advice for 2 firewire drive backup technique

[gratiotdesign]

Curerently I am using a G4 400 as my server, supporting a PowerBook, G4, and 3 PC workstations. I am running OSX 10.2.6 server, and back up with Retro workgroup to a VXA1 tape drive. Since I am a small (me and freelancers sometimes) studio, I do all.... I have had my share of hassles with the VXA and Retro and many here appear to have. I am also tired of switching tapes, and the constant feeling that in the event of a problem, i am really not set up well enough to be secure. And those tapes are bloody expensive (in Europe at least). So I want ease of use....

 

Now I am considering the following: 2 Lacie d2 FW400 drives on rotation that I can simply have one in house and one off site. I have a couple of questions about this.

 

I currently use the server backup method (due to the powerbook) and that normally seems trouble free (other than it never tells me when I need new tapes... which I only notice after 2 weeks of no backups!!!) I have never managed to get it to work with 2 "sets" of tapes e.g. backup set A and backup set B. I always understood you could simpley insert set B and it would use that, or set A and it would use that. However, in my experience it only complained and asked for the original set A.

 

So the question is, is this really possible to set this up in a simple plug and play way? How would that work with FW drives? Do I set them both up and then un-mount one, deconnect, take it home, and the following week, hook it up again and take the second one away?

 

Remember, my goal is to ignor this thing as much as possible. Set it up, disconnect one drive time to time for off-site security, and swith them again without jumping through hoops.

 

And yes I have looked at the step-by-step server backup instructions, but that does not cover the swaping of backups sets.

 

Any help or other suggestions appreciated!

 

also...

I know Dantz imagines this product is "easy" to use, but in my opinion this is simply not true. They are completely missing the target audience and skill level of what I imagine is a large slice of the user base. Yes, the concepts and technical side of backup is tricky, but that is the whole point of great (mac) software, is to make complexity simple, and easy to use. The interface for Retro is complicated, full of jargon, and simply unintuitive. I suppose that is harsh, but it does seem that the engineers did not think much about streamlining the setup process or concepts of use or deployment. It is one of those products that I sometimes think, wow, that is powerful, and then at the same time, but why is it so difficult to use! Well, needed to get that off my chest...

 

 

[pt44]

Hi

 

I used to use tapes to (onstream fw30), it started having problems, so I had a rethink. Tapes suck - big time. They also cost a fortune, as you rightly point out. I wonder how many people actually do a proper cost analysis of tape costs? I did, Firewire drives are far, far cheaper.

 

So, I am running two LaCie firewire drives, backing up using Retrospect Workgroup, using the Server method/scripts, for backing up my powerbooks.

 

Does it work? Is it easy? The answer is a great big YES :-) on both accounts.

 

I used to hate tape. Constantly having to eject old ones, insert new ones, remember which backup set it was etc. Then their were the errors, on a regular basis. Firewire drives? You set them up, then sit back and admire the way they just work. They never ask for a tape, they never do anything. They just simply do their job without bothering you. The only checks you ever need to make, are quick ones on the log, just to see that no errors were encountered. They are also extremely fast. Read that as FAST! I can't remember the exact figures for transfer rates, but they were impressive. (still slow for the powerbooks, because its over Airport, but that's only a problem for the first clean backup). My 150Gb worth of data on my main G4 took hours to back up, rather than the usual days it took with tape, and it never stops to ask for more tapes :-)

 

I bought a LaCie 500Gb Big Disk fw400 (no point in the fw800 speed, for backup IMO, and its cheaper) and a LaCie 400Gb Big Disk fw400. If you can order from Apple UK, you will find that these drives are an absolute bargain, for some bizarre reason, they have them for sale at an incredibly cheap price (remember their prices include tax & free shipping in the UK)

 

I use the 500Gb as the main drive. This gets backed up daily via scripts. My total data is currently around the 200Gb mark, so this should allow me plenty of room, even considering the incremental data. It also allows room for the next two years, for data increase. (I'm a digital photographer). By that time, I imagine hard drives will be even cheaper, and the two I've got will have paid for themselves. The second drive, the 400Gb, is for off-site. Originally I was going to simply use Retrospect. This drive lives off-site for at least a week, before it gets updated/renewed. I decided instead to use Carbon Copy Cloner, on OSX, to make a bootable copy of my main drive in one partition. Then used CCC to backup all other volumes to a second partition. This has the advantage, that if my house burns down, I can pickup my 400Gb drive and plug it into someone else's computer, boot up from it, then work away as if nothing had changed. It is a complete copy of my system. Obviously it is a week old (perhaps two), but I will only have lost two weeks of data, which is nothing compared with losing it all in a fire. CCC can also update the files using a sync utility. Also, because it is backing up volumes, the drive can be plugged into each machine, one at a time, to use CCC. This means it is using FW rather than Airport, which greatly speeds up the initial backup. The off-site drive can be smaller than the on-site, because it only gets backed up a few times incrementally, if at all. So it only needs to be a little bigger than the total of my data size. When it comes back on-site (briefly) it can either have a small incremental, or a complete new backup, then go off-site again.

 

To summarise, I cannot recommend this system enough. It is truly a remarkably easy way to backup and I do not understand why more people have not dicovered it. Perhaps it is because people still think that hard drives are expensive items? Personally I seem to buy new hard drives every other month and have watched the prices plummet, so I was very aware of how cheap they are per Gb, when compared to other mediums. Some photographers out there are still backing up/archiving their data, to CD's which seems prehistoric to me. My two hard drives cost me less than £1000 for a total of 900Gb of space. That's around a £1/Gb. Around the same cost, or cheaper, than CD, far cheaper than tape of virtually any kind (that I looked at, Onstream, VXA, AIT etc.) and its the most amazingly easy to use solution.

 

Paul

 

BTW - I agree with your thoughts on Retrospect and its ease of use. Its fine when you get to know it, but for beginners its very off putting, unnecessarily so IMO. I'm sure it could be simplified a little if a little bit of thought went into it.

 

[gratiotdesign]

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for the detailed reply! I imagine as a photographer you do have a large data requirement. My needs are probably a bit smaller, but I can tell you CAD and graphics files sure can get big!

 

I am a little unclear one something. In backing up there are several concepts as I understand it. One is archiving material over a long time, and another is simply covering your butt in case of calamity. Now, I will assume that I will move projects onto cd or DVD as required when complete as it can then be stored also with the project documentation (in my ID business, this is perhaps the easiest way). Then there is the off site requriement. So fine, make 2 CDs/dvds and have one off site. I think that works.

 

Now, what I understand you are doing is saying that the 500gb drive is running on a server script and is running daily. Meaning after the initial backup is is incremental all the way. Does that mean you just let that go for... years? I had the vauge understanding that incremental backups at some point also slow down any recovery later. True? Or are you periodically telling it to forget the "set" and begin again on the 500bg drive?

 

I like your idea of having the ccc backup as in a disaster that sounds like a faster way to get going. However, I am not so sure how that would work for my PCs. I am in the unfortunate position of having to use the bloody PC for cad software... and that is my bread and butter.

 

Is there not a way to have it set up that I have 2 drives, lets say 400gb or watever I need, and simply swap them back and forth? So in effect I have 2 "sets" and the I identical exept one week out of sync?

 

Also, the calculation for space - is it as simple as add up the data on each computer and double it? At the moment I have a VXA1 tape set that has 5 members and is about 140GB after running for about 5 months. Would I be resonably safe using a 200gb drive, or should I really go for the 400? There certainly is a price difference!

 

I really appreciate your advice and comments!

 

Thanks

Dan

[pt44]

Dan

 

Archiving or backing up? You are correct about these two concepts, however, I'm a bit of a "rebel", I don't believe in Archiving :-0

 

Why? Well, as everyone does, I started out archiving old stuff to CD. However, what happens when you want to look at that stuff? What happens when you find out the CD doesn't work anymore? So you have at least three copies on CD, to cover your ass, all adding to time taken to make the things in the first place. Then how do you know if each one is ok? Do you periodically go through your whole CD collection, running checks on them? And if you want access to old data, you have to dig out a CD from that masive storage rack that you now have in your office!

 

Not me I thought. I have ALL of my data on hard drives, always accesible at a moments notice. Is it always readable? Well I can run various disk utilities that ASAIK can scan the whole disk and check for errors. But what if your hard disk goes wrong, they are notoriously unreliable, I hear the masses cry. Well, that's where backup comes into play. As I backup daily, I always have two full copies of all my data. (If I wanted to be even more prudent, I'd set up a mirrored RAID on my main drive, so that it was protected every second, perhaps when I update my system, I'll set that up). So if my main drives die, I have an instant backup copy on the 500Gb. It would take minutes to recover the data using Retrospect, to another hard drive, and be up and running in no time. Then I have the off-site copy as well.

 

The thing is, Hard drives have become SO CHEAP. I cannot see any reason for archiving anymore onto CD/DVD, when you can simply keep copies of all data on you computer. It was different when one had a 6Gb main hard drive (my old G3) but now my G4 has a 200Gb WD as its main drive, and two 120Gb drives running as a RAID, for speed, just for pictures. The cost of these drives is peanuts, and it just keeps dropping. The 200Gb WD JB, was under £150. I see no reason not to have large hard drives in your computers, internally and use external drives as backup.

 

The 500Gb is backing up incrementally. Once it a while, yes, I will refresh it and backup again from Scratch. However because the space is so large, I see no hurry at the moment.

 

For bootiing up on the PC, could you not just have another separate partition and install windows, and boot from that? I don't know Windows very well, so this may not be possible.

 

You could swap your drives back and forth, I was initially going to do this, but then thought, what's the point? One does that with tape, because the tapes wear out. Hard Drives don't really wear out (do they?) they tend to just die. So I saw no good reason for swapping them. Also, it allows me to have a smaller/cheaper drive as the off-site.

 

Size of drive? Good question. I have no idea. All I know is that bigger (when it comes to hard drives) is always better. I have freqeuntly run out of space on drives and it is a true pain in the rear. I'd rather buy big now and not have to worry about running out of space for at least a year, hopefully two or more. Given more data, I could have probably got away with smaller drives, my 500Gb is currently has about 250Gb of data on it, so I could have bought the 320Gb or 400Gb as the main backup. However my image bank will, I predict, grow by another 60-80Gb this year, shooting digital images. It could grow even more quickly if I update my 6MP camera to a 11MP camera. So I thought it much better to build in a little head room. Unfortunately it is only something you can evaluate.

 

Are you in the UK? If so did you check Apple's prices, they were truly cheap a couple of weeks ago. Remember their prices include tax, unlike most others.

 

Regards Paul

[gratiotdesign]

Hi Paul,

 

I agree about the archive... and if I ever really need to go back, the software that I created the work in is probably so different that I cannot open it anyway! That is why I also make hard copies of anything important, or PDF output of artwork or presentations.

 

I may be slow at getting this, but let me see if I have what you are saying:

 

1

the 500gb drive is on site always and is backing up with retrospect. Other than a fire, theft or other calamity, this is your on site backup for your network.

2

the 400gb drive is always offsite except 1 everys week or so when you bring it to work and make a ccc of each computer. Or are you only doing an incremental ccc as I think you mentioned? Doesn't that take a long time to do? Plus, doesn't that take more energy than having retrospect do it for you?, or it is all about bootability i guess.

 

Thanks again!

Dan

[pt44]

Dan

 

Yes, that's exactly it. To be honest its only been about a month since I got the drives, so the off-site method does need looking at. It may be better to use Retrospect, I'm not sure. Though CCC does have a sync utility that will incrementally update the files. And I do like the fact that it is instantly usable. I'd definitely keep the off-site partitioned so that it could be bootable (perhaps I should partition the on-site, for the same reasons, giving me an insantly usable system, I may look into that.)

 

Paul