🚀 go-pugleaf

"Damien McBain" <askme@for.it> wrote in message 
news:h5z62r3i58qr$.oy0qqzs7fbte.dlg@40tude.net...
> Paul J. Campbell committed to the eternal aether...:
>
>> I have a home network consisting of two computers connected to a
>> small router via 10/100 Mbps ethernet. I have 4 IDE hard disks, each
>> 200GB or less. The operating systems are Windows XP SP1 and SP2,
>> Windows 98, Linux Red Hat 9, and Linux Fedora Core 3.
>>
>> Now for the hard bit - what's the easiest way to keep all of these
>> IDE hard drives backed up, e.g. if one of my hard drives gets errors and
>> fails, I'd preferably like to just replace it with a backed-up
>> hard drive and have it work.
>>
>> I believe I would want one or more backup 'devices' to be connected
>> to my router, i.e. I don't think I want to keep opening up my
>> computers and keep putting in individual backup hard drives every
>> time I want to do a backup. The question is, what should those
>> 'devices' be?
>>
>> I'm a complete novice in backing up, so don't assume that I know
>> anything. By all means include any brand names in your answer.
>>
>> Corporations don't have a lot of time to waste, so how do they do it?
>> I don't necessarily mind spending some money if it will give me
>> reliability and convenience.
>>
>> Would hardware RAID 1 or RAID 5 work?
>> - Backing up: can the backed-up drive(s) sit on the network
>>      outside my computer? The original hard drive is obviously
>>      inside my computer.
>> - Restoring: if one of the hard drives
>>      in my computers fails, can I replace it with a backed-up hard drive
>>      and have it work? Will both Linux and Windows still work?
>>
>> I understand that RAID is rather expensive but it may be worth it
>> depending on the price.
>>
>> --
>> If that's possible, then I think this still leaves to have to deal with
>> one more backup methodology - if some files get deleted accidently, then
>> in the back-ups they will be deleted as well.
>>
>> So I probably need something which also allows me to do a few
>> historical backups. I suppose I need something which can image my hard
>> drives, and (to save on cost) with the option to allow incremental
>> backups on subsequent backups?
>>
>> I tried using Norton Ghost 9 in XP SP1 (whilst XP was running - 
>> apparently
>> it's supposed to support this). I did it the hard way by opening
>> up my computer and connecting the backup drive to it. (As I wrote above,
>>    I'd prefer if I could have the backup drive on the network all the 
>> time,
>>    if possible).
>>
>> But it didn't work for me. Some logical drive letters seemed to back up
>> fine, others didn't. So I have a portion of the files backed up,
>> but the hard drive won't boot - Linux Red Hat 9 complains that
>> /boot has a 1-byte size difference compared to what is in the
>> Master Boot Record. Whereas Windows XP boots up to the XP logo,
>> but that's all it shows - it doesn't give me the normal password prompt.
>> On the web this Windows XP problem is mentioned by many people, but
>> I could never find a solution.
>
> The whole thing would be easier if you ran a file server (which could be a
> very humble computer with a couple of large HDDs in it). You could store
> ALL your files on the server and back it up with tapes or an external hdd.

I had an old PC running as a file server/backup device. However one mistake 
I made. The drives on the backup machine were two SCSI drives and a adaptec 
controller (which I obtained for free). Worked great for 2 years until the 
controller, or both drives packed up.

I could not justify a new SCSI controller, but luckily both my PC's that I 
backed up data FROM are still ok.

I've since changed to a Netgear SC101 with two mirrored 80gb drives as my 
backup drives.

As an extra precaution I also copy mydocs (plus any important stuff) between 
both PC's using Save-N-Sync

Clive