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Home Backup Solutions [duplicate]

Home Backup Solutions [duplicate]

Right now, I have a couple of laptops and a desktop running various versions of Windows and Linux. I am currently just manually copying over stuff to dvd's and external hard drives, but as our media is growing (pictures, code etc) I need to find a better solution, preferably automated. Whatever it is, needs to support at least the major operating systems (Windows, *nix, and Mac), have secure options, and also preferably using open source or free tools.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 249
Total answers/comments: 4
Guest [Entry]

"RSYNC is pretty good option for backups, especially over the LAN or internet. Preferrably you need some kind of unix machine to backup to though there is now pretty good Windows option too. With rsync you can easily do rotating backups with hardlinks, that way you can have a full backup for every day of the week, or every week of the year, and there is not much overhead, the data is only stored once on the server.

There is plenty of guides and tutorials on how to use rsync on Linux and for Windows I highly recommend DeltaCopy, a GUI for rsync server/client.

My usual setup makes weekly backups of not so important stuff to a server on my LAN and critical files like emails are rsynced to a hosted server in another country, just in case my town gets hit by a meteor."
Guest [Entry]

"You can have a centralized solution running a backup application in the computer that connects to the backup devices, and receiving data from other computers using windows file sharing. I prefer linux, so I'd try to have a linux pc serving that purpose, rsync could be used (you could search for a graphical application). Instead, if you run windows on the main backup computer, I found the free windows-only Cobian Backup to be the best.

Bacula has many features that may be excessive for a home backup solution. Last time I tried, I found that setting up Bacula was very difficult and much more difficult than graphical applications like Cobian Backup.

This can be combined with an online service, Dropbox is easy to set-up and has good reviews."
Guest [Entry]

"I use Acronis TrueImage Home to image each group of data; the images are then copied to other physical disks. For example, my OS and App volumes are imaged to my internal backup disk and to my NAS. And my NAS is imaged to my internal backup disk. At any one time every byte on my disks are backed up in at least one other place, and in the case of key data (personal files, photo's etc) there are multiple versions in different location.

Storage is ridiculously cheap (the new Samsung F2 1.5TB drives are £50) so storage space is simply not an issue.

If you don't want to pay for TrueImage, the are free alternatives, such as Bacula, NASBackup and Clonezilla.

Note: Although the latest version of TrueImage is £40, you can often find the previous version for free on the front of magazine cover-disks - that's how I got my first copy of TrueImage 9..."
Guest [Entry]

"For backing up a full network, BackupPC is the solution I like. It can do multi-level incremental backups. BackupPC is especially good if you are backing up a large number of computers with similar configurations (e.g. a computer lab where all the computers have the same versions of all programs), because BackupPC collapses multiple identical files into one, saving space. (I'm sure some other backup solutions do this as well.)

You can't use it with Optical media, however. You'll need a server with enough disk space to hold the backups."