RE: Backup to USB Drives and 3rd Party Software


Let me clarify, the emphasis was on “Small Businesses” on a budget.

I don’t deny tapes are nice for portability, but their also prone to
contamination and damage just the same.

As for cost, I’m sure what numbers you are looking at but the average LTO
tape drive, anything smaller i.e. 72GB isn’t practical for most customers,
runs anywhere from $1000 - $2100 and the tapes are $34 per. And let us not
forget tapes wear out and need to be replaced every 1.5 years is what I think
I remember being told. A 20 day rotation will set you back $680.

With today’s 2.5” portable drives like the WD Passport which is the size of
a Blackberry and around $69 for a 120GB drive, I can buy 40 of them to one
tape drive and 20 tapes. As for durability, last I checked 2.5” drives are
good to 1000G/1ms shock rating when not in operation and 300/1ms in
operation, plus I supply my customers with a padded carrying case.

I agree, always get the extended warranty with Backup Exec, if nothing else
for the free upgrades.



"Macro Systems" wrote:

Hi

I disagree with your statemet "As we all know tape drives for small
businesses are a thing of the past, they’re just not cost effective"

USB drives might cost less upfront, but I dont have problems with the drive
letter of the tape drive changing, dropped tapes will probably work just fine
(USB drives have a habit of not working after being dropped). Tape are small
enough to plop in a purse or brief case. Tapes are cheap enough that we have
gotten to archiving a monthly tape for a year. So over the course of a year,
tapes are less costly than a USB drive a week.

Having said that, we also use USB drives in addition to tapes. In some
cases, it is faster to backup to USB drive and then USB to tape: solves the
backup window issue.

When you purchase BackupExec, I would strongly suggest that the maintenance
and 24/7 support be purchased to go with the software. You get all of the
version upgrades AND 24/7 support. It is really nice to get support when you
are in the middle of a recovery on the weekend.

hc

--
Howard Cunningham
MS Small Business Specialist
Macro Systems, LLC
3867 Plaza Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030

www.macrollc.com


"Daveinfla" wrote:

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

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