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Home > Archive > Backup Software > June 2007 > Backup: Truecrypt + NTFS Compression + Robocopy
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Backup: Truecrypt + NTFS Compression + Robocopy
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| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com 2007-06-13, 1:14 pm |
| Hello,
my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
should get me lots of room.
Is this a good idea?
I thought it would be very fast after the first backup as it's just
mirroring so only updating changes.
Have I missed anything?
Thanks for any help,
bob
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| Morten Skarstad 2007-06-13, 1:14 pm |
| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com skrev:
> Hello,
> my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
> of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
> a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
> use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
> Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
> should get me lots of room.
>
> Is this a good idea?
As good as any, I'd say. Some would maybe prefer tape backups, but disks
are getting cheaper, roomier and more portable all the time, and the
traditional tape backup vendors have even started dabbling with backup
"tapes" that are actually 2,5" disks encased in special cartridges. So I
can't see you go very far wrong.
TrueCrypt + compressed NTFS works just fine in my experience. Depending
on what kind of data you're storing you may not really benefit much from
the compression, you'll just have to find out yourself.
> I thought it would be very fast after the first backup as it's just
> mirroring so only updating changes.
Are you thinking of doing full backups all the time? If so the backup
would still consume a lot of time every time you use a new disk for the
first time. And by the time you mirror your data to, say, a monthly disk
for the second time there may have been so much changes that there would
be a lot of mirroring anyway.
I haven't used Robocopy, so I can't say anything about what it does and
how it works, but most serious backup software has an option for doing
multiple levels of backups. First backup is a full backup, but
consecutive backups only take into account new, changed and deleted
files since the master backup. This means that you'll be likely to need
at least two of your disks to recover from a disaster, but it'll save a
lot of time during backups.
| |
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| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
> my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
> of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
> a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
> use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
> Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
> should get me lots of room.
>
> Is this a good idea?
>
> I thought it would be very fast after the first backup as it's just
> mirroring so only updating changes.
>
> Have I missed anything?
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> bob
>
It should work fine provided your external disks are big enough and
allow extra space for your data to grow. At least double what you need
to backup at present will give you some leeway.
The nightly, weekly, monthly plan is sensible. How many monthly disks
are you getting? Perhaps the ability to recover data older than 1 month
might be a good idea.
I think its a great idea. Tapes are just a pain to use and very expensive.
| |
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| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
> my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
> of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
> a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
> use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
> Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
> should get me lots of room.
>
> Is this a good idea?
>
> I thought it would be very fast after the first backup as it's just
> mirroring so only updating changes.
>
> Have I missed anything?
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> bob
>
It should work fine provided your external disks are big enough and
allow extra space for your data to grow. At least double what you need
to backup at present will give you some leeway.
The nightly, weekly, monthly plan is sensible. How many monthly disks
are you getting? Perhaps the ability to recover data older than 1 month
might be a good idea.
I think its a great idea. Tapes are just a pain to use and very expensive.
Chas
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| bealoid 2007-06-15, 1:14 pm |
| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com wrote in news:1181756805.475496.168860
@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com:
> Hello,
> my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
> of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
> a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
> use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
> Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
> should get me lots of room.
[snip]
I'm a bit confused.
1) Why use truecrypt? If you think malicious people might have access to
the backups then the backups are worthless, surely?
| |
| bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com 2007-06-15, 1:14 pm |
| On 15 Jun, 15:44, bealoid <sig...@bealoid.co.uk> wrote:
> bob_jeffc...@hotmail.com wrote in news:1181756805.475496.168860
> @n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com:
>
>
> [snip]
>
> I'm a bit confused.
>
> 1) Why usetruecrypt? If you think malicious people might have access to
> the backups then the backups are worthless, surely?
thanks for the responses.
I want to use truecrypt to stop people getting at sensitive data -
probably a bit narotic but you never know. It has all our source code
as well as our employees personal information. I guess NTFS security
should protect it but I'm not so sure about how serious MS regard
security.
The problem with 3.5 disks is they're a bit big and heavy, I want to
carry the disk required for todays backup with me when I walk to
work. 2.5 disks are much more costly per gig but I like the
conveniance. Maybe I should rethink this.
I've given it a try now and think it should be very quick. About an
hour to backup 12GB Exchange, 2GB SqlServer and 100GB file system,
assuming file changes aren't that large. File changes being written
to a NTFS compressed drive in a Truecrypt drive seem to go at about
400MB a minute.
Robocopy seems to fly when you set it to output to a log file rather
than console.
Bob
| |
| George 2007-06-15, 7:17 pm |
| bealoid wrote:
> bob_jeffcoat@hotmail.com wrote in news:1181756805.475496.168860
> @n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com:
>
>
> [snip]
>
> I'm a bit confused.
>
> 1) Why use truecrypt? If you think malicious people might have access to
> the backups then the backups are worthless, surely?
>
Nothing wrong with encrypted backups. If someone should get their hands
on the backups it is the second layer of protection.
| |
| hal@the.beach.com 2007-06-15, 7:17 pm |
| On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:59:53 -0400, George <george@nospam.invalid>
wrote:
>bealoid wrote:
>Nothing wrong with encrypted backups. If someone should get their hands
>on the backups it is the second layer of protection.
Absolutely. Without the pass phrase - not password - they can't do
diddly with the encrypted backup.
Read the Diceware page regarding passphrases first.
http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html
http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html#howlong
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| Richard Steven Hack 2007-06-16, 1:16 am |
| On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:46:45 -0700, bob_jeffcoat wrote:
> my company backup is about 140GBs now (uncompressed) and my new plan
> of action is to get a load of 2.5inch external USB hard disks, create
> a Truecrypt disk formatted with NTFS and set to compress. Then I'll
> use Robocopy /MIR to mirror all critical folders every night.
> Probably have nightly, weekly and monthly disks. NTFS compression
> should get me lots of room.
>
> Is this a good idea?
This is OT here since it's not freeware (although there IS a three-machine
"lite" version which IS free), but you might want to check out Storegrid.
This is a backup solution that uses the UNIX rdiff-backup algorithm (not
rdiff-backup itself, this is their own software) to backup only
incremental changes to files which allows for point-in-time restoration
and good network performance. Fairly cheap at $30/machine for what it does.
http://www.vembu.com/
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