Backup to USB Drives and 3rd Party Software

I reposted this as new and attached it to an old thread, didn't get a
response so excuse the dup.

I have some comments I hope will assist others when looking into backup
solutions, I also have a couple questions in regards to using external USB
drives.

First my questions:

As we all know tape drives for small businesses are a thing of the past,
they’re just not cost effective.

I’m using two WD Passport external USB drives and want to swap them each
day, keeping up to 5 backups on each drive. First I setup both USB drives
with an extended NTFS partition, labeled them both “Backup” and assigned them
as drive X: After testing this solution I’ve run into a couple of
issues/questions.

First, when swapping drives one of them defaults back to the next available
drive letter on the system, in my case F:, switching it back only forces the
other USB drive to F:. Using F: for both works but it would be nice to be
able to use what I selected.

My second question has two parts…I noticed SBS uses bkprunner.exe and a
script file to indicate what files to backup and exclude, and scheduler
determines the schedule, however I don’t see anything that configures where
it backups to or the filename it uses. Is there a config file for this? What
controls the labeling of backup files? I noticed it appends a number,
starting at 1, to each backup file. With two drives I assume one drive would
hold the even numbered backup and the other the odd numbered backups?

Is there any way to duplicate the backup routine (using bkprunner.exe) on a
standard 2003 server?


Now for my comments…

My background comes from larger IT organizations, so I'm use to using larger
tape drives and Backup Exec with all the plug-ins which can run in excess of
$1000 for the software alone, not to mention thousands for tape drives. So
when it comes to an SBS environment I’ve had some research to do.

With that said I have to point out that there is a version of Backup Exec
designed for SBS which costs far less then the standard version and it
includes ALL the plug-ins. You can pick it up with the purchase of a new Dell
server for $349, retail is about $369. I point this out because Backup Assist
is $686 with all the plug-ins; it’s simple but not cheap if you need a
complete package. NovaStor does the same bait and switch, quote low and
require add-on after add-on for a full suite. Backup Exec may have a learning
curve, but it’s flexible, scalable, and most importantly reliable. There’s
also one more thing Backup Exec does out of the box (Backup Assist doesn’t)
and that’s a bare metal recovery. Bare metal recovery creates a bootable CD
that allows you to boot from and restore the entire system, including the OS,
from the last full backup. With other solutions you have to install the base
OS, drivers, tape software, and then do a full restore. NT Backup included.

Dave
MCSE 2003

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Export Entire SBS 2003 Registry
    ... So the USB backup drive was unplugged ... I just had to properly prepare the backup tapes for NTBackup to be ... I gave up on tape drives a few years ago. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: OT-True Image Backup
    ... Make sure the USB drives file system is NTFS and not FAT32.. ... Jaymon is correct in that the disk image you create and save to the D: ... partition of your USB external HDD will have no effect on the other ... Step-by-Step Instructions for Using the Acronis True Image Program to Backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: OT-True Image Backup
    ... Make sure the USB drives file system is NTFS and not FAT32.. ... Jaymon is correct in that the disk image you create and save to the D: ... partition of your USB external HDD will have no effect on the other ... Since the disk images you will be creating (at least the initial backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Back up data to USB?
    ... A flash drive is fine as a secondary means for storing backups of particular files, but I don't think it's suitable for storing drive images unless the amount of data is very small, nor would I rely on a USB flash drive as the only media for the backup of data. ... It also can do file backups and disk cloning. ... can take to back up the entire contents of one's day-to-day working HDD, ... With both hard drives connected, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Backup Fails: "C: is not a valid drive or you do not have access"
    ... does not like their tape drives to be on the same SCSI controller as RAID ... Can you try to perform the same backup to a partition that is separate ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
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