SOHO Backups?

Bill McGonigle bill at bfccomputing.com
Tue Nov 15 15:35:01 EST 2005


On Nov 15, 2005, at 14:42, Ted Roche wrote:

> Anyone else have a different idea for backups or is tape still the 
> thing?

I use (3) 300GB IDE hard drives, mounted into IDE 'hotswap' sleds which 
slide into a firewire case.

Backup procedure:
1) umount the current disk (disk a)
2) turn it off
3) swap sleds (disk a comes out, disk b goes in)
4) turn it on
5) mount the new disk (disk b)
6) take the fresh backup disk (disk a) to the safety deposit box at the 
bank
7) bring home the disk that was at the bank (disk c)
8) next time, swap (disks b) & (disk c), take (disk b) offsite

notes:
* you can do it with two but then you have all your eggs in one basket 
for some period of time, or an extra round-trip to the bank.  Drives 
are < $100, gas is expensive, time is money - do the math.
* rsync and rsnapshot are essential tools
* disks are cheaper than tape per GB
* disks are more fragile than tape against shock
* sometimes tapes develop bad spots in unexplained ways that disks don't
* sometimes disks suddenly die without warning and then you might be in 
for DriveSavers
* I use the The Kingwin sleds from NewEgg:
     17-121-153 	MOBILERACK TRAY IDE KF-21-IT RT
     17-121-106 	MOBILERACK IDE KF-21-IPF BEIGE
   They're aluminum and plastic - I used to use all plastic ones that 
were cheaper but they got hot.  Plus Kingwin makes a USB to sled shim 
which I keep in the bank box 'just in case' since ordering a drive bay 
at that time might be problematic, but everything has a USB connection.

A this point I have 3 somewhat-disjointed images floating around, 
though the current copy is always up to date, which is most important.  
The next step is to use LVM to mirror the two drives at home and break 
the mirror to take one away, so all 3 are in sync.

-Bill
-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
bill at bfccomputing.com           Mobile: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/    Pager: 603.442.1833
Jabber: flowerpt at gmail.com      Text: bill+text at bfccomputing.com
Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/




More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list