Elegant and SIMPLE Network Storage Solution (for dummies)

[fmriguy]

Hi all,

I'm sure most people here are familiar with frequent and painful calls from family members and friends requesting computer tech support. In the past week I've gotten two from my mother (one dead toshiba laptop and one constantly rebooting home-built pc) and I'm about to lose my mind. How many times have I said back up your data!!!

Now on to the point...I'm trying to decide on the best storage/backup solution for the "average" family member and I need some help. It seems my options are:

1) Use one of their current desktop workstations and install a backup software to backup all of the PC's on the network to an external drive.

2) Use a dedicated server instead of a workstation to do #1 (thus reducing users mucking around with the OS).

3) Use some form of NAS device with RAID that is isolated in a closet somewhere and have it back up everything.

At home, I use option #1 and use Retrospect software, which works great for me. However, I'm not sure if my family could figure out how to restore files or a whole system using that software. Do you all have a recommendation about which way I should go? I'm looking for a quiet solution but ease of use is probably the most important. Maybe i'm missing an even better option?

Thanks in advance!

[andyb]

The simplest method on the planet (it does involved computer-stupid people).

Get them to buy an external HDD (suggest a make/model/capacity etc etc ) and then tell them how to use it (that is your fault).

Install and set up the following software for them, make sure you backup my docs, desktop, and wherever ther address book is and outlook/outlook express data. They are all in different places and this software will only do one at a time and needs a job for every one, give them 1-5mins per job depending on their data size (MB's or KB's).

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

However its very quick by default (unless you have changed any settings) and only backs up new and modified files (sequential) which is why its so quick after the initial backup (which could take a long time).

Its free.

It will back up to any device that you have access to, unlike lots of paid-for shyteware. It will back up to a network share, an external device, or a network shared external device, etc etc.

All you then need to do is get your people (stoopid relatives or friends alike) to turn the thing off in the correct way.

Good luck - I have relatives that are quite allergic to computers as well and have done a huge amount of things that you would believe as your relatives are like mine


Andy

PS: Thank SPCR forum members for pointing me to Karens Replicaror in the first place - share and share alike I say

[Bluefront]

That seems like a lot of trouble to go through to simply have an OS back-up. There are restore programs available that can back-up your whole computer to DVDs. You simply boot off #1 in the set, and everything is restored. Cost is minimal......and the restore process is painless, easily accomplished by beginners.

Link

[fmriguy]

Thanks for the quick responses.

@ andyb: That looks like a viable option. I've used Syncback in the past and that looks very similar to the program you mentioned.

@ Bluefront: I actually own Acronic TrueImage, which has worked wonders for me in creating disk images, but i've never backed up the whole system drive to DVD. Perhaps this would be a good way to start off and then write sequential images (or files) to an external HDD.

I guess going the whole dedicated server/NAS route is a bit overkill. Unfortunately, that's typically how I think (the girlfriend still asks me why we have a linux laptop dedicated as a print/ssh server). Sometimes simple is good. Now I'm leaning towards just getting an external hard drive and use option #1. With a DVD backup of the initial install I wouldn't have to step them through the driver installations, etc. I suppose the disk image route might be nice given that you can just mount the image as a drive or do a full restore.

Any thoughts as to whether the image might be more susceptible to corruption? Would a bad sector that wasn't rewritten properly result in an unusable image whereas storing individual files might result in a loss of just those files? Just trying to weigh the costs/benefits...

[nzimmers]

other useful free utilities:

Microsoft's own "synctoy"
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/usin ... nctoy.mspx

Syncback
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html

those two above are very good (and have some advanced features) for
syncing directories on a drive to another location (like external drive)

I use acronis myself

Also....you might be interested in the upcoming "windows home server" which from what I gather is windows server 2003 with some home
network client type utility to backup or share directories and some kind of restore options if one of the clients dies

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... fault.mspx