🚀 go-pugleaf

Paul J. Campbell wrote:
> 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.
>
> --
> On the web I've researched a few backup devices. Something like
> Netgear Storage Central (SC101) sounds good in that it allows you
> to put in your own hard drives of your choice.
>
> Buffalo TeraStation comes with an attractive 1TB of storage via
> 4x250GB hard drives, but I don't believe the hard drives can be taken out?
>
> In any case if my understanding is correct, both of these devices
> basically allow you to backup files. By themselves, I think they don't
> come with anything to allow me to take full images of my hard disks - is
> that correct?

Many networks are centralised. All comps use one compute's hard drive.
I.e. one comp is the file server.
But maybe with 4*(200GB) to store, that's too much for one comp.
Maybe you should get a Tape Storage thing or something like you
mentioned , that stores 1TB,  then you should go to a linux machine,
and mount the partitions from all the other hard drives. So you can SEE
all other hard drives from one machine, in directories.
Then you'd just copy them over from those directories to the tape
drive.

But that's no good if you want the Whole Image of each hard drive. Then
you'd have to use ghost.
There is a Network edition of Ghost so you can run it from One machine
and ghost all the others. Then you'd copy the images onto your tape
drive.

This is all guess work. i'm a novice on backups too.