brooke Systems Administrator/ Assc. Art Director Epsen Hillmer Graphics
