Windows Server

OldNewbie · Guest

I believe some of you have experience with backing up to an external HD.
(Okay, now for the record, I do not like tape, have had bad luck with tape in
the past, and just plain don't trust tape. Sorry, I had to get that out.) I
want to use external HDs.

Would you recommend using SBS backup? Are their any other products out
there that justify the extra expense (Veritas, Dantz)? USB vs Firewire, I
have heard even though USB has higher specs 480 vs 400, that firewall
actually is faster, can anyone verify this with experience? Does anyone have
experience with LaCie drives? Are they reliable?

Any advice from experience will be appreciated. You can't trust advertising
and I would rather not mess this up.
--
Still learning, still trying.

Chad A. Gross [SBS MVP] · Guest

I have a few sites using NTBackup to backup SBS to external USB drives, and
I've done a successful bare metal restore of an SBS from a backup on a USB
drive. No personal experience with Firewire or LaClie drives - but I know
Steve Foster has a firewire LaClie drive . . . maybe he can post in details
on that front . . .

--

Chad A. Gross - SBS MVP
SBS ROCKS!

www.msmvps.com/cgross
www.gosbs.org

OldNewbie wrote:

Daren · Guest

Hey

Tha LaCie drives are reliable as I also backuped to one of these but I have
read somewhere in the help pages for SBS2003 that you can't do a bare restore
from external drives so I have just installed another internal and moved the
backup to that.

We also use Datalifeline.net to backup up our databases and other crucial
files offsite, seems to work really well.

Cannot fault LaCie though!

Daren

"OldNewbie" wrote:

Guest · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:38 pm Post subject: Re: Backup to External HD

I have a few clients using external USB drives for backup, and have had
wonderful results. We've been using the Transcend 2.5" drives
(http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductdesc.asp?description=22-157-005&depa=1)
which I feel are a pretty good value, not to mention the right size for
portability. All of them are using two drives, swapping them out at
the end of each week.

On one of my client's servers (an older Dell PowerEdge 1600SC) the USB
controller was 1.1. So, of course, the backup went rather slow (2
hours for a 10GB automated SBS backup file, compared to the SCSI tape
drive we were replacing which did the same backup in about 45 minutes).
Adding a USB 2.0 PCI card would have improved the performance, but we
had another problem that needed to be resolved: getting the owner of
the company to remember to take Drive A home every Friday night and
returning on Monday with Drive B. We decided to attach the drive to
the owner's PC instead... (which has a Gigabit NIC) so that it would be
more convenient for him to take the drive home. Over Ethernet, through
a Gigabit switch, the backup now takes around 1hr and 10 minutes...
still not as quick as the tape drive, but at midnight, it doesn't
really matter in this case. (If we did incremental backups instead, I
think the time difference would be negligable).

For security purposes, we put the drilled a hole in the desk through to
a lockable drawer.

Overall, we're generating quality backups, restore is significantly
faster than tape, and for about $250.00 for the two drives... it's a
phenominal savings over most ANY tape system.
Jeffrey B. Kane
TechSoEasy

SuperGumby [SBS MVP] · Guest

you seem to have some discussion going but I'm interested, your bad
experience with tape, was it a certain type of tape (one beginning with T,
but I'm not gonna say that word) or is this a 'tape in general' thing?

"OldNewbie" <OldNewbie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D743B45E-54EE-4B8B-B778-12E917DC2F3D@microsoft.com...

OldNewbie · Guest

they were DLT format in a old, slow Dell server. The bigger problems were
the size of the data (about 70 gig, 14 hrs or more) that was backed up
weekly, i.e. coming in on sundays to change tape, and then the size of the
incrementals to back up the daily production, about 25-30 gig. We ran two
shifts and often the nightly backup (after 2nd shift) was not finished before
first shift came in the next morning. I had to do a lot of deleting on
friday night to get the full backups down to the size they were. Often I
would need to find and restore one access database out of that ocean of
sequential data, and after waiting 15-25 min. have the thing fail to actually
restore the database while reporting it was sucessfully restored. It was
just a royal pain. I will not go through that again, ever.

"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" wrote:

SuperGumby [SBS MVP] · Guest

kewl, you didn't have a problem with tape, you had a problem with
implementation.

If your backup system relies on SOMEONE doing SOMETHING it is bound to fail.

The BEST we can ask is that our backup system ask NO MORE than that a
responsible person:
1) Change the tape.
2) Check the log. (this really shouldn't be considered optional)

Both SBS Backup and W2k3 Backup make their 'best effort' to ensure this.

"OldNewbie" <OldNewbie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0640C9A6-7582-4E6B-A95B-50FAB45E4BB9@microsoft.com...

OldNewbie · Guest

I'll accept that. The owner of the company went through IT Directors about
one every 6 months. I inherited an incredible mess (the tapes were not the
only dish that suffered from too many cooks). The whole thing still left a
bad taste in my mouth for tape. My six months were up some time ago, I am
now working on a brand new box, with a brand new SBS2003 setup, in a startup
company. It is heaven.

"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" wrote:

Miguel Marzano · Guest

Hi OldNewbie,

We're using IOMEGA Rev for backup in our SBS2003 box.
Cheaper/Safer/Faster replacement for Tape backups. We use the bundled
software, and it works like a charm. Plus you get a branded Symantec
ghost to mirror your disk.

Best regards,

Miguel

OldNewbie wrote:

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