[Anthony2oo5]

Hello people,

Have been looking into backup solutions and wanted to know what the best software to use for my requirements is.

We need to be able to go in and plug in our storage media (In this case we have a USB external hard drive with networking capabilities), and have it do a full image of the hard disk as fast as possible. I have a copy of ghost, which is great, but when I did a test it took 1.5 hours to complete a normal image, with no compression, the data was 36GB worth and the computer speed is fairly good.

If you think that not using a USB device would be faster then I would be interested in hearing any other ideas you may have.

Edited by Anthony2oo5, 17 June 2008 - 11:14 AM.

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If you're happy with Ghost perhaps you should consider doing the hard drive back-up after work.

Unfortunately back-up software isn't going to be done in five minutes if you want a complete copy of the drive. 90 mins may be a bit slow but a lot depends on the content of the drive, the read speeds of the source and the write speeds of the destination too. For 36Gb, 90mins would sound about right under average conditions.

A network solution may be more convenient however you would be limited to the throughout of the network controller which is most likely 10/100Mbps - considering USB2's maximum theoretical throughput is 480Mb/s, it may not be any faster.

Another drive inside the PC in question would be even faster however this IMO defeats the whole point of a backup system because it would be no good to you if (touch wood) the thing is stolen.

[Neil Jones]

If you're happy with Ghost perhaps you should consider doing the hard drive back-up after work.

Unfortunately back-up software isn't going to be done in five minutes if you want a complete copy of the drive. 90 mins may be a bit slow but a lot depends on the content of the drive, the read speeds of the source and the write speeds of the destination too. For 36Gb, 90mins would sound about right under average conditions.

A network solution may be more convenient however you would be limited to the throughout of the network controller which is most likely 10/100Mbps - considering USB2's maximum theoretical throughput is 480Mb/s, it may not be any faster.

Another drive inside the PC in question would be even faster however this IMO defeats the whole point of a backup system because it would be no good to you if (touch wood) the thing is stolen.

[starjax]

Anthony,

I would consider something like the netgear nv+. This is a network attached storage device that had redundancy and expandability. Comes with backup software for you to install of the various pc's. Demo can be found here

Drobo is another such unit

another option that is much closer to what your doing currently would be something like a maxtor shared storage 2. This also comes with software to control your backups. This however, is also a network device. They also make the "one touch" line that is usb and also comes with backup software.

I thinks pretty much covers the basic backup strategies without going to something like "cloud" based computing backup (which has it's own inherant security risks) or full on corporate backup solution.

[Anthony2oo5]

Thanks both for your replys.

I forgot to mention but we will be going in and out of businesses backing up their data and taking it off site. So it needs to be more of a portable solution.

Is there anything that we can use that will do a compete image of the drive the first time around and then only backup files that have changed since the last time we did it. I think its called incremental. But it needs to be done via a boot CD so we don't have to install any software, and it also needs to have USB support.

Thanks very much for the help you have provided thus far.

[starjax]

I'm sorry, but based on your requirements, there isn't anything that runs from a "boot cd" that will allow you to do this other than the current solution your using. Most backup solutions will make a full backup the first time they are used and then incremental backups at set time intervals after that.

[starjax]

check out our backup series on the main page http://geekstogo.com/

http://www.geekstogo...ckup-solutions/