How to back up my business?

December 16, 2007 6:44 AM

I'm looking for a hassle free, preferably automated backup system for a small business (1 desktop computer).

The computer contains critical information about the business (e-mails, exel files, word documents etc.). I need to start making backups but I don't have any idea how and where to start. Do I look for a system that makes a snapshot of the HD? Do I look for software that uploads certain types of files to a server every night?

I have an off site server available for the storage. For the upload I have a ADSL line (it's not really fast at uploading large volumes).

I'd prefer a piece of software that uploads backups every night at a fixed time after working hours, but I'm not sure such a thing exists. The only program I know is Norton Ghost but I'm not even sure it does what I need. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

posted by NekulturnY to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

EMC Retrospect is commonly used in small business environments on both Mac and PC.

It's your choice of whether to back up just the important business documents, or the whole hard drive. This mainly depends on whether you expect to be able to plug in a new computer, press restore, and get back to exactly how you were? Or are you more concerned with keeping a series of nightly, weekly, monthly, yearly backups of a certain set of documents?

Good software for both full disk backups and file-specific backups will be able to send only what has changed to the backup server, so the ADSL line shouldn't be a huge problem.
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 6:49 AM on December 16, 2007

For full disk backups on Mac, SuperDuper is the winner. And yes, it has the scheduling functionality you require. Not sure about the PC side.
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 6:50 AM on December 16, 2007

How about SyncToy? You can schedule with Windows scheduler and it's free.
posted by arcticseal at 6:54 AM on December 16, 2007

Response by poster: Forgot to mention, it's a Windows PC running XP.
posted by NekulturnY at 7:04 AM on December 16, 2007

I suggest you look into Connected Backup from Iron Mountain. We use it on a much larger scale at the University of Michigan for automated network-based backups. I'm not sure how it scales for smaller organizations, but definitely look into it.
posted by kbanas at 7:11 AM on December 16, 2007

"Do I look for a system that makes a snapshot of the HD? Do I look for software that uploads certain types of files to a server every night?"

I'd recommend 2 separate systems. Regularly create a bootable snapshot on an extra drive (so you can get up and running quickly if the main drive fails), and use an online backup service to keep copies of files elsewhere. Any half-decent backup service's software will allow you to control when/how files are uploaded (the initial upload may take days/weeks via ADSL, but after that you'll probably be fine as I doubt you're generating a lot of new data).

You could use your off-site server, but backup space is cheap ($5+ per month) and some services let you specify your own encryption key (even they don't have access to your data), so it's usually easier and safer to let someone else look after it.

I use a combination of SuperDuper (to clone to an external drive) and Mozy (online backup) for my Mac, but I don't know what the best Windows equivalents would be.
posted by malevolent at 7:48 AM on December 16, 2007

SyncBack SE is good stuff. FTP backup, etc.
posted by disillusioned at 7:58 AM on December 16, 2007

I'll second Mozy as a good online backup.
posted by mac-way at 8:35 AM on December 16, 2007

To the offsite server, something using rsync will make the most of your bandwidth.

Also, Jungle Disk lets you backup directories regularly and cheaply to Amazon's S3.

I would give more info, and a website, but I think this ad-supported connection disagrees with my browser.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:55 AM on December 16, 2007

I use Jungle Disk, which is connected to Amazon's Simple Storage Service. I set it to automatically backup every 15 minutes -- files are only uploaded when they are modified/created (old copies get saved as well). The costs are nominal:


Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - data transfer out

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests


This works out to less than $5/month for me. Mozy, which is similar, may be more cost effective for you depending on the amount of files you have.
posted by fourstar at 9:18 AM on December 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

Since you have your own offsite storage, I am going to suggest SyncBack SE as well.
posted by tcv at 10:32 AM on December 16, 2007