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AwfulErnie
Mar 4, 2015

The Gunslinger posted:

Have you tested restoration? I can find tons of image based backup stuff for Windows that will make an image, very few that will actually restore that image successfully without one problem or another.

I agree with Shadow Protect. I have restored literally hundred of times because I basically use it to image new PCs. I make a backup of a base machine. Then use their USB boot utility to make a USB boot disk. that will boot you in to a WinPE environment with shadowprotect running. browse to whatever restore point you want, it will find all the images that are needed in the chain and restore - it is very fast and very reliable. You can restore to a completely blank disk and be exactly where you left off.

Otherwise, it all you need are individual files, you can mount up your restore point as a drive letter. Then just copy and paste files.

Using their image manager program, you can control the retention and consolidation schedule for your incrementals.

AwfulErnie fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Apr 11, 2015

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alanthecat
Dec 19, 2005

I've MS SQL Server running on 2008r2 and I'm just using Windows Server Backup. Is this ok?

Bonus: it's on RAID 0. (not my decision)

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





alanthecat posted:

I've MS SQL Server running on 2008r2 and I'm just using Windows Server Backup. Is this ok?

Bonus: it's on RAID 0. (not my decision)

It'd better than nothing, but I'd look into some way to get some more granular backups somehow. It's often nice to be able to restore just one database to a specific point in time.

logikv9
Mar 5, 2009


Ham Wrangler
I still have access to my Google Apps for Education account at my old university, and policies state that I can keep my login/services forever. Given it's basically an unlimited google drive account, what's the best way to get my poo poo into that cloud? I've tried uploading stuff overnight but it's so large that either it takes forever, or it gets stuck on "loading" or whatever pre-uploading procedure it has.

lowcrabdiet
Jun 28, 2004
I'm not Steve Nash.
College Slice
There's an Amazon Deal of the Day for a couple of CyberPower and APS units: http://amzn.to/1CHB6oo

I figure people who are interested in data backups might also be interested in battery backup systems too

MagusDraco
Nov 11, 2011

even speedwagon was trolled

ConfusedUs posted:

To get the ball rolling, I figure I'll post my home backup scheme!

My primary storage for my home is a Synology NAS. All of my laptops/desktops (I have four in my home) back up to the NAS daily. The macs use Time Machine for this.

The NAS itself is backed up to an external harddrive every day and to the cloud once a week.

This gives me three layers of redundancy (NAS + EHD + CLOUD) for all my regular systems, and the NAS itself has two layers (EHD + Cloud).

I'm curious what do you use to actually backup the windows computers to your NAS. Do you just use Windows 7 Backup/Windows 8 File History or do you use something else. I have some 300 GB of documents and photos from work that would suck to lose and I should probably do more than just copying them over to an external hard-drive once in awhile.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





havenwaters posted:

I'm curious what do you use to actually backup the windows computers to your NAS. Do you just use Windows 7 Backup/Windows 8 File History or do you use something else. I have some 300 GB of documents and photos from work that would suck to lose and I should probably do more than just copying them over to an external hard-drive once in awhile.

I'm trying to keep this thread company/product agnostic, focusing on best practices, so I didn't name it. And it would be absolute overkill for the average home user, as it's the server-level product I work on.

Anything that backs up to a disk would work in this scenario. Windows backup would be fine. Crashplan would work. Acronis or other imaging software would work. You could do it with robocopy batch script, even.

Seriously, whatever.

wyoak
Feb 14, 2005

a glass case of emotion

Fallen Rib
Is it possible to restore transaction logs on top of a SQL backup made with VSS? As far as I can tell, VSS backups (or maybe just these VSS backups) are only the DB and log files, so I can mount the databases from the restore, but can't restore anything on top of them since they won't be in norecovery

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





wyoak posted:

Is it possible to restore transaction logs on top of a SQL backup made with VSS? As far as I can tell, VSS backups (or maybe just these VSS backups) are only the DB and log files, so I can mount the databases from the restore, but can't restore anything on top of them since they won't be in norecovery

You would probably need to do some command-line work, but I don't know exactly what commands. I'm pretty sure you can apply logs to a database though, if you're in a consistent state without a gap.

Most backup applications worth a drat will just do it for you. Pick your backup to restore, select a time, everything's there as of that time.

Edit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177446.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Looks like restore everything, one at a time, in order, with special flags like NORECOVERY.

MagusDraco
Nov 11, 2011

even speedwagon was trolled

ConfusedUs posted:

I'm trying to keep this thread company/product agnostic, focusing on best practices, so I didn't name it. And it would be absolute overkill for the average home user, as it's the server-level product I work on.

Anything that backs up to a disk would work in this scenario. Windows backup would be fine. Crashplan would work. Acronis or other imaging software would work. You could do it with robocopy batch script, even.

Seriously, whatever.

Alright. Good to know. I'll probably stick with file history/windows backup then. Thanks.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

Just to contribute, I have a Plex Media Server I built running Windows 8.1 with a little over 7TB of storage that's currently using DrivePool to orgranize/protect my media. I was looking for a super simple backup solution I could use with my existing setup after I had 2 hard drives crash, and so far the DrivePool app has been pretty solid. It was super easy to set up (for someone like myself who had never looked into back up solutions or even knew what drive pooling was) and it only cost me $20 too.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





teagone posted:

Just to contribute, I have a Plex Media Server I built running Windows 8.1 with a little over 7TB of storage that's currently using DrivePool to orgranize/protect my media. I was looking for a super simple backup solution I could use with my existing setup after I had 2 hard drives crash, and so far the DrivePool app has been pretty solid. It was super easy to set up (for someone like myself who had never looked into back up solutions or even knew what drive pooling was) and it only cost me $20 too.

DrivePool is pretty sweet, but I wouldn't call it a backup solution. It's sort of a weird mix of software RAID and Storage Spaces.

And RAID is not backup!

Had a customer case a year ago where whatever funky drive-spanning thing that DrivePool does was playing hell with one of our products. Caused a lot of files to be backed up twice.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

ConfusedUs posted:

DrivePool is pretty sweet, but I wouldn't call it a backup solution. It's sort of a weird mix of software RAID and Storage Spaces.

And RAID is not backup!

Hmm, what would you suggest be a good alternative in my case? Cloud backups? I do plan on sticking with DrivePool on my Plex Server for the foreseeable future, but another added layer of protection wouldn't hurt :)

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





teagone posted:

Hmm, what would you suggest be a good alternative in my case? Cloud backups? I do plan on sticking with DrivePool on my Plex Server for the foreseeable future, but another added layer of protection wouldn't hurt :)

Local external drives, a NAS, cloud backups, or some combination. You want a separate, independent copy of the data.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

ConfusedUs posted:

DrivePool is pretty sweet, but I wouldn't call it a backup solution. It's sort of a weird mix of software RAID and Storage Spaces.

And RAID is not backup!

Had a customer case a year ago where whatever funky drive-spanning thing that DrivePool does was playing hell with one of our products. Caused a lot of files to be backed up twice.

Yeah well I would call it a backup solution. Its about as good as RSYNC anyhow. Logical RAID 1 isn't bad and you can use NTFS previous versions. I mean if we are taking about mission critical poo poo, no it's not good for that but for 20 bux it beats the poo poo out of anything else. The cases where it fails is if you get hit by lightning or someone steals all your poo poo.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





So you think it's a good solution when it doesn't cover two of the top three reasons for data loss?

It's good software but come on.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

ConfusedUs posted:

So you think it's a good solution when it doesn't cover two of the top three reasons for data loss?

It's good software but come on.

I think its a great solution for home users. Top reason for data loss is hard drive crashing, at least around the computers I get to mess with.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





redeyes posted:

I think its a great solution for home users. Top reason for data loss is hard drive crashing, at least around the computers I get to mess with.

Yeah, maybe that's the top reason, but it's certainly not the only reason. Fire, theft, and power-related failures are the other primary reasons.

If only one copy of your data exists, it's not backed up. RAID is not a backup solution for this very reason. DrivePool is no different.

All it does is add some redundancy to address one specific potential cause of data loss. Backup is a catch-all for any problem.

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


I want to hear what people are using to back up various cloud services. How are you backing up your O365 environment? Dropbox? Salesforce? I've been using cloudfinder for o365 and it's alright but you can't automatically delete old backups.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

ConfusedUs posted:

Yeah, maybe that's the top reason, but it's certainly not the only reason. Fire, theft, and power-related failures are the other primary reasons.

I pray I never have a home fire or someone breaks into my house, but I've got my Plex server hooked up to a UPS as a preventative measure so at least that's covered!

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

ConfusedUs posted:

Yeah, maybe that's the top reason, but it's certainly not the only reason. Fire, theft, and power-related failures are the other primary reasons.

If only one copy of your data exists, it's not backed up. RAID is not a backup solution for this very reason. DrivePool is no different.

All it does is add some redundancy to address one specific potential cause of data loss. Backup is a catch-all for any problem.

Well I do consider it 2 copies even though they are not in a separate box. The drives can be yanked at any time and run through normal NTFS recovery software or any other computer. The entire filesystem is just NTFS after all which makes it far easier to recovery from problems than and RAID type solutions. I mean I get what you are saying but for an average joe that just wants to combine a bunch of different sized hard drives into a pool with redundancy, its great.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
Looking for a recommendation for a backup service, preferably unlimited. I have many many computas but mostly work with 3. I like backblaze but I'm not sure if its worth the cost to scale to ~3 machines. I mostly have photos and video to backup which make up the biggest share. I don't care about full OS/App backups. The rest of my files are small project files. In all right now less than 2T although that could explode to 4T in the next 18 months. Thing is each of my machines has a different purpose so my main photo machine would have all the photos, my laptop would have misc small files and my 2nd desktop might have projects.

Unrelated but I keep reading 'examples' of people storing ripped movies to these services. Why would you do that? Not for legal reasons but a movie to me is easily replaceable data that takes up a lot of space.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Shaocaholica posted:

Looking for a recommendation for a backup service, preferably unlimited. I have many many computas but mostly work with 3. I like backblaze but I'm not sure if its worth the cost to scale to ~3 machines. I mostly have photos and video to backup which make up the biggest share. I don't care about full OS/App backups. The rest of my files are small project files. In all right now less than 2T although that could explode to 4T in the next 18 months. Thing is each of my machines has a different purpose so my main photo machine would have all the photos, my laptop would have misc small files and my 2nd desktop might have projects.

Unrelated but I keep reading 'examples' of people storing ripped movies to these services. Why would you do that? Not for legal reasons but a movie to me is easily replaceable data that takes up a lot of space.

Get a NAS. Back up all of the machines to the NAS.

Get one subscription to one provider of your choice, and back up the NAS to it.

This is what I do.

People back up their rippedmovies because it's often easier to just re-download them from your backup provider than it is to re-rip. Assuming you didn't just sell the disk when you were done.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

ConfusedUs posted:

Get a NAS. Back up all of the machines to the NAS.

Get one subscription to one provider of your choice, and back up the NAS to it.

This is what I do.


Ah neato, thanks.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
So...is there any way to have a backup service run on my NAS as opposed to running on a PC with the NAS mounted?

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Shaocaholica posted:

So...is there any way to have a backup service run on my NAS as opposed to running on a PC with the NAS mounted?

Synology NAS devices have both Crashplan and Amazon Glacier packages available.

alkanphel
Mar 24, 2004

ConfusedUs posted:

Get a NAS. Back up all of the machines to the NAS.

Get one subscription to one provider of your choice, and back up the NAS to it.

I assume you partition the NAS for each machine to backup to? Would you still need to backup the NAS physically, besides to the cloud?

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





alkanphel posted:

I assume you partition the NAS for each machine to backup to? Would you still need to backup the NAS physically, besides to the cloud?

I just have a separate folder for each machine on mine. So my wife's macbook air goes to one folder, my macbook pro to another, and my son's PC to a third folder.

I do back up my NAS locally, to an external HDD, because there's a lot of stuff that only exists on it. All my music, pictures, and other media are on the thing. It's not just a backup drive for me.

I do exclude the backup folders from that backup, though. No point in backing up the backups.

So my setup looks like this

Endpoints > folders on NAS
NAS (excluding backup folders) > external HDD
NAS (everything) > Cloud

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

ConfusedUs posted:

NAS (everything) > Cloud

How are you personally doing this step?

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Shaocaholica posted:

How are you personally doing this step?

My NAS is a Synology and I've used both the Crashplan and Amazon Glacier packages. Both work fine.

Currently I use a server-level product that I work on--it's free for me, so why not? But totally overkill for normal use.

Methylethylaldehyde
Oct 23, 2004

BAKA BAKA

ConfusedUs posted:

My NAS is a Synology and I've used both the Crashplan and Amazon Glacier packages. Both work fine.

Currently I use a server-level product that I work on--it's free for me, so why not? But totally overkill for normal use.

Comedy option DPM?

RusteJuxx
Jul 14, 2001

College Slice
This may be a stupid question, but I cannot find a direct answer through searching.

With Google Drive's 1TB offer of $10 / month can I have 2TB at $20 / month and so on or is the only choice once 1TB is reached is to jump to the 10TB option?

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
So what did people do before online backup services became mainstream? Backup to external and pray the house doesn't burn down? Keep an external offsite and rotate every so often? Backup to optical media?

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
Also, do those backup companies ever sell their obsolete drives on the private market? As in, will there all of a sudden be a huge wave of 3TB/4TB used drives on the used market? Or is it mostly trickled through various 3rd parties that you'd never really notice someone dumping 1000s of a particular type of drive on the used market.

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Shaocaholica posted:

So what did people do before online backup services became mainstream? Backup to external and pray the house doesn't burn down? Keep an external offsite and rotate every so often? Backup to optical media?

Tapes.

I wouldn't trust a used mechanical hdd. Nor do most people. There's not much of a market there.

It's one of those things that you're better off just buying new.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

I meant home enthusiasts. Or did that crowd use tapes?

ConfusedUs
Feb 24, 2004

Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!





Shaocaholica posted:

I meant home enthusiasts. Or did that crowd use tapes?

Oh, home users, if they backed up at all (most didn't) it was usually with external hdds, or CDs, or DVDs.

The cloud age has really brought backup to the home market.

brylcreem
Oct 29, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

ConfusedUs posted:

I put this in the OP, but man, file-sync options like Dropbox and OneDrive aren't really backups. They're great for content access but lack crucial functionality you need in a true backup solution.

I (re)read the OP, but there's nothing about those options in there?

I use Spideroak with 1TB of space to back up (sync?) all my user-generated data (My Documents, Pictures, Videos, porn). What's the trouble with that?

(p.s. no, I don't make my own porn!)

brylcreem fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Apr 27, 2015

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



OneDrive (and I'm guessing DropBox) in particular do not keep previous versions and sync in real time. Which means if you corrupt a file locally, that file will instantly be mirrored in the cloud with no way to recover a good version. You're somewhat protected from a device or drive instantly dying, but that's it. No protection against crypto-poo poo, no protection against user error, no protection against a slowly dying drive or faulty ram.

From what I'm reading Spideroak does keep a file history, so it can probably qualify properly as a backup.

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Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

Shaocaholica posted:

I meant home enthusiasts. Or did that crowd use tapes?

Really hardcore people I knew had a rotating series of external drives that they would store at a friends/parents house, etc.

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