[CentOS] External Backup Systems?

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:40:17 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> Hey everyone,
> 
> My home server just had a disk failure a few weeks ago and like a lot of
> people I haven't ever really made backups on a regular basis. So I was
> looking into backup solutions which will save me from this situation
> again.
> 
> Now I have Bacula setup, and backing up my files onto my home server.
> 
> Although this works great, I have one issue: The disk in my server was
> the one that actually failed, and so, even with RAID1, could fail again.
> So to get around this I wanted to backup to external media aswell.
> 
> I don't really think external hard drives are that great considering
> they are just as reliable as internal hard drives which would be
> pointless as RAID1 should be reliable enough in that case.

The point to using an external hard drive is that unlike the internal
one(s), the external one(s) would be 'idle' most of the time (only
active during the actual backup process, which would be a once every n
time units (once a day, once a week, whatever).  Depending on the
technology in use, 'inactive' can mean unmounted, sleep mode, powered
off, disconnected, etc.

> 
> Backing up to DVDs are quite unreliable too, a simple scratch could
> render the backup useless. Also it would require quite a lot of DVDs to
> backup my data (at least 500GB!).

The clue here is 'Jewel Cases!'  Keep your CDs and DVDs in Jewel Cases. 
Don't store CDs and DVDs in sleves or on a spindle or other 'low cost'
option.  Use a proper Jewel Case.

> 
> The only other option I could think of is to use tapes, but this option
> can be quite pricy for a home user.

Tapes are actually the worst option.  All maner of failure modes, unless
you go to extreme measures to protect them (which talks it from a pricy
option to an imposibly pricy option).

> 
> So I was wondering what you guys use for external backups for a home
> system containing at least 500GB worth of important data?

I don't have disk that ginormous (and cannot imagine having disks that
size).  I have a 73gig SCSI system disk, that I do monthly fulls and
daily incrementals to an enternal 120gig SATA 2.5" disk in an USB
enclosure.  I run a cron job that uses dump and a Tower Of Hanoi
sequence.  Monthly I manually burn DVDs of the previous months backups.

> 
> Regards
> 
> Hamzah

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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