backing up a laptop and desktop VIA WIFI

[iWearKiltz]

hi guys,

 

I'm connected to the internet via Bt and i live in the UK.

 I have the bt home hub 3 and i would like to backup a laptop (vista) and a future desktop to the drive. the best way i personally thought of doing this was a single hard drive enclosure, like this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-USB-3-0-Hard-Drive/dp/B00G28Y9BU/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

 

the western digital 2tb drive comes with some included software (would like your opinion on this if you have used it in the past). if that software isn't good i plan to use a windows solution. 

 

this is for my dads personal business and he doesn't want to spend a lot of money on it - but he realises the importance of technology.

 

so i'd much appreciate it if you guys would let me know if this solution is the best (baring in mind my limitations), and how best to implement the system into my dads business (the business is based at home)

 

many thanks,

iWK

[iWearKiltz]

update: he would also like to sync his phone to it if possible. be it syncing to the laptop which then backups onto the hard drive or another method,

 

thanks

[iWearKiltz]

update: researched into it - looks like several of the WD live drives have good and bad reviews. I think the best option would be to go for the older, blacker, models as these have better reviews.

 

also found out that I'd probably have to map the hard drive to the network.

 

thanks

[zuboici]

I started this post yesterday and it has got quite long and involved. I've been meaning to write something like this for a while though so thanks for asking the question!

 

 

 

The worst thing to do is no backup at all.

The 2nd worst is backup without practising recovery.

The next is applying only one form of backup.



I would suggest: Start with your External drive and use Macrium Reflect (free) to take full system images of all PCS/laptops every week. Use an image of your own computer and restore it to a spare HDD, boot from it and use that for a week or two. Now you know you can restore! Reflect has a clone feature I prefer not to use - Every drive that needs cloning is an opportunity to practise a full system backup and restore so don't miss that opportunity.

That's basically what I did until, although it means I can restore entire systems in one go within a couple of hours (backups take 20-30 minutes but restores take up to a couple of hours), I realised the actual data on the restored system is only as new as the last backup.

Of the two real-life restores I've done since that kind of backup has been in place, I was able to retrieve the missing files from one failing HDD but not from a dead SSD (Sandforce, lol). Luckily it was cat photos that were still on the camera!



So I needed a form of probably data-only backup that would be far more up to date as often as possible.

Dropbox and similar services (google drive, sky drive, Ubuntu one and others) are not designed as backup services but can be used as a first line of defense and can work amazingly well. There are differences in speed and features and you must practise using all of them to be aware enough to advise others on the subject. I only actively use dropbox ATM but have google drive on test for tablets/phones.

There are problems with these services:

 - They're limited capacity-wise and you have to pay to increase that
 - They use up your internet, even if all your machines are on a LAN, so large regular backups become impractical
 - If you delete from one machine, it syncs that deletion to other machines, breaking it as a backup service. You can usually get away with it by switching a machine on with the internet unplugged but most laptops afaik don't have a wireless-lock switch on the outside.
 - If versioning is implemented (where you can still retrieve an older version even if you save mistakes to a file) you probably have no control over how many versions will be kept
 - Deleting a file may or may not delete versions as well and again, no control over that
 - Many people don't like "the cloud". I can see why but it's BS unless you're gonna get sued or arrested if others see you data. In my opinion.




So a combination of system images using Macrium Reflect to an external drive and using something like dropbox is a very very good start but still not perfect. I wanted a solution that was

 - Completely under my control as far as configuration goes
 - On my LAN as we get no more than one meg of internet and limited to 50GB/month
 - Has to be specifically designed as a backup system
 - No monthly costs!!!!!!




Currently I use all the methods already mentioned as well as:

 - Syncrify (free) but versioning doesn't work after trial period. I really ought to pay for the $50 licence that makes versioning work again because it's a good dedicated data backup/restore program. My PC runs as server and client and 3 other machines run as clients so I don't need a separate PC as a server

 - I bought an HP Microserver when the £100 cashback was on (keep track of hotukdeals.com for that kind of info) and installed xpenology to it. That has more than one dropbox-like sync service available that run on your LAN and you have more control over them. I'm currently trialling Cloud Station to sync portable programs between my desktop and laptop, seems to work but keeps giving me annoying popups.




Next moves:

 - Network system images twice daily for all machines
 - ZFS filesystem for backup server (inherently protects against data corruption)
 - Identify two dedicated backup systems and add redundancy to each




So backup is a subject in itself. And a journey. The first three lines of this post are the most important, the rest is just practise and refine and learn a lot along the way. I hope this helps you

[zuboici]

Further:

 

  Using software that comes with an external drive is fail, just like using encryption systems from the same source is fail. Using software that's freely available to everyone on the internet and has been criticised and developed for a few years and still appears popular is good.

 

  Dropbox and google drive both work on Android (yeah I'm assuming it's Android). As long as one of your PC/laptops has that folder in it's backup scheme, you're golden.

 

  Re: syncing a phone... Hmmm... My dad was adamant he wanted Outlook to sync to his Android based phone. Took a long time to convince him they're competing technologies and will probably never sync to each other. I've heard stories of sync methods that work a bit for a while but G and MS stop it working after a while I think. Dad now uses gmail to get mail from his existing address instead of Outlook (as well as actually but we have yet to iron that out). All his contacts are now moved from Blackberry to gmail. He might even get the hang of google's calender one day.

 

There are Android manager Apps/programs out there but I've not integrated that far yet so idk what their limitations are.

[iWearKiltz]

I started this post yesterday and it has got quite long and involved. I've been meaning to write something like this for a while though so thanks for asking the question!

 

 

 

The worst thing to do is no backup at all.

The 2nd worst is backup without practising recovery.

The next is applying only one form of backup.

I would suggest: Start with your External drive and use Macrium Reflect (free) to take full system images of all PCS/laptops every week. Use an image of your own computer and restore it to a spare HDD, boot from it and use that for a week or two. Now you know you can restore! Reflect has a clone feature I prefer not to use - Every drive that needs cloning is an opportunity to practise a full system backup and restore so don't miss that opportunity.

That's basically what I did until, although it means I can restore entire systems in one go within a couple of hours (backups take 20-30 minutes but restores take up to a couple of hours), I realised the actual data on the restored system is only as new as the last backup.

Of the two real-life restores I've done since that kind of backup has been in place, I was able to retrieve the missing files from one failing HDD but not from a dead SSD (Sandforce, lol). Luckily it was cat photos that were still on the camera!

So I needed a form of probably data-only backup that would be far more up to date as often as possible.

Dropbox and similar services (google drive, sky drive, Ubuntu one and others) are not designed as backup services but can be used as a first line of defense and can work amazingly well. There are differences in speed and features and you must practise using all of them to be aware enough to advise others on the subject. I only actively use dropbox ATM but have google drive on test for tablets/phones.

There are problems with these services:

 - They're limited capacity-wise and you have to pay to increase that

 - They use up your internet, even if all your machines are on a LAN, so large regular backups become impractical

 - If you delete from one machine, it syncs that deletion to other machines, breaking it as a backup service. You can usually get away with it by switching a machine on with the internet unplugged but most laptops afaik don't have a wireless-lock switch on the outside.

 - If versioning is implemented (where you can still retrieve an older version even if you save mistakes to a file) you probably have no control over how many versions will be kept

 - Deleting a file may or may not delete versions as well and again, no control over that

 - Many people don't like "the cloud". I can see why but it's BS unless you're gonna get sued or arrested if others see you data. In my opinion.

So a combination of system images using Macrium Reflect to an external drive and using something like dropbox is a very very good start but still not perfect. I wanted a solution that was

 - Completely under my control as far as configuration goes

 - On my LAN as we get no more than one meg of internet and limited to 50GB/month

 - Has to be specifically designed as a backup system

 - No monthly costs!!!!!!

Currently I use all the methods already mentioned as well as:

 - Syncrify (free) but versioning doesn't work after trial period. I really ought to pay for the $50 licence that makes versioning work again because it's a good dedicated data backup/restore program. My PC runs as server and client and 3 other machines run as clients so I don't need a separate PC as a server

 - I bought an HP Microserver when the £100 cashback was on (keep track of hotukdeals.com for that kind of info) and installed xpenology to it. That has more than one dropbox-like sync service available that run on your LAN and you have more control over them. I'm currently trialling Cloud Station to sync portable programs between my desktop and laptop, seems to work but keeps giving me annoying popups.

Next moves:

 - Network system images twice daily for all machines

 - ZFS filesystem for backup server (inherently protects against data corruption)

 - Identify two dedicated backup systems and add redundancy to each

So backup is a subject in itself. And a journey. The first three lines of this post are the most important, the rest is just practise and refine and learn a lot along the way. I hope this helps you

I was starting to lose hope in the folk of LTT when I had this post up for a while - even fake bumping it just to get some fresh attention. THANK YOU for not only reading, but replying. Replying to such an extent that I'm going to have to read this over a few times before I make my next verdict.

 

From what I got though, I should back up, and I should back up now. And rather then backup, take system images. I'm not sure if there is a size difference when comparing the two though, like which one will fill a hard drive up quicker, system images or backups? And once that's decided, do I get rid of backups(/images) after 5 days, after 10 days? do I get rid of them ever?

 

Next thing is, I don't particularly want to have to run a server at the moment - despite being able to build one on the cheap. This is because my Dad doesn't need that expansion… YET.

 

The phone is a second priority, and shouldn't be concentrated on for now, but I'll keep researching.

 

At the moment, I'm still not sure if you're saying that my idea of a Drive attached to the router (BT Homehub 3) is a good idea or not? please clarify

Be it a short term solution that needs to be sorted ASAP, or a solution that could work for a year or two.

 

Thanks zuboici

 

iWK

[zuboici]

Again, this post got pretty long and involved, I hope it's useful, here it is:

 

 

 

Hey no problem, thanks for reading!

+1 for start backups now
+1 for read over and over
+1 for don't try a server yet
 

 

 

I've not had any luck with backups to a drive attached to a router, I use that for file sharing within the LAN. I know it's possible but Windows networking is a whole career in itself so I'll describe what I've had success with.

 

1 - Buy an external USB drive based on a 2.5 inch (laptop) HDD because they don't require a power supply. I have 1TB and it's big enough for several non-gaming PCs.

(At this point you'll be plugging the external drive into USB on each PC every time you do a backup. Experience tells me power supply = too much hassle = backups do not happen)

2 - Download free version of Macrium Reflect and install to your own PC (I'm not affiliated, I just use Reflect a lot)

3 - Image your own PC to the external drive using Reflect

4 - Restore the image to a spare HDD, boot from it and run like that for a week.




Now you *know* you can do it!




In order to backup several machines, you'll install Reflect on each of them and make a sensible folder naming scheme on the external HDD with text files for each PC to keep track of things.

[driveletter]:\images\[computer name]\001

is the place to start. Then you can add folders named 002, 003, 004 and so on.





I have a readme.txt file in each [computer name] folder where I log numbers and dates and some description of each bkp to help me keep track. e.g.:

001 2013-01-01
  DadLaptop upgraded to Win7 64bit, no updates, no settings changed, nothing

002 2013-01-02
  AV installed, WinUpdates done, installed FF, spybot, NPP.

003 2013-01-02b
  Installed dotnet, VLC, Office and Winupdates done




Then in the future, after you've done a load of weekly bkps and deleted some old ones you'll end up with entries like:

015 2013-09-22a
  Bkp just before installing Office 2013

016 2013-09-22b
  Just installed Office 2013

017 2013-10-08
  Dad is sure he likes Office 2013 so this is the new best system backup

018 2013-10-24
  Thought I'd better do another one, ho hum yada yada





!! Keep the first few images, they're relatively small and you might need one or all of them - Quicker than a full reinstall!

!! Keep the last few images, they'll end up much bigger but they're your working recovery images.




Do you see the picture emerging? We can cover how to use your PC as a backup server later. Let me know how you get on