Cheap Backup for an NT Server

[tk421]

Got a customer, kind of a cheapskate, who needs to backup data off his NT server. I've only used scsi tape solutions that cost at least $500 or so for servers, so I don't know what will work for cheap (looking for something around $200 or less).

Any suggestions appreciated.

tim

[twelve]

Tell the customer that if his data is important, you get what you pay for. Pull some higher end quotes and get him to go for the one around $500, then use NTBackup and batch files daily.

If he goes cheap, when his data fails to be there he will blame you anyway. My 2 cents. Good luck.

Travan tape drives are cheaper and will run off of IDE. Fast enough to run overnight.

[Ahcoraj]

I had one guy have me install a second hard drive in a removable cage. He then ran synching software every night before he left. 20 gb of storage for 150$ installed, and he can take the data home at night and use it.....

[tk421]

hm, that's a pretty cool idea. though they have a rackmount server that wouldn't take a rem. cage. of course the server is not rackmounted. it's just sitting on a little foldup table. good idea though. i'll have to use that one.

[EatnS10s]

Any USB ports or Fire Wire (probably not). Look into external USB or Fire Wire drives if a HotSwap drive can't be used.

[tk421]

nt doesn't support usb, and i'm pretty sure not firewire either.

[kannibul]

[quote]Originally posted by tk421:
<strong>nt doesn't support usb, and i'm pretty sure not firewire either.</strong><hr></blockquote>

NT 4.0 supports USB after SP-5
It is not hotplug, but it is recongnized by the OS given the drivers.
I installed an Iomega Zip 100 USB on a NT 4.0 machine when I was at tvguide. I told the purchaser and the manager that NT and usb were not compatible, but they both proved me wrong with documentation.
I was surprised too, but just to confirm it I also called Iomega.

[tk421]

well i'll be. that's good to know.

[emr]

Try this. No Hands Backup from a Swedish guy. It's freeware.

<a href="http://hem.spray.se/anders.peterson/index.html" target="_blank">http://hem.spray.se/anders.peterson/index.html</a>

A colleague recommended it to me although I haven't tried it yet myself so I can't make any personal recommendations and I have no idea of its capabilities or, more importantly, limitations.

Hope this is helpful, and if it is any good, maybe you could post to let us know.

Ewan

[Twisted_Mister]

Maybe I am missing the point, but the at command is free. try starting the scheduler service and using at to allow nt to back up the data. I have a few customers that can't affod to spend a lot, so this is how I set them up. I t is simple and works great. :D

[tk421]

thanks for the software suggestions. the real cost problem that I have is the hardware. I was mainly wondering if there were any reliable and inexpensive parallel or IDE, or even SCSI drives.

[http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi]

I had a customer come in this past friday. One of our corporate guys informed me of a laptop hard drive install and OS reload on an IBM laptop. Ok, no problem. I am at the store from 11:30 to 8:00pm on friday's. The customer was to show up at 5:30 to 6:00. He shows up at 7:35. I have time to install the hard drive, and start the restore, but not be there for the finish. My girlfriend's birthday party starts at 8:30, so no chance of me staying late.

Anywayz, the customer comes to the front counter and the staff member there comes in the back to get me. The customer follows him. I explain that I was expecting him a while ago and that I had time to install the drive, start the restore but not be there to finish it.

They both went to the front where I figured they were filling in the paperwork, little did I know they guy was installing the hard drive himself! (found that out later). He comes into the back where I am (which he is not allowed to do first of all, we have barriers set up), sticks his finger in my face and says, "Let me get one f@!#$@ing thing straight. You are not leaving this f@#$@#$ing store until my f@#@#%ing laptop is ready. You got it? I don't give a f@#$@#, you can call the owner, call your manager, call anyone, but you ain't leaving this f@#$@#ing place until my system is ready and I see it working."

;-)

My response to this was of course, "Now let me make myself equally clear. You were expected at 6:00, not 7:35, and firstly, I will not be calling ANYONE, and regardless of the condition of your system, I can ASSURE you that at precisely 8:00 you will watch me walk out of this store and not look back, and you will not be able to stop me. Now get out of my service department".

;-)

The restore cd that was left for the customer turned out not to be the right restore cd anyway. I never layed a finger on his laptop and was never going to after the above happened. He started screaming and cursing while trying to do the restore himself, so I checked out the cd and it was not a restore cd, but just drivers. ;-) I smiled and gave it back to him. ;-)

8:00 came around, and I was out that door.

Today, the guy sends our corporate guy a bill for 2000$ for HIS time. We all had a good laugh.

[Ya_know]

[quote]Originally posted by <a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi/avatars/Sheep.gif:" target="_blank">http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi/avatars/Sheep.gif:</a>
<strong>
;-)

My response to this was of course, "Now let me make myself equally clear. You were expected at 6:00, not 7:35, and firstly, I will not be calling ANYONE, and regardless of the condition of your system, I can ASSURE you that at precisely 8:00 you will watch me walk out of this store and not look back, and you will not be able to stop me. Now get out of my service department".

;-)

Today, the guy sends our corporate guy a bill for 2000$ for HIS time. We all had a good laugh.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Right on my man! (I don't know why you posted in this thread, but it was a good story).

2000$ for his time? What sort of brain surgeon is he? I think you handled that well. If it happened to me, I don’t think I would have been so polite. If he is so worried about time, he should understand that prompt arrival would get the expected service, anything less equals tough crap.

[twelve]

No really, I wasn't kidding on the Travans

here is an example

<a href="http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?loc=14617&sku=10297114&PageFormat=7#product" target="_blank">http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?loc=14617&sku=10297114&PageFormat=7#product</a>

then use the at command to schedule the backups ie

at 23:00 /every:m,t,w,th,f c:\archive.bat
at 6:00 /every:t,w,th,f,s c:\eject.bat

then create archive batch files with something like this in them

ntbackup backup c: d: /v /d "daily_backup" /b /hc :o ff /t normal /l "c:\backuplogs\archive.log" /tape:0

I actually have one batch for each day and dump it to different log files per day so the logfiles don't lock the system up (they can get pretty big pretty quickly and ntbackup hangs on them trying to open and update.) then you just go in weekely and move them or clean them.

[Kenny P.]

Well, if the cheap route is sought, try a spare 20gb drive and a copy of Norton Ghost 2002. It will cut an image to the spare HDD which can be left in the machine with the power plug pulled. Individual files can be retrieved with Ghost Explorer, but the drive must be online for that.

Just a thought with 20gb drives going for $80...

Kenny P.

[PurpleDoc]

I'd go the hard drive route. With how inexpensive they are you could set up a mirrored set and do a ghost on top of that if you wanted.

[SoJo]

Go with a Jazz or Orb drive (Orb will handle 2.2 gigs)thier both reasonablely priced. This way the customer can rotate the media in case of a fire or flood or something.

Second or spare hard drive is a good ideal as long as nothing happens to the system (See Above)

My .02

[tk421]

well now that i know that nt CAN support usb, i will probably do something like a jaz drive. do you know if jaz drives have good support for nt server?

[KCHowler]

Mirroring with NT or 2K server is very easy and cheap. The nice thing is if your hard drive crashes you can still boot off the mirrored drive, no down time! Make sure you get an identical drive for mirroring. In case of a fire or other disaster the tape backup is the best.

[MacGyver]

While mirroring is good to guard against physical failure of the hard drive, nothing beats a tape backup. Especially when your boss comes to you because he accidentally overwrote an important document. A mirror setup will do nothing for you in that case. Hence the need for tape backup and offsite backup data storage.

Any business that is too cheap to backup their data is CRAZY

[PurpleDoc]

We do alot of Data recovery here, and I can tell you that tapes have their downfalls as well. The two most common things that we get that is associated with tapes is; people will fail to see if the backup was successfull or tape breakage because the person is too cheap to buy more than 1 tape for a given amount of time. I hear from the customer, " Well the computer told me the back up was good." Wrong. People need to check their backup and see with the orbs in their head and make sure the data is good. With the mirrored set you can make the one of the drives in a removable chassis and take it home each night. but what ever the backup, check it. :p

[tk421]

[quote]Originally posted by MacGyver:
<strong>Any business that is too cheap to backup their data is CRAZY</strong><hr></blockquote>

You are right about that.

[Antimatter]

Rewritable CDs are a good budget option as you can fit a half decent amount of data on them(for a smaller business anyway). Selling a CD-writer to the client is fairly easy as well. ;)
Travan IDE tape drives are a good budget tape option.