Wed, Sep 29 2004 18:34
bradley
From today's mailbag... Ron asks about backups
Ron via Yahoo.com writes to “via E-Bitz:”
“I am looking for a decent solution for backing up a SBS 2003 Server with about 30 GB of user data. The current Seagate Travan system is both slow and unreliable. (Lifetime warranty on tapes? HA!) Would you suggest that I try the Iomega Rev system or get 2 to 3 USB HD's?
What do you use? If you have tried harddrives, have you run into any software difficulties? I am sure I'm not the only person curious about external drives as backup solution.”
Dear Ron:
You are not alone in looking for a reliable and cheap backup solution. Tape drive manufacturers HAVE NOT stepped up to the plate in providing reliable and REASONABLY priced tape drives to keep up with the monster drives we are throwing into our servers. In my own case I wasn't ready to go to a usb harddrive solution and I was anticipating backing up my main server AND a member server so I plunked down 3 grand on a Sony Quad tape loader. Yup you read that right, $3 thousand smackeroos. Works wonderfully [it better at that price]. But it's not your normal SBS backup solution by any means.
What's the best backup? One that works. One that you've tested. One that the client will remember to change out.
Do people use usb enclosure harddrives as backup media? Yup, sure do and they work.
Do people use IOMEGA Rev drives work with SBS? Per Eliot's tests yes, haven't checked back with him if he's using them a lot [and I need to check for that reg key for Mike from the newsgroups who can't find it on his system]
As far as the travan drive, you do have the hotfix right?
Too bad Iomega or some other vendor didn't come up with a “guaranteed to work with SBS” external backup system. Something like a SBS branded SAN, or a SBS branded Iomega solution. I mean like aren't we big enough of a marketplace now to start having vendors position themselves to be more plug and play than they are now? We have HP with SBS and Trend pre-installed now, don't we?
Now before you ask, Ron, I'll ask the question....can DVD's be used as a backup media? I don't know about you but a “normal” backup of a SBS box... I'm going to doubt that it fits on a DVD, even one with all sorts of compression and junk. And I just know that on my desktop, cd/dvd rom burning is not a trivial task on this box, it does take resources.
If I didn't have my 200 gig/400 gig compressed Sony quad loader tape drive and I was backing up 30 gigs of data? I'd probably throw in an usb2/firewire card and go for those usb/firewire harddrives. I actually have a unit or two around the office just to aid in migrating.
Thanks for writing in Ron. Keep us posted. You can find me on the blog or in the newsgroups most days.
Filed under: Backup
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