backup data from nas

[VJ]

Hello,

I have a question regarding backups... My brother has a nas on which his music resides (streams to squeezebox), he now would like to keep backups of it (on usb harddisk). What is the best/fastest way to back it up?

Ideally, it should copy only the newly added or the modified files rather than just stupidely copying everything. Which software should we use for it?

Thanks!


Jörg

[Haig]

He can use something like Cobian backup where it has a file sync feature.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/index.htm

[Wulfman]

rsync?

mfg
wulfman

[VJ]

It is for my brother, better have something graphical...

The nas contains both photos and music; he has 2 backup usb drives (one for the music, one for the photos). The nas has its own backup implementation (copy files to a storage device on its usb port), but that would only allow one policy.
I'll send him the link to the cobian software...

Thanks!


Jörg

[Gurm]

Well it's mapped as a drive, yeah? So just set up file synchronization and let the server handle it...


Oh, wait... you don't HAVE a server on your domain. Hmm... in that case? Go with one of those other suggestions. LOL.

No seriously, client OS'es do file sync too. Used to be through briefcases, now it's through offline file/folder sync. I just recommend that. Why reinvent the wheel when your OS can do it for you?

[VJ]

I find the Windows file sync functionality quite counterintuitive (esp. that briefcase-thing-a-ma-jig)....

Haven't tried with the online/offline folder thingy, so will check it out...

Jörg

[Wulfman]

something basic? c't magazin in germany created a vbs script, which backs up your data as a batch-job using rsync. you define the directories that need to be backed up as well as the target directory, from then on you just click the icon. in your case, you could just prepare two batch files, one for music, one for fotos.

the first backup is a complete backup, every following backup is incremental, linking files that haven't changed to the first backup. very useful, and even worked for my parents: connect usb disk, double-click big red icon, wait until black window is closed, disconnect usb disk.

mfg
wulfman

[UtwigMU]

Music doesn't change much like a mail server or business database. It doesn't need to be backed up (back up means you only loose changes made since last back-up), it needs to be archived.

You just make 2 folders one Archived and one Nonarchived. Then move everything to Nonarchived.

Then install 2 SATA burners in your server and also hook up all your rigs with DVD burners on the LAN. Buy lots of redbull. Open one Nero per burner per computer, select different burners, then burn. If you have good IO (several HDDs) and lots of RAM you can burn 2 DVDs at once on computer, copy little bits to other rigs over GbLAN and also do some burning there.

Then burn everything to DVDs and move it to Archived. If you like to be on safe side make 2 copies of DVD and store the other copies on different location.

After that downloaded, bought, ripped music goes in Nonarchived and when it's 4GB you sort it, tag it, burn it to DVD and move it to Archived. Unless you're the type that likes to download discography of the band when he likes one song, it shouldn't be too much work from this point.

External drives tend to die when you trip on the cable while they're on .


If you're into backups, NTBackup works surprisingly well and it's simple, there is option for incremental backups, you can schedule it. The main catch is that if you tend to change your password you should create separate passworded account for backup and give it it's own password, then schedule tasks to be run as that account.

[Wulfman]

External drives tend to die when you trip on the cable while they're on .

optical disks tend to go bad all by themselves.

mfg
wulfman

[UtwigMU]

Well, one acquintance lost one 500GB drive due to fall and with the other one enclosure died, luckilly drive was OK, so data is being salvaged. Dateiretung from German ontrack for 500GB drive would have been 1700€ so she hasn't opted for it.

This is why I suggest to make 2 copies. Once Blu-Ray becomes mainstream rearchive everything to Blue-Ray.

A RAID1 of 2 500GB - 1TB drives would be cheap and enough for really big music collections (real RAID5 becomes expensive but can be done cheaply with Linux). This can protect you from HDD failure.

Backups - music is not really mission critical data, you can always redownload it from your umm... music subscription service. There are also no viruses that go corrupt your MP3s, Main dangers are HDD failure and accidental deletion.

[VJ]

Well, the NAS is a RAID5, so there is some security there. All music is ripped from his cd's, so the backup is needed in case the NAS suffers an issue (to prevent everything from having to be ripped again). The backup drive will only be used for that (and will not be moved around a lot.
The NAS also contains his photos and videos, for which we intend to use a second external disk, and the same workflow (but these will be written to dvd as well).

Gurm: Just played around a bit with that offline folder thingie, and while it looks interesting, I am not confident enough to see my brother using it...

UtwigMU: copying data might be time consuming, esp. as the standard Windows copy only offers the overwrite opens "yes", "yes to all", "no" and "cancel". A slightly more intelligent tool would make things a bit more workable.


Jörg

[UtwigMU]

The slightly more inteligent tool is total commander. You can skip files that can't be copied and do compare of folders afterwards. You can then rename those pesky french, brazilian and russian MP3s, that failed to copy due to funny filenames, copy only the files that are not present in one folder untill it's all sorted out. It's free, it will only incite you to buy it on startup, otherwise, works forever.