How to back up this data?

Graphics Cards, Sound Cards, Joysticks, Computers, etc. Ask or advise here!

How to back up this data?

Postby machineman9 » Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:29 am

As I start to take more photographs, I am constantly becoming more aware of just how important these files are to me, and I am looking for some backup measures.

I currently have a Western Digital Elements 1TB USB external drive, but this does not have any automatic backup systems, which differs from better WD drives.

For continuity and maximum compatibility, I will be buying another of these drives. I am just wondering how I can get the drives to automatically backup, and have one as a redundant system for the other.

I believe this would be a RAID 1 type set up?

How could I do this? I know I could just copy and paste, but USB really isn't that fast and it took me for ever to copy the thousands of photos from my internal drive to my external when I first bought it! I really want a 'fire and forget' method where it will just sort out my files for me. Drobo looks like a possible investment for the future too. Size isn't the problem, don't get me wrong, I will probably never fill a single one of these drives, but they are affordable and I need backup rather than spare space.


On an unrelated note: I am running out of USB connections. I have seen 'splitters' which turn 1 USB into about 5, but are these worth buying? I believe there's something stupid like 512 or 1024 possible USB expansions from one slot, but in a practical sense, will a standard 1-to-5 splitter be okay? I would try and keep my externals on their own USB slot, but for things like a joystick, webcam, phone cable, camera cable, etc... Will these be impaired by using the same USB slot simultaneously?


Cheers!
Last edited by machineman9 on Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
machineman9
Major
Major
 
Posts: 4816
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2004 9:05 am

Re: How to back up this data?

Postby RaptorF22 » Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:20 pm

You could use ntbackup. I believe the GUI version will allow you to set a nightly backup, and if that doesn't work, you could always make a .bat file for the CMD version and use task scheduler to set a nightly/binightly/whatever backup. If you have a XP machine lying around to the files off of, this link might be helpful. And if you are running on an XP machine, it's already included!

As for the USB issue, if you have a spare pci port you could always get one of these.
Image
User avatar
RaptorF22
Major
Major
 
Posts: 1645
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2009 2:53 pm

Re: How to back up this data?

Postby ozzy72 » Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:53 pm

You could try http://download.cnet.com/Second-Backup- ... 05044.html it is free and does all you need ;)
Image
There are two types of aeroplane, Spitfires and everything else that wishes it was a Spitfire!
User avatar
ozzy72
Administrator
Administrator
 
Posts: 33284
Joined: Fri May 24, 2002 4:45 am
Location: Madsville


Return to Hardware

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 167 guests