05-23-04 05:16 PM
In article <4095f47b@news.comindico.com.au>,
info@rjcornish.com says...
> I have a small office with 4 computers:
> XP Pro on 2 computers and XP Home on 2 computers.
> Each computer is used 5 days a week for 40 weeks a year and then 7 days fo
r
> 12 weeks a year.
> Data is shared between computers with the majority of shared data being
> stored on the fastest computer with XP Pro.
> Have just bought a 80Gb external hard disk to back up onto using a USB2
> connection.
Good start, invest in 2 or 3 more and rotate them out
weekly to an offsite facility. (At least 2 should be
offsite at all times.) Then, even if the office burns
down, you'll only lose a week or two of data instead of
everything.
If you want cheap carrying cases for the drives ($60-
$80), you can try one of these places, or just stick
some foam in a briefcase:
http://www.caseman.com/
http://www.allcases.com/productpage.asp?productid=1154
http://www.atlascases.com/pelsizes.html#pelsizes
http://www.carrycasesplus.com/products.asp
> Have set up Backup Utility that comes on XP Pro for main computer to perfo
rm
> incrementa backups (to the external HD) of networked folders from each
> computer two time per day.
Hopefully you're doing a full backup at least once a
week then?
> (What happens to daily backups when the computers
> are not powered up, or if one of the folders attempting to be backed up is
> not accessible due to that computer not being powered up?)
That computer will then miss the incremental backup...
hopefully you catch it on the next pass.
> Is this the best arrangement or should I setup Backup Utility to run the
> backups from each computer with storage being on the common external HD. I
f
> so, how do I install Backup Utility on the XP Home computers - It is not
> setup and is it on the Windows XP CD's (Home or Pro)?
Pull works just as well as push, and since you're using
a removable drive, pull is probably easier to work with.
Since the XP Home machines don't seem to have backup
software, stick with the pull method.
> What is the best way to back up Outlook Express emails and address book? I
n
> relation to emails one inward email modifies the whole Inbox.dbx, and
> therefore an incremental backup recognises this a being modified. If these
> are large files this considerably slows down the backup process. Any
> comments?
You're probably going to have to live with that
limitation as it's simply how Outlook Express works.
Are you talking about a backup that takes 30 minutes to
run or 3 hours?
If you're really concerned with backup times, (and this
is only if you're trying to push 40GB of data across the
wire in under an hour), you could consider upgrading to
Gigabit Ethernet. An 8-port workgroup switch is $150
now, cards are $40 or so. Really iffy if you'll see any
speed-up as the bottleneck will probably then move
somewhere else.
[ Post a follow-up to this message ]
| 
