Most Reliable Backup/storage media

[nmX.Memnoch]

Man...I pulled out an old trick and it still wouldn't work. The ECHO Y| xxcopy.exe /switches didn't work...so I tried:

xxcopy.exe source destination /CLONE /Y /YY < y.asc

The contents of y.asc were simply the character Y. No go there either. I finally did this in a KiX script, but it has to be interactive...

Shell '%COMSPEC% /C START "" @SCRIPTDIR\xxcopy.exe "SOURCE" "DESTINATION" /CLONE /Y /YY'
Sleep 1
SendKeys("{ENTER}")
Exit

I use A LOT more switches when I run XXCopy...that's just an example.

[Brando569]

im trying an online backup solution and so far so good. ive given up with local backups because half the time they dont work when you really need them too. ive had HDDs crash when ive had stuff backed up on them or i would delete the partition by accident. with cds/dvds they would get scratched over time or it would just be a bad burn/disc and they wouldnt let me copy anything off of them (the most recent example was last night when i tried to transfer a lot of files i had downloaded previously and burnt to dvds, when i went to transfer them to my new 500gb hdd i kept getting CRC errors) the only problem with online backup is it takes awhile if you have alot of stuff to backup, that is unless you have a fast upload speed. i only have a max of 40kB/sec (read 40 kilobytes/sec not bits) so i dropped it down to 30 to allow room for over head. it took me about a month to backup ~50gb, the crappy thing is you pretty much have to reupload everything if you reinstall windows, the company (mozy) says it doesnt really do that it just checks their servers for the files that you previously backed up, but i think thats BS since it takes just as long and for it to work after you reinstall windows you have to login to your account and pretty much delete your computer from there and then re-add it immediately. its a slight PITA but i think its kind of worth it for unlimited storage space for only $5/month per computer

Edited August 23, 2007 by Brando569

[nmX.Memnoch]

Hehe...online storage isn't really viable when you're talking 600GB worth of data to backup (for a full backup of my file server). I wouldn't do it even with my 1Mbit/s upload.

I also don't trust anyone else having access to my data. Once it's on their servers they can do whatever they want with it. No thanks. That's how videos and pictures get leaked.

Edited August 23, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch

[Brando569]

very true, i retract what i previously said about the re-indexing. it seems it is pretty fast compared to the initial backup. even though i bumped my backup set down to 21gb it says its only going to take about 3 days, compared to what would most likely be about 2-3 weeks with the initial backup. if your are really paranoid about someone looking at your backups you can use your own encryption key with mozy, none of my stuff is that important so i just use their key. maybe i should change it just for the hell of it idk...

i think blu-ray will be really nice to backup data on, a 50gb disc thats enclosed in a case like a floppy 12 of those and theres your 600gb

Edited August 23, 2007 by Brando569

[nmX.Memnoch]

i think blu-ray will be really nice to backup data on, a 50gb disc thats enclosed in a case like a floppy 12 of those and theres your 600gb

I can get three 750GB external hard drives for a fraction of the price.

[DL.]

Smaller amounts of data that are frequently updated can be backed up to rewritable media such as DVD+/-RW or DVD-RAM. DVD-RAM is very simple to use, works like an external HD or a floppy (just copy the files to the disk in your file manager or script it). The problem with it is (just like any DVD) the limited storage space available, and the fact that it's very hard to find fast media (I haven't been able to find any higher speed than 5x, even if 12x is supposed to exist).w

Backup media for normal people (=no expensive tapedrives) haven't managed to keep up with the size of HDD:s.

Unfortunately in a few years when the prices for HD-DVD or Blue-Ray has come down we might still have similar problems as we have today with limited backup space.

Online backup is not an option for many GB:s of data when upload speeds are less than a MB/s, even if you got one of those 100Mbit Fibre-LAN connections (widely available here in Sweden) it would take quite some time to upload hundreds of GB:s.

Using a combination of DVD:s and HDD:s (maybe with RAID) is the way to go at the present time.

A separate backup-server or a NAS with RAID:ed (level 1 or more, maybe nested) disks might be a good choice. Cloning it regularly to one or more other disks which are kept at a safe location (=off-site) will give you more than enough (probably overkill) storage safety. You got to have very bad luck if a solution like that would fail. The price of such a solution (500GB, 2-disks in RAID1 NAS+1 extra disk) starts at about 800$ (may differ a bit), it's not cheap but what is? This may not be the solution for the thread starter (the price may be too high) but others may find a solution like that suitable for their needs.