Simple Backup Strategy for a small business?

March 21, 2007 7:17 AM

Suggestions for backup solutions for a small daily paper? Long story after the break.

This is a small daily paper, part of a chain. The chain is a family owned business, so things don't work logically. There are two major questions, each dealing with backup solutions, with smaller subquestions of each.

Last week, we discovered our IT department installed backup solution was not backing up our server, and hasn't backed up our server for 8 months. The IT manager is part of the family, so he isn't going anywhere. And that's a whole 'nother matter. For the moment, we need to put in a quick, simple backup solution while our IT department "looks into" fixing our backup "problem".


First question---

We have decided to purchase our own external hard drive to back up stuff from this server. The server is running Windows Server 2003. We have Windows XP workstations and a old 400mhz Mac G4, running 10.3.9. We would like to to hook this external drive to the Mac, since the IT department doesn't have any access or control of it (though the G4 can see the PC server and interact with it in terms of copying off files). Doesn't have to go with the Mac though, if you can suggest something better (I have full admin rights on my Windows workstation, which of course, can be taken away.) We'd also like it to have easy, reliable back up software included, like Retrospect Express. 200gb would be good, though more is fine too.

Network notes: The current server is here in the building, which we share with 3 other newspapers. We only want to back up our stuff. The server is divided at the top level by four folders: Paper A, Paper B, etc, etc with each paper organizing it's folder however it wants. We want to backup our entire folder, which is currently around 45gb.

Please, no bashing or "advice" about our IT department. That's a separate problem you can't help with. We are only asking for advice what kinda external drive to buy and what software can be used with it.

* Reliable drive. This is the main concern. It should work for several years, easily.

* External drive.

* Includes easy to use backup software, able to do increment backups. Example: after doing the first full backup, the system would only backup changed files.

* Works easily with Mac and PC.

* Speedy. In the event of crash from the main server, we should be able to work off this drive.




Second question--

We back up each issue on CD. However, our issues are getting too large to do one CD, so would DVDs be a suitable replacement? Can we burn a single issue at time to DVD? Is there any free software to do this on the PC?

posted by The Behatted Wild Man of Greenfield to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Maxtor One Touch may be something to consider.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:53 AM on March 21, 2007

DVDs are fine. You can burn any data on the DVD. You will probably get free DVD burning software when you purchase a DVD burner or a new computer with a DVD burner.

You should never work off the backup drive. Never. Copy it over to a new server. Wait for this to happen.

The Maxtor thing mentioned by crash is probably fine for what you need.
posted by beerbajay at 9:26 AM on March 21, 2007

FYI, if you're bargain hunting: the Western Digital 250GB hard drive is currently selling for $80.00 (normally $150.00).
posted by gd779 at 11:01 AM on March 21, 2007

Hard disks aren't "backup".

I know you know this, but it seems to bear mention anyway.

If you *must* use that, as opposed to tape, for the nonce, my personal advice is go with Seagate, the pricier the better; I have had bad luck with both Maxtor and WD; the former the more recent.
posted by baylink at 1:32 PM on March 21, 2007

Seconding the Seagate over Maxtor. (Though Maxtor has been recently bought by Seagate, so maybe their quality will go up...)
posted by beerbajay at 3:14 PM on March 21, 2007