Backup snapshots

[iviv]

My parents work from home, and business has finally reached the level where they want to start backing up their computers in case something happens. There's 10+ years of Sage accounts, plus loads of other stuff over the two PCs.

One PC just runs XP and one business program, and at the moment we just do a weekly backup and copy files over the network to my dad's laptop, which runs sage and all the other stuff. And now he wants to make sure that if something happens, he doesn't loose all that data, because obviously it would be a huge problem with all the accounts. The laptop runs Vista.

So, I've been recruited to look into ways of backing it up. There's two options as far as I can see. Either keep an external drive plugged in all the time, and use some kind of backup program to write any file changes to the external drive when a file is updated.
Or the easier (And perhaps safer option) would be to image the drive weekly onto the external drive. That way, if the hard drive does die, we could get a new hard drive for it, plug it into my PC (Have to buy a connector though), reimage from the external drive back onto the new drive, and everything's back again.

Are there any other options? The first doesn't seem too good since it means the external drive has to be attached all of the time, which seems a little redundant, but it would be sure to keep all of the data.

But can you image a hard drive like that? With the image program installed on the drive you are imaging?

Thanks!

 

[Pho]

Acronis True Image does this, even whilst windows is running. You can take incremental backups too so you don't have to image the whole drive every time.

If the files aren't very big you could maybe look at cloud storage?

 

[CaptainCrash]

10 years worth of business data, and now they've "finally reached the level where they want to start backing up"....

In the short term, as you have two computers why not simply back up each PC across the network to a target folder called, say, "Backup" on the other machine? You'd only need to copy the user data on a recurring basis - you could also do a one-off image of each drive if you'd need to be back up and running quickly if something goes wrong. You could also think about using a dedicated NAS device as a backup location for both machines, which might be a tidier and more convenient solution.

You really want to be looking at offsite backup for the critical user data though, which probably means cloud storage as suggested above. Mozy and Carbonite seem well regarded and don't cost a fortune.

 

[theheyes]

I would actually do both - a regular daily file backup and perhaps a weekly image.

It is important to test the backup as well. What I would do is buy a replacement hard disk now and then try to recover your laptop from one of the images. You don't want to find out it doesn't work after the disaster.

Also it sounds like all your data is on one site, which is never advisable for a serious backup plan. If you move data off site you're also under obligation to protect it so you may want to look into your encyrption options as well.