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
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