Cost-effetive (CHEAP) Backup Solutions?

Horizons · « **on:** 4 Jan 2006, 06:11 pm »

I installed a Seagate 250 GB SATA drive as my music drive and I am happily ripping through my CDs.

No way I am going to get caught without a backup of this drive. All drives crash eventually - some a lot sooner than others (Maxtor).

One way to a cheap backup is just buy another (~$100) Seagate drive. It looks like an external USB Zip drive (250 MB) is even cheaper. I don't care about speed, I will only need to back the drive up once a week or two.

Ideas?

mcgsxr · « **Reply #1 on:** 4 Jan 2006, 07:05 pm »

I don't have a collection big enough to fill it yet, but I am backing up exactly as you suggest, using a USB external 200G drive.

Sure, I should store that USB drive offsite etc,

Eli · « **Reply #2 on:** 4 Jan 2006, 08:59 pm »

Quote from: Horizons

I installed a Seagate 250 GB SATA drive as my music drive and I am happily ripping through my CDs.

No way I am going to get caught without a backup of this drive. All drives crash eventually - some a lot sooner than others (Maxtor).

One way to a cheap backup is just buy another (~$100) Seagate drive. It looks like an external USB Zip drive (250 MB) is even cheaper. I don't care about speed, I will only need to back the drive up once a week or two.

Ideas?

That works, although external drives generally aren't cheaper than their bare, internal counterparts. Like you say, you probably only need to backup once a week or so, even less if you're in a period where you're not ripping music or modifying the files in any way. You can probably afford to lose a week's work, but not several month's (or year's) worth. With an external drive, consider taking the disk off-site to guard against fire or theft. Keep it at work, or stash it at a friend's house.

A variation would be to backup to an NAS or other large capacity file server on your network. Not viable for most folks, but if you already have an NAS for storage of things like video files, which require much more storage capacity than music, then it's a good place to keep music library backups.

The only other viable alternative right now is to back up to DVD disks, preferably dual-layer and preferably rewritable. Cheaper, but not nearly as fast or convenient as hard disk backups.

tdangelo · « **Reply #3 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 04:08 am »

If you have lots of CD's getting extra drives to duplicate get's expensive

I just use DVD-RW's - I bought 100 for about $35. It takes a little time depending on your DVD's writing speed but is much cheaper. Using RW's you can rewrite whenever you need to. I have 2800+ CD's on about 205 DVD's. Total cost is less than $100 and some time

Those 2800 CD's take up about 1TB in FLAC format. Just another opinion.

Tony

zybar · « **Reply #4 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 04:11 am »

Quote from: tdangelo

If you have lots of CD's getting extra drives to duplicate get's expensive I just use DVD-RW's - I bought 100 for about $35. It takes a little time depending on your DVD's writing speed but is much cheaper. Using RW's you can rewrite whenever you need to. I have 2800+ CD's on about 205 DVD's. Total cost is less than $100 and some time Those 2800 CD's take up about 1TB in FLAC format. Just another opinion.

Tony

You are a patient man to rip over 205 DVD's...

2800 cd's? Wow! That is a lot of music to enjoy.

How many out of that 2800 do you think you listen to on a monthly basis?

George

tdangelo · « **Reply #5 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 04:15 am »

yeah it takes time - I work from home every other week so I have time then

I prob. listen to the same 10 or so, heheh - just kidding

I would guess maybe 100? With the Squeezebox its so easy just to surf

JeffB · « **Reply #6 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 07:21 am »

I have a computer with 2 hardrive racks ($30 each).
You can buy a rack that fits in a 5.25" bay.
You then place your internal IDE drive into an insert.
The insert slides into the rack.

For every hard drive that you own you buy an insert($20).

This allows changing drives in your computer very easily.
I have one rack for my OS and one for my data.
I can swap between my Windows drive and my Linux drive.
I can swap in a backup drive to mirror one drive to another.

It is kind of cool, but also has its issues.
Drive racks are not standardized. I am afraid that one day I'll need an insert, it won't be available and I'll need to buy a new design. Which will then mean 2 new racks plus a new insert for every drive I own, yikes! A similar problem would arise if IDE drives someday become completely outdated by new technology.

The drive can only be used in computers with the same rack.

Currently, an IDE drive, plus rack insert is cheaper than a USB drive, but the USB drives keep coming down in cost.

Most external USB drives require a wallwart AC adaptor. This would be ugly if you had multiple drives. You can however buy a 2.5" USB drive that can be powered by the USB bus. These are limited to 80GB currently and are kind of costly.

I went down the drive rack road mainly so that it would be easy to mirror my OS drive. Windows cannot be backed up while windows is running, so the racks along with Norton Ghost provided a means to backup my OS. A few years ago this was not possible over USB.

Today, the 2.5" USB drives are starting to look like a better solution, but costly. I don't know if a USB hub can be purchased with enough power to drive multiple 2.5" drives though.

For strictly backup of music, I like the DVD idea already mentioned. It seems like the most affordable route.

ctviggen · « **Reply #7 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 12:46 pm »

I thought Norton Ghost would backup everything, even while Windows was running? Is that not true? If not, perhaps I need to rethink my backup strategy, as I'd like to be able to just plug in my second drive when my first drive fails.

woodsyi · « **Reply #8 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 01:36 pm »

Coud one just get a single hot swappable external drive enclosure (i.e. sata to firewire/usb) and go through as many internal hard drives as you need? There seems to be a deal (<$100)for an internal 300GB drive on the net every week somewhere if you count the rebates.

Levi · « **Reply #9 on:** 5 Jan 2006, 02:30 pm »

Quote from: ctviggen

I thought Norton Ghost would backup everything, even while Windows was running? Is that not true? If not, perhaps I need to rethink my backup strategy, as I'd like to be able to just plug in my second drive when my first drive fails.

Norton Ghost 9.0 and above does create an image of your HDD while windows is running. Also version 9.0 allows you to transfer data across the network and create a scheduled backups.

I consider inexpensive backup will consist of using floppies, CDRs and DVDRs. They are not the most convenient. So the easiest would be is to have another HDD and a backup software that does it automatically.

JeffB · « **Reply #10 on:** 6 Jan 2006, 06:49 am »

The Windows operating system always has a couple of files in use and are they are unreadable. At least this is true of Windows NT 3.5, 4.0 and Windows 2000. I believe it to be true for Windows XP but don't know for certain. So unless something has changed or there is some kind of work around the only way that I know of to backup a Windows partition is to copy it while running DOS. Norton Ghost boots to DOS and then allows the copy. You can always copy any partion not containing Windows while Windows is running.

JeffB · « **Reply #11 on:** 6 Jan 2006, 06:54 am »

Having only a single drive enclosure might be reasonable for a SATA drive. For IDE however, dealing with the power connector is an extreme pain in the ass. They are so fricken hard to pry loose I am sure you would break something eventually. Plus you'll bust up your fingers. Maybe there is some special tool that I don't know about. Also, some of the IDE enclosures that I have seen hug the drive pretty tightly. You have to shake it to get the drive out. Hard drives aren't designed to be shaken.