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PostPosted: Sat May 23, 2009 8:54 pm 
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George:
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1. The process is not entirely automated. I have an alarm set on my main PC that reminds me each sunday afternoon to do a PP1 type Server Backup of my "non-automated" share folders. These folders are relatively stable and relatively small when compared to the recorded TV shares I have automated by the script. So the manual process that I use on Sunday afternoons takes little time to run. But the fact remains that it is not automated and would not get done if I were away from the house when the alarm is displayed. I can fix this and make these "non-recorded tv" share folder part of the script by implementing the Copy commands, with the Exclude option parameter, that is already embedded in the script. I will still wait a while before I do that. I want the current script to run a few more weeks before I make the change. So in the interim I will just depend on the manual processing of the "non-recorded tv" folders.


Another solution here is to have a SECOND script that is scheduled at a different time and with a different frequency, e.g., weekly instead of daily.

Quote:
2. I am still not fully proteced agains disaster. My present practice leaves the external hard drives connected to the server at all times. This protects me against:
a. a hard drive failure in the server
b. a hard drive failure in any of the the external disks
c. a MSS system drive crash
d. a complete loss of the server because of any "non-destructive" event such as a motherboard failure on the MSS.
e. a situation where a Server Recovery might cause me to to lose the BDBB database
f. a sutuation where a Factory Reset is required.


To get more you need to (manually) remove the backup from the MSS and take it off-site. Then you create a second backup (which, of course, takes time) and rotate that with the first of a schedule of your choosing. I have lately started doing this monthly AND the day before leaving the house for any extended period of time. When you put the old copy into the MSS it will, of course, take longer than a "Sunday" backup, but considerably less time than creating a whole new one.

I actually now rotate THREE drives: #1 goes to the off-site location, #2 comes home, and #3 is placed into the MSS as soon as I remove #1 -- before I even leave the house! Since the drive I bring home is not immediately placed in the MSS it serves the function of becoming a "readily available" spare should another (e.g., "pool") drive fail.

Quote:
However, it still does not protect me against a disaster such as the house burning down unless I can reach the four external hard drives I backup to now and get them outside the house prior to my office burning. Solving that problem will take a good bit of hardware that I don't presently own. I prefer to leave the external drives connected and "take the chance of a major disaster" because I don't think I am willing to go to the trouble of moving the four hard drives to an off-site location each morning after the script has run. So to fix this last issue, I will have to have four new external hard dirves of at least 500GB capacity (I really need 1TB external drives). I can see the day coming soon (I only have 95GB left on one of my 500GB external drives) where I will have to replace one of my drives with a 1TB external drive. Buying more external drives would allow me to "cycle" these drives on, let's say, a weekly basis to an off-site location. Implement this solution would be costly (5 external drives right away) and it would not be easy to move thise five drives. This does not seem to me to be a good long term solution.


(See above.) I would definitely not rotate off-site on a daily basis! The value of your data may be more than mine but even I am not THAT paranoid. (Never thought I's say that!) You can, of course, replace the local target with a network storage device and place that in a "safer" place on your premesis, such as a van, a woodshed, cabana, detached garage or a "sugar house" (if you live in VT) -- which is really your next point. With the amount of data you want to backup I would use two scripts, one for data that changes frequently and is more valuable and another for data that is backed up for "convenience (e.g., ripped music, DVDs, etc.) on a less-frequent schedule. It is unlikely that all your data has the same value and you should adjust accordingly.

Quote:
The other solution to buying so many external hard drives is to use a hard drive enclosure tower and use it as an "off-site NAS". I don't really know enoght about that option yet to implement it and it will cost a good bit of $ as well to implement, so I don't see that happening in the next couple of months. I do believe this second option is better than buying a bunch of external hard drives, though.


Yes, this will "cost". ALL backups "cost". But the trick is to balance the cost and inconvenience of handling the backups with your budget and your perceived value of your different types of data. Is it "better" than taking things off-site? Maybe for some, especially those with a separate building/vehicle to place the target device in or those with a neighbor withing wireless range -- an alternative suggested to me on another board. But many of us do not have that luxury!

Another solution is to backup some reasonable-sized, frequently changing files to the "cloud", maybe daily or even more frequently, and then change the rotation schedule(s) accordingly.

Since we all have very different parameters (home, volume of data, types of date, degrees of paranoia, etc., etc., etc.) there is no one answer to all this.

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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2009 5:38 pm 
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John, thanks for your input. Sorry about the delayed reply and unfortantly, I must delay a bit more. I an in a major revamping of my investment portfolio and getting back in the market after the huge declines we have seen in the indexes since late July, 2007. I had been putting that off until I got my backup plan working pretty well and once I start this process it depends on using current data (pricing and other related time dependent data)so I have to keep my nose to the grind stone for a while.

I will be back after considering your comments and getting the portoflio back in order. Bear with me for a while an thanks again for your input. I(Edit: Cross that "I" out... I meant to say "You" have made good comments :crazy: )have made some good comments that I want to give the proper attention to before I reply.
George

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Last edited by SeaRay33 on Fri May 29, 2009 12:27 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:39 am 
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Hey Guys - Thanks for the informational post. I've been lurking here since early May when I took delivery of my first WHS and this forum has be a great resource. After reading through this thread a couple of times I have a comment and a question.

It was noted earlier in this thread Robocopy is noticeably slower than XCopy. I noticed that the parameters in the script where Robocopy was used included the /z or restart mode parameter. I did not see this in the list of parameters when XCopy replaced Robocopy in the script. If the script was run using XCopy as noted, then it is probably a good bet that the stated performance gain can be attributed to excluding the restart mode parameter. Restart mode writes a recovery record inside an incomplete file so the copy operation can keep track of where to restart in the case it is interupted. The overhead associated with this leads to the degraded performance. Though I have not tested this, I would expect that if XCopy were used with restart mode, performance would be somewhat similar.

As far as my question in concerned, has anyone tried to see if there are performance gains to be realized by pulling the data across the network instead of pushing it? It has been a number of years since I have tested a scenario like this and I don't recall which method is faster.


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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 12:13 pm 
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gadgetguy wrote:
Hey Guys - Thanks for the informational post. I've been lurking here since early May when I took delivery of my first WHS and this forum has be a great resource. After reading through this thread a couple of times I have a comment and a question.

It was noted earlier in this thread Robocopy is noticeably slower than XCopy. I noticed that the parameters in the script where Robocopy was used included the /z or restart mode parameter. I did not see this in the list of parameters when XCopy replaced Robocopy in the script. If the script was run using XCopy as noted, then it is probably a good bet that the stated performance gain can be attributed to excluding the restart mode parameter. Restart mode writes a recovery record inside an incomplete file so the copy operation can keep track of where to restart in the case it is interupted. The overhead associated with this leads to the degraded performance. Though I have not tested this, I would expect that if XCopy were used with restart mode, performance would be somewhat similar.

As far as my question in concerned, has anyone tried to see if there are performance gains to be realized by pulling the data across the network instead of pushing it? It has been a number of years since I have tested a scenario like this and I don't recall which method is faster.


Hello and welcome! Glad you are here. Thanks for the ideas.

I am going to let JohnBick reply to your first point (comment). He would know more than I about that. My uneducated guess is that you are right :!:

As to the second point (please correct me if I have missed your point, gadget), the only way I could see you would be pulling the data across would be if the drives you were "backing up to" were on another computer (maybe a WHS Client???), either inside the case or attached as USB or eSATA external drives to the client. Then you could run the batch file from the client. It could be bacause I did make it very clear in my comments, but I (and I think JohnBick too) am pushing the data from the MSS to external drives connected to the MSS. The network is not involved. Unless I am misunderstanding your point (and that is definitely possilbe :D ) I don't see how one could pull the data from the external drive side (i.e. there is no OS on the drive side of the backup). Boy, that wasn't very clear was it? :D Hopefull it was good enought for you to understand what I am trying :roll: to say!
George

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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 12:26 pm 
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Thanks for the reply SeaRay. In retrospect I should have noted that I was looking to pull from another WHS. My apolgies for the lack of clarity.


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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 12:34 pm 
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gadgetguy wrote:
Thanks for the reply SeaRay. In retrospect I should have noted that I was looking to pull from another WHS. My apolgies for the lack of clarity.

Oh...Yes. Now I understand. Unfortantly, I have no answer for you. If you are using two WHSes to "disaster back" each other up you are saying I presume? And I also presume you would have to go across the Internet (VPN... but I confess I don't know much about that) to someone else's WHS? If you are talking about one person owning two WHSes one of those would need to be off-primises (again I presume) or disaster recovery would be lessened. Again, VPN involved. Not too many of us (although some do) have two WHSes so I am guess you are not really talking about that.

Sorry to be so dense :D

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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 1:44 pm 
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SeaRay: I have one WHS dedicated to housing all my digital photos, RAW, DNG, JPEG, etc. I use this extensively. I was looking to utilize a second WHS to backup various computers and also contain a copy of the digital photos in the case I accidently delete something by mistake. That's where this thread has become of interest. From the standpoint of backups I use several 1TB USB type drives and take these to offsite on a weekly basis. In a word - Paranoid :shock:

At some point I may enlist my brother to try out a VPN set up across the internet but for the time being I am content to see how this will work out.


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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 2:34 pm 
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gadgetguy wrote:
SeaRay: I have one WHS dedicated to housing all my digital photos, RAW, DNG, JPEG, etc. I use this extensively. I was looking to utilize a second WHS to backup various computers and also contain a copy of the digital photos in the case I accidently delete something by mistake. That's where this thread has become of interest. From the standpoint of backups I use several 1TB USB type drives and take these to offsite on a weekly basis. In a word - Paranoid :shock:

At some point I may enlist my brother to try out a VPN set up across the internet but for the time being I am content to see how this will work out.

Thanks for the clarification, gadget. Sorry I do not know if pulling from one WHS to another is faster that pushing. Sounds like you may have some experience at that. Let us know, if you find more out about that...intersting idea.

I suspect John will be getting back on your comment about the /Z parameter since the scripts you are referring to are John's and he made the comment about the speed differences.

On further thing. At the risk of sounding like I am trying to "sell you" on a service. I assure you I am not. I have no affiliation with Phanfare, but if you have a large photo collection you might want to consider Phanfare.com. I use the service and have at present around 20GB of photos/videos there now... and it builds almost every day. You can open a free Phanfare account (they used to offer 1GB storage for free but I see recently they changed that 250MB) to test out how this would work for you. Here is the clincher! :) They offer "unlimited" storage of all your photos and video for life for an annual fee of $55. I do backup my photos right now to MSS but that is completely redundant (as you said, paranoid). Phanfare backups up their backups with Amazon S3 and even go to the extreme of keeping copies on both coast (New Jersey and Oregon, I think) for their disaster recovery. I have used Phanfare for about 5 years now and no one is perfect but I am happy with them. One of the features that sold me on them is if you ever decide you want to leave them because you are unhappy with them for any reason, they will (at their cost) copy all your photos/videos to DVDs and ship them to you. That is a once in a lifetime offer :D In other words, you can't say ship me another copy next month. They will do that to but they charge as I recall, about $25 per DVD after your once in a lifetime offer has been used. I think this is a very cheap and foolproof way to "backup" your photos. Of course they allow your friends (ones that you have approved) to look at your photos too. This service is so good, I have not felt the need to use HP's photo album viewing software they provide with the MSS...never even looked at it.

Just at thought for your consideratioin. If you want to look further, they have a good website that explains it all

Hope you like it :)

Again, welcome to the forum. :mss: Hope you will keep posting and join in. I bet you can contirbute some good ideas!
George

Edit: Gadget. I realized after re-reading you last post I had mislead you on one thing. Phanfare does not presently store RAW files (I think I am right about that). I bet you are a professional photographer :-k They do, however, store very large TIFF files, whick may be acceptable to you. But just wanted to be clear (and please check my recollection with Phanfare) but you will probably have to leave you RAW files on your MSS. Sorry for not catching that before.

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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:11 pm 
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gadgetguy wrote:
It was noted earlier in this thread Robocopy is noticeably slower than XCopy. I noticed that the parameters in the script where Robocopy was used included the /z or restart mode parameter. I did not see this in the list of parameters when XCopy replaced Robocopy in the script. If the script was run using XCopy as noted, then it is probably a good bet that the stated performance gain can be attributed to excluding the restart mode parameter. Restart mode writes a recovery record inside an incomplete file so the copy operation can keep track of where to restart in the case it is interupted. The overhead associated with this leads to the degraded performance. Though I have not tested this, I would expect that if XCopy were used with restart mode, performance would be somewhat similar.


To be honest, not using "/Z" on the XCOPY commands was an oversight! Thanks for pointing it out; I have added it to my local copy and will run with it a while. (Which spoiled my schedule for updating everything tomorrow!) A VERY QUICK test showed no difference in the XCOPY performance with the /Z parameter added -- will watch it for a bit and see what happens!

gadgetguy wrote:
As far as my question in concerned, has anyone tried to see if there are performance gains to be realized by pulling the data across the network instead of pushing it? It has been a number of years since I have tested a scenario like this and I don't recall which method is faster.


Since the backup drive is local to the MSS in my scenarios, either internal or external, the "pull" isn't an option.

I did, however, experiment with push vs pull when I set up SyncToy (v1.4) to synchronize some client folders to the Shared Folders in the MSS. I did not see any consistent/measurable difference.

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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 7:19 pm 
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I have not had time to look into it, but the "/Z" parameter causes the XCOPY command to fail to copy anything on local copies -- which these are. (I had added the switch as the last of the series of switches in the CMD file.) As it is intended for NETWORK operations I have moved it down the priority list and will not be addressing it for about a week.

If anyone wishes to experiment with it and report back here feel free to do so!

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:37 pm 
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Thanks for the reply John. After reading your response regarding push/pull and giving it some more thought, I suspect that any performance gains may not be readily identifiable and would require some serious work developing tests, executing them, and recording the results - Long story short may not be worth the investment of time.

Interesting tidbit about Xcopy. I did not know that the /Z option would fail in that scenario.

On another note as I was poking around today, I discovered that Xcopy has been deprecated in favor of Robocopy. Aparently it is still present in Vista and should not pose a near-term issue with Home Server. It may however be relegated to the bit bucket sometime in the future. http://blogs.msdn.com/matt_pietrek/archive/2007/01/16/robocopy-built-into-vista.aspx


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 12:36 pm 
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Update: I have just discovered I might have a corrupted hard drive on the server. So there is probalby no need for anyone to look at this until after I have tried to repair or replace this drive. I will get back and post here later after I have seen if I can repair/replace the drive.

I have had a lot of company lately and am now trying to catch up with a lot of things I normally monitor daily. I have also had some major new pojects added to my workload. The net result is I am behind on a lot of things including posting to this forum.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, as I recall, I started having problems with my backup database, the one that keeps copies of all the PC backups connected to my MSS(I usually call this the BDBB backup, following Alex's convention althought I am not using the WHS BDBB add-in to perform the backup). As most of you reading this thread would know, I use an automated script to perform the backup of the BDBB. The problem I have is continuing and I decided it was time to discuss these problems here. I am not certain these problems are related to the automated script I run each day, but the timing of the problem seems to have started shortly after I added backing up my BDBB to the script.

The screen shots below show the problem.

Here is what my Computers and Backup Tab looks like:
Attachment:
ScreenHunter_01 Jun. 14 13.52.gif
ScreenHunter_01 Jun. 14 13.52.gif [ 60.85 KiB | Viewed 12095 times ]



Here is what the Backups section of my Settings looks like:
Attachment:
ScreenHunter_02 Jun. 14 14.05.gif
ScreenHunter_02 Jun. 14 14.05.gif [ 74.99 KiB | Viewed 12095 times ]


In this state I cannot see a list of backups for any Home Computer nor can I restore from any of the backups for the Home Computers because the Status of each Home Computer's Backup is "Unknown".

There are some other unusual things realed to Home Computer Backups I will not yet discuss here, because I hope if I can get the two above screens to look normal these "other things" might be fixed as well.

The Health Services light on the MSS is normal (solid blue) and the Home Server Icon in the system tray of each Home Computer is green. Also you can see from the first screen shot that the network is reporting "Network Healthy" in the Console. Of course all the icon's in the system tray of all Home Computers and in the Console "should be reporting" a problem and would be red, considering that the second screen shot shows that the MSS thinks the Backup Service is not running.

I have checked via RDP and the Backup service is shown as Started. So the problem is that the the Console thinks the Backup service is not running but it, in fact, is running. Because the Console thinks Backup Sevice is not running, that leads to the problem I described above... I can't see the Home Computer Backups.

Here is the command I am running in the script that copies the Backup Database to an external USB drive connected to the Server:

XCopy D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4} G:\Backups\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4} /D /E /V /C /I /G /H /R /K /X /Y >C:\Temp\External-Backups.log

I as far as I know the Backup/Cleanup has not run today (Sunday) but I cannot tell that for sure since I cannot see the backups. It does seem that this happens every Sunday (as best as I can recall) but it seems like it has happend before at other times as well. In the past, I believe I have fixed the problem by runnig a Backup Datbase Repair. That is not working today.

I haved checked everything I can think of including Repairing the Backup Database. Any ideas on how to fix this?

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:03 am 
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Status Update: Please see my previous post for additional information.

Further Update: Good News! :banana: The restore of the earlier BDBB worked and my two screenshots in the previous email look "normal"now. I am currently in the process of running the Cleanup/Backup that I missed from last Sunday. When that finishes my BDBB should be ok and up to date, ready for tonight's Midnight to 6AM Home Computer backup window and "Command File (Script)" to be run at 6am tomorrow for the BDBB backup and Share Folder backup. I did loose some backups because my secondary BDBB backup was not completely current, but that is something I can live with.

The only unanswered question now is why did the BDBB get corrupted in the first place. Since I now know my drives are ok, the answer to that one is unclear. This, however, does point out the need to point my BDBB backup to another external drive (so a redundant backup is made available) periodically. My current script does not allow for this. But it is a simple matter of changing a drive letter every so often to produce a secondary copy of the BDBB database just in case something like this happens to my "current" BDBB files. I don't see, just off hand, how to automate the changing of the drive letter, so I will just have to decide how often I want to update the secondary BDBB (probably every three or four weeks or so) and then set a reminder to change the dirve letter. On second thought, it would be easy (as I think JohnBick had stated here before) to set a second script with the drive letter changes that runs with Windows Task Manager once every (say) four weeks. That is probably what I will do.

Any comments/criticisms/observations are always welcome. As I have said here before, two heads (or three or four) are better than one.

At least for now the crisis is avoided and I will have MOST of my backups back due to the successful restore :chicken:

End Updates

I have now run chkdsk /f /r on 6 of my eight drives and did not find any errors beyond the following message on three of the six drives. I only ran chkdsk on 6 of the disks (instead of 8 ) because the other two drives were shown by the WHS Disk Management Add-In to NOT contain computer backups.

Attachment:
ScreenHunter_02 Jun. 16 03.12.gif
ScreenHunter_02 Jun. 16 03.12.gif [ 13.48 KiB | Viewed 12066 times ]


I did not find any areas on any of the 6 drives that needed repair.

I booted the server and I see that the screenshots shown in my previous post are the same. Right now I am replacing my current copy of the BDBB database with an older copy that I saved (on a seperate external drive from the one I "usually" XCopy the BDBB database to) a few weeks ago. So after this copy is complete (it is taking a very long time as the file is 199GB and it seems to be copying over at an unusually slow speed... not sure what that is about) I will have done a "round trip" or Restore of an earlier BDBB file I made with the script I run every day to copy the BDBB and some share folders. So we will have a least one data point where we have a restore from an earlier XCOPY. I mention this because JohnBick has said previously he would like to see how that works. We should have that one data point in the next several hours.

I will report back when I have the BDBB restored from an earlier copy to let this thread know I have a good BDBB database after the Restore is complete.

After the restore is done and if that does not fix the two screenshots in the previous post, I can think of only one more thing I can do and that is to run chkdsk on the two remaining disk that DID NOT contain backups to see if there are any bad clusters on these last two drives. However, even if they are bad, they did/do not have home computer backups on them and should not be causing the errors in the BDBB I am seeing in the two screenshots in my previous post.

If the restore of the BDBB does not fix the problems I have having, now that it appears that a corrupted disk did not " mess up" the BDBB, that makes me wonder how this problem could have occured in the first place. So then I would be back to my previous post asking for help on the same questions posed there.

In the mean time, if any of you have any ideas, I am listening and would appreaciate any comments anyone cares to make.

George

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:43 pm 
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SeaRay33 wrote:
... This, however, does point out the need to point my BDBB backup to another external drive (so a redundant backup is made available) periodically. My current script does not allow for this. But it is a simple matter of changing a drive letter every so often to produce a secondary copy of the BDBB database just in case something like this happens to my "current" BDBB files. I don't see, just off hand, how to automate the changing of the drive letter, so I will just have to decide how often I want to update the secondary BDBB (probably every three or four weeks or so) and then set a reminder to change the dirve letter. On second thought, it would be easy (as I think JohnBick had stated here before) to set a second script with the drive letter changes that runs with Windows Task Manager once every (say) four weeks. That is probably what I will do.

A better solution may be to swap out the d\target disk every week or so. No software changes needed. When you replace the curent disk with an older one the first backup will take longer than a normal incremental one but less time than an all new one!

And you can store that disk you removed off-site, not just off-line!

I discovered, via a friend, that keeping a disk off-line has another advantage. If lightning strikes your home and, somehow, gets past your surge protector (or UPS) you may well actually loose the backup disk! Having listened to my paranoia on backups he created a backup disk and took it off-line a couple hours before the lightning hit. A new one was actually being created at the time of the strike. He lost the (new, on-line) backup disk and a data disk. Everything else on the MSS was OK. A printer connected to the MSS via USB but NOT on surge protection was totally fried. Lesson #1: Keep a copy off-line! Lesson #2: EVERYTHING connected to your system needs to be on a surge protector and ALL data lines (phone, LAN, TV Cable) should be protected.

PS: Glad you are back on-line, George!

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:51 am 
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JohnBick wrote:
SeaRay33 wrote:
... This, however, does point out the need to point my BDBB backup to another external drive (so a redundant backup is made available) periodically. My current script does not allow for this. But it is a simple matter of changing a drive letter every so often to produce a secondary copy of the BDBB database just in case something like this happens to my "current" BDBB files. I don't see, just off hand, how to automate the changing of the drive letter, so I will just have to decide how often I want to update the secondary BDBB (probably every three or four weeks or so) and then set a reminder to change the dirve letter. On second thought, it would be easy (as I think JohnBick had stated here before) to set a second script with the drive letter changes that runs with Windows Task Manager once every (say) four weeks. That is probably what I will do.

A better solution may be to swap out the d\target disk every week or so. No software changes needed. When you replace the curent disk with an older one the first backup will take longer than a normal incremental one but less time than an all new one!

And you can store that disk you removed off-site, not just off-line!

I discovered, via a friend, that keeping a disk off-line has another advantage. If lightning strikes your home and, somehow, gets past your surge protector (or UPS) you may well actually loose the backup disk! Having listened to my paranoia on backups he created a backup disk and took it off-line a couple hours before the lightning hit. A new one was actually being created at the time of the strike. He lost the (new, on-line) backup disk and a data disk. Everything else on the MSS was OK. A printer connected to the MSS via USB but NOT on surge protection was totally fried. Lesson #1: Keep a copy off-line! Lesson #2: EVERYTHING connected to your system needs to be on a surge protector and ALL data lines (phone, LAN, TV Cable) should be protected.

PS: Glad you are back on-line, George!

Thanks, John, for the welcome back. I am still running way behind on many projects I need to do, including my 2008 taxes if that gives you a clue (Form 4868 filed :D ). I hope to be able to continue to post often (in this forum) enter disbursed with working on the other projects that seem to have arrived at a "critical mass" lately.

Thanks for the reminder on swapping the disks. Now, that’s what I remember you said before #-o As we speak the new backup is underway. I had an extra external drive that was ready to go. I’ll make sure it at least has an extra copy of my BDBB transferred to it each week. I think I will take it out and store it in my coach when it finishes and set up a manual reminder to do this each Saturday from now on.

A part of Florida not far from me is the “lighting capital of the U.S.” (more strikes per sq. ft. than any other place in the county). I have taken a few nearby hits but so far no damage to the MSS or any of my computers/equipment. My UPS on the server is not working correctly and that is one of my projects I mentioned above. I have a EE friend that said one can get a surge protector for about $60 at Home Depot. It is put in at the circuit breaker box and protects the whole hose. I have heard of this offered from the electric company at a much higher price and without as good a protection. Have you heard anything about this? Looking into the whole house surge protection is another of my projects mentioned above. See how long that list is :-({|= and it just seems to get longer all the time.

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Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)


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