What's the best Backup system?

[Bumpus]

Here at work, we have a server running Win2K Server, 5 terminals off of it and another 5 PCs logging in from time to time. A while back we had a hard drive crash. We thought we were protected since we backup to a tape drive every night.

Well.... somehow, some of the backups, while saying it was a successful backup, weren't. We ended up having to recreate several day's data after a restore.

Since then, we not only backup to tape, we also backup the entire server to a 250 gig USB Hard drive every night as well. Myself and others here still do not have that "warm and fuzzy" feeling regarding protected data.

Any thoughts on what else is available or other means of data backup other than tape? In any case, I think we'll still do the backup to the hard drive nightly.

Thanks, Bumpus

[FastLearner]

I don't think the media used for backing up is as important as the strategy used to backup important data. Using tape drives, although a little old-fashioned, is still one of the best backup schemes. A full backup is good, but it's not necessary (and is very time consuming) to perform every day. A good backup plan uses a combination of:

full backups: what you're doing now

differential backups: only backs up files that have changed since the last backup. In this case, the archive marker does not change the marker attribute indicating that the file has been backed up.

incremental backups: same as a differential backup, except the archive marker is changed to indicate that the file has been backed up.

Once again, a good strategy is to use a combination of these types of backups.
Since you're running Win2k Server, this is as easy as running the backup wizard and selecting the appropriate backup type.

A very popular method is to combine a full backup with a differencial backup. Tape suits this purpose very well, actually, but you need a whole lot of tapes (depending on the amount of data we're talking about) and a little bit of patience in the case of a server restore. The benefit is that you lose very little (if any) data in the process. Tape is actually pretty reliable, as long as the tapes are kept clean and in a safe place, and are replaced from time to time.

Anyway, this strategy calls for a full backup to be run on the weekends (which is good if your office is closed on the weekend). It also entails running nightly (or daily) incremental backups (everything that changed) every day from Monday through Friday. In this case, if your server has a drive failure, you would:

1) Restore the full backup from the last full backup (maximum one week old).
2) Restore EACH (in order) day's incremental backup tapes.

Recall that this is necessary because an incremental backup backs up only what has been changed since the last backup, and then marks the data as having been backed up. I'm sure you will find this method to your liking. Even though it requires more tapes than what you're used to, you will save money on any new types of drives (and their respective media). You'll also have a system in which your data is very safe from loss.

Hope this helps, even though I know I didn't answer your question directly.