topic Re: Backup Solutions? in Installation & update

Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 00:47:55 GMT

Hi all,

I am trying to find a solution for backing each day.
Our office set up is as follows:

1 power book - backed up to cd each day.
3 G4 desktops and 1 G5 desktop, each is used as a stand alone for Archicad with their own libraries etc. at the moment each person is responsible for backing up to cd-rw for their machine.
This is not working as the last thing people seem to want to do is copy files and back up at the end of the day. each machine has about 10GB max to backup.

My questions are, with these machines being connected over a network, would purchasing a firewire HD and connecting to one machine ( say the G5) then each person having there own backup software on each machine to back up to this drive each day work? would there be any problems with this? is there recomended software for backing up that would locate the drive over the network.

is there a system where the drive can be connected to the network hub so the other machines do not need to be turned on?

Also when backing up, if I am working on a .pln file and it is also being backed up at the same time, does this cause problems? or does the last saved copy get backedup?

Really just looking for the right direction to go in.

kerry.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 03:18:29 GMT

Kerry wrote:
Hi all,

I am trying to find a solution for backing each day...

1 power book - backed up to cd each day.
3 G4 desktops and 1 G5 desktop...

My questions are, with these machines being connected over a network, would purchasing a firewire HD and connecting to one machine ( say the G5) then each person having there own backup software on each machine to back up to this drive each day work? would there be any problems with this? is there recomended software for backing up that would locate the drive over the network.

I think this is the right approach. Get a copy of Retrospect with enough clients for all your computers. Attach the external drive to whichever machine you want to use as a backup server. This does not need to be the G5; a G4 or even a G3 is adequate to the task. You might also consider a second backup drive and rotate them off site weekly.

Is there a system where the drive can be connected to the network hub so the other machines do not need to be turned on?

There are Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems but they are a bit pricey compared to just buying hard drives

Also when backing up, if I am working on a .pln file and it is also being backed up at the same time, does this cause problems? or does the last saved copy get backedup?

Set the backups to run at night. Open files will generate errors in the back-up. (I'm not sure if this means they aren't backed up or if it's just a warning.)

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 03:31:31 GMT

Matthew,

At least I'm going down the right track.
do you leave all machines running at night? is this o.k. for the machines to be running 5 days a week 24hrs.
or do you schedule them to shut down after a certain time?

all older files are archived to disk at the moment.

are there any recommendations on HD types?

Re: Backup Solutions?

__archiben — Wed, 19 May 2004 08:49:24 GMT

Kerry wrote:
is this o.k. for the machines to be running 5 days a week 24hrs?

kerry

as far as i know, its advisable to keep them running. OSX's unix core performs daily, weekly and monthly clean-up and repair tasks in the small hours of the morning . . .

we just have the users log-out and let the machine do the rest.

~/archiben

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 11:56:17 GMT

The machines need to be running in order to be backed up. You can set them up to shut down on completion of the back-up. There is also a special setting for the backup server to be doing its thing all the time, but I wouldn't do this with an active workstation.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 19:52:59 GMT

So I gather it's healthy for the machine to be running.

with regards to the retrospect software or other software for backing up,
does anyone have any bad comments. is it reasonably straight forward to use.

otherwise It looks like the firewire drive's and some software.

Thanks for all your help.
kerry.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 22:24:20 GMT

Retrospect is the only backup software that I recommend. It has simplicity, reliability and longevity that are unmatched by any other as far as I know.

As far as the Firewire drives. Buy known name brands like Maxtor or LaCie. I like the LaCie drives for their cool aluminum enclosures, but I can't find anywhere on their website about what brand of drives they use.

Maxtor, Seagate and Hitatchi (nee IBM) all make good drives. I have not been very impressed by Western Digital.

I bought a couple of external hard drives from Firewire Direct once and when one of them failed I discovered that the mechanism was a no-name device (it was no longer worth chasing the warrantee - I just stuck a new drive in the enclosure).

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2004 22:34:11 GMT

thanks Matthew

I will go shopping and see what i can find.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Thomas Holm — Wed, 26 May 2004 13:24:26 GMT

No offence meant, but I have to partly disagree with Matthew. While Retrospect is unmatched in flexibility, allowing backups to all kinds of media, for simplicity and reliability nothing matches LaCie's freeware program Silverkeeper (Mac only).

Retrospect has had problems from day one in OSX, and some of them seem to persist for very long. The latest bug fix (and more info) can be found here:
http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=28135

We've used Silverkeeper each day for more than two years now for backing up our main OSX fileserver, which both serves a network of five Macs (OSX and OS9 mixed) and a Windows XP machine, and also doubles as an Archicad workstation. In OSX 10.3.3, no crashes, no issues. You can set up scheduled backups and several different backup sets if you wish. And the program runs on unaffected if Archicad crashes!

While the program is freeware and formally unsupported, it's development is backed by one of the biggest hard disk brands (LaCie), and of course used as a sales argument. We back up to (at least two, one daily, one weekly) cheap external Firewire hard disks - we think that's the simplest, cheapest and most efficient backup solution today. Just count how many hard disks you get for one good tape backup station today!

Silverkeeper works with Desktop-mountable volumes only, and can be found at http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/ . We've used it exclusively in MacOSX, but it's said to work in OS9 too. I'd guess at half the speed and half as reliable - use OSX for all critical work!

I think this program is one of the very few exceptions from the "it's worth what you pay" rule. Knock on wood!

Thomas

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Wed, 26 May 2004 20:07:31 GMT

Thomas,

I downloaded a trial for retrospect, and also silverkeeper.

i thought I would try both to see the differences. i have not got the Firewire HD yet but was trying to backup from one G4 to my G5.

silverkeeper gave me an error and only copied 1/2 the files, I am trying again to see what happened.

I used retrospect to back up to DVD on my G5, it gave me an error also, it would only name the disk.

Can you give me a brief overview on how you have set up your back up system. does each station set there shedule to back up to a firewire HD on another computer, or does one station run silverkeeper to backup to a HD connected to it?

are there any do's and don'ts of setting up a good backup system.

kerry.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Thu, 27 May 2004 01:12:54 GMT

Thomas,

I had forgotten all about SilverKeeper. (I think it was once called SilverLining - or perhaps that was just the formating software.)

Thanks for reminding me. I'll have to dust it off and have another look. I am always in favor of simple and reliable solutions, especially when they are free.

Re: Backup Solutions?

Thomas Holm — Thu, 27 May 2004 22:34:37 GMT

Kerry,

sorry for late answer.

If you have trouble with both Silverkeeper and Retrospect, the issue is probably something else. Use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions before you do anything else. (I regularly use OnyX
<http://www.titanium.free.fr/us/onyx/index.html>
to automate routine maintenance).

As I think I said, Silverkeeper only copies to Finder-mountable volumes. And it only copies visible, non-locked files for which you have permissions enough, just like if you were dragging a copy in the Finder. If that works, Silverkeeper works, if not, not. You cannot use it to backup program or system files in OSX- for that I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner
<http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html> .

We've made it as simple as possible. On the server, we have a master project folder where all project data is stored. Those who want to also have private data folders within this one. Each person is responsible for keeping the project folders and their own data up-to-date on the server.

Each day, someone has the responsibility to plug in one of the external Firewire disks, start Silverkeeper and press the GO button. That's all. It's preset to copy the Master Project Folder and all its contents to the FW disk. And it keeps a log which makes it really fast except the first time. You can set it to just copy new or changed files.

I don't want it to have scheduled backups because the server is used for other things as well (Archicad for instance). A scheduled backup is too likely to get in the way, sometimes you're in a hurry and want to turn off the machine, for example. But you can do it with Silverkeeper.

You can set up several backup sets in Silverkeeper if you like. If you don't change it, it defaults to using the last used set.

File permissions can be an issue in MacOSX. Set wrong, some files won't copy. I use a utility called Batchmod to handle that, check out
<http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/>

If you need it, drag a data folder into Batchmod's window. On the server's master project folder, I usually set Owner as Nobody, Group as Wheel, and check all boxes to allow R W X for both Owner, Group and Others, and I also check for subfolders and files to use these priviledges and to unlock. I do this once in a while on the whole master project folder, to keep problems away. Note that this utility can be dangerous if you happen to use it on programs or system files. Always use it on data folders only. Also note that you have to be an Admin user with a valid password to use it.

If you want to set up a fileserver on a machine without OSX Server, you're restricted to use a folder in your Shared directory as primary data storage. If you want more flexibility, you'll have to buy OSX Server or use a utility like Sharepoints <http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/> .

Sharepoints can be quite confusing for a Unix illiterate like me, but it lets you set up shared directories on an OSX Client machine that work just as well as OSX Server, even with Samba filesharing for Windows clients. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy OSXServer - it's much more easy to use especially for bigger networks and heavier demands than ours, and includes some impressive administrative tools as well. But Sharepoints, Batchmod, and Silverkeeper fill our needs at an unbeatable price.

That's all for now. You'll have to learn Silverkeeper yourself. It's not that hard, and the help files are OK.

And follow my tips on your own risk only!

Thomas

Re: Backup Solutions?

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 01:34:02 GMT

What we're doing is we have a "server" (more of a regular computer which has a monitor attached... sometimes) which has 2 rather large identical drives attached. All our data is mirrored on both drives (if one goes, the other one will still have all the information on it). All the data that changed is backed up each day (3am or 4am), and all the data that changed during the week is backed up once each week (on the weekend).

Now, if I'd be more organized I'd burn all these backup files to a CD every week at least (but I'm not, hence the mirrored drives). You could try something like that. One of the advantages is that you can work on every file from whatever computer you want to (ours are all networked together) and all the files are stored in one place for easy backup.