Matt Pobursky wrote:
> I've been using the "paid" version for about two years now to backup my
> servers and network workstations. I run script files on the servers with
> "Lauchpad" (an excellent and reliable scheduler) which calls batch files
> with XXCopy commands.
>
> One server is a backup server and mirrors the primary server every hour
> plus does weekly off-site backups to a removeable hard drive. The primary
> server does hourly, daily and weekly backups of itself and the 5 other
> workstations on my network. It's all very efficient and just keeps 
> working.
> Theses are Windows 2000 systems, BTW.
>
> You might think backing up 5 workstations every hour would be time
> consuming and network intensive but because XXCopy has some extensive
> differencing options the whole process only takes 6-8 minutes per hour.

What kind of data do you have on your workstations? We only backup the 
desktop and e-mail, the official policy is that all other files must be 
saved on the server (no local copies).

> It's awfully nice having automatic backups of everything back to the last
> hour, day, week or month when you have one of those "oops" moments.
> Obviously having a rotation of 4 weekly off-site backups is a good thing
> too.

So with this system, how far back can you go?

And, to clarify, you cannot recover a file that got erased 2 hours ago --  
right?

> This is the best backup system I've had in 20+ years of my consulting
> business. It's simple, reliable and works quietly in the background.

Right now, we use tapes for backup. There are four "daily tapes", three 
monthly tapes, tapes for each month of the year, and one yearly tape.

They get rotated thus:

Mon-Tue-Wed-Thu-Wk1
...-Wk2
...-Wk3
...-Jan
...
...-Nov
...-2007

You got me thinking about replacing the daily tapes with a couple of hard 
drives. Most of the time, the "oops" moments have to do with stuff that 
happened very recently, and it's nice to be able to recover a file that got 
changed or erased an hour ago (not practical, with tapes). It's also a lot 
more convenient to restore the data from a hard drive, than from tape.

Vitaliy 

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist