mj

ok,
Its official,
I am now our IT manager

After a recent disaster with my old man's hard drive ( now sorted ) ,I have decided we have to back up our documents at work ( only word docs and drawings/site piccies ). Our newly installed ( by me ) network consists of me & the old fella, & possibly the old Q because she wants to get on the internet at work ( cue - miiiiiike how do I do this??? - 40 times a day ).

I have put a new 40 gig drive in my dads machine ( to replace his one that went pop), and an additional 40 gig in mine . so far I have set up / in the process of setting up the following and would appreciate any comments to see if I have got it something like, or I am way off the mark:

we have:

2 or 3 ( yes - you read that right 2 or 3 ) , machines, all W2K .

networked via ADSL router hub jobbie.

additional 40G backup drive on my machine ( on same IDE as my existing 20 G - is this ok or do I need to split the drive over the 2 IDE channels ? )

I have/will set up a new folder on the C: drive of each machine pureley for work documents - both these folders to be shared to each machine as we sometimes work on the same jobs, and need acess to each others docs.

I have told him to keep the "my documents" folder on his machine for personal stuff only, I will do the same.

now the backup bit..........

Do I

set up a sheduled backup of our work folders ( and our OE .dbx files ) to backup to the additional 40g backup drive on my machine?, and if so can I back up as real files/folders or does it have to be one of those .bak type files?

or,

can I make the work documents folder mirror to the backup drive on my machine as the originals are being modified/wriiten, can this be done with an IDE drive, or do I need RAID or SCUSSI for this?.



As I understand it, if our main hard drives go down we still have the work stuff on my backup drive. in any case I will copy the backup drive to CD's once a month ( can I schedule this aswell? ) As I see it the only way we will lose all the hard drives is either a fire or theft - in any event there will be more to worry about than losing one months worth of data - we are only a 2 bob outfit anyway so we could always get around it, and sometimes the old " my computers curled it's toes up " excuse is a good blag

Any suggestions and answers to my questions gratefully welcomed.

thanks in advance,

Mike.

swaussie

Use the built in Win2k backup utility - To start the Backup utility, look in System Utilities in the Start Menu (Start, Programs, Accessories, System Utilities). The Utility will open to the "Welcome" tab, one of four tabs. The other tabs are "Backup," "Restore," and "Schedule Jobs." On the Welcome tab, there are three options: "Backup Wizard," "Restore Wizard," and "Emergency Repair Disk" or "Automated System Recovery"

If using the Wizard, you can choose to backup the whole computer, selected files (including files from other computers on the network), or System State data.

You can also choose to back up the files to another drive in the form of a .BKF file. A good option if you have a large drive available like you do.

if you choose the files to be backed up, choose the destination media, which can be a pc on your network, and choose the "normal" backup type.

Its fairly intuitive to use and should suit your needs fairly well.

Foot_Tapper

As a personal preference, i would create an area on your second
hard drive; share the folder with everyone permission.
Create 3 sub-directories for indivuals to use.
Since you havent got a "domain model", create user accounts on your pc, with the same username that they use on their own pc's.
And same passwords.
Then make them map a drive to the shared folder.
They will have access to all the work, but keep their stuff in their own directory. Then you only have to back up, that one shared folder.
If you have a re-writable cd, you can do daily backups.
will only take a few mins depending on ammount of data.
OR buy an HP surestore (i think they're called that)with dat tape, internal one fits in a normal 5 1/4 slot.With the supplied software you can set it to run and back up that one folder whenever you like. ie you can lock your machine, (not switch off)
and back up at say 9pm each night.
If you have 5 tapes (this is overkill but anyway), one for each day of the week. re-use mondays tape ,the next monday and so on.
Also; if someone realises they have deleted a doc, 3 days ago; u have it on tape.
Once you get the hang of it make your own strategy.

Beauregard

mj
Do any of your machines stay on 24/7 ?

mj

no, just office hours ( in my case 8am-8pm )