Exterior Hard Drive For Back Up.

Mike Finley

Right now I have 2 computers on a network. I back up the files on computer A onto computer B and vice versa.

I am seeing exterior hard drives anywhere from 250 gig to 400 gig ranging in price below $200.00.

I was curious if it would be wiser to do my back ups from both computers onto one of these exterior drives instead of what I am doing now? I'm not certain what the advantage or disadvantages might be in doing this instead of using each computer as the other ones back up like I am doing now.

Opinions?

Speedy Petey

That's what I do. I only back up critical items every month or so and I backup Q-B every few days.
To me the advantage is that you can pull the external and plug it into ANY computer. If a machine crashes it can be hell getting the info out.
I have an 80G external. It's crazy how prices of fuel and copper are through the roof and you can get computer components cheaper than ever.

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MinConst

Mike,
An external is not going to give you anything more than what your doing now. If your backing up computer A to B and B to A, the next step is to place these 2 backups offline and off site. This can be automated and will give you a solid strategy. If you have a web server this might be a good place to FTP the backups to nightly.
Are you doing complete system backups or just your data? Unless both Computers A and B are identical (motherboard wise) then restoring one to the other could be a problem. Ghost is an easy way to backup and gives you one file to work with.

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Paul
Minichillo's Construction
Website
I will never leave you hanging!

Mike Finley

I'm pretty much doing what Speedy Petey is doing, just backing up data that would be irreplaceable or a real hardship to replace.

The house burning down would be pretty catastrophic for me data wise. It might be a good idea to burn some CDs and throw them in the safe deposit box just in case.

Double-A

Always, always, always have a back up off site. I can't stress this enough. A plumbing company I worked for a few years ago was broken into. They had alarms, but the thief just pulled the phone lines off the building. The neighbors ignored the alarm going off for 4 hours while the thief trashed the place. All digital data stored there was lost.

They were making CD-RW back-ups everyday, using the Odd/Even method and were able to buy new machines, reload the software, restore and be up and running by noon the next day. Never take your business data for granted.

We store offsite back-ups daily (they go home with me and one other person every day) and one weekly backup is stored online on a server in Canada.

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"My clients’ wishes are the center of my attention." -- David Guido, a contractor in Woodstock, N.Y.
New York Times, July 20, 2006

Zatol

Nathan... I am sure that as you read this thread you are seeing the business opportunity presented...

I know that there are online services available that allow you to back up data and access from anywhere, but there is always room for one more site. Especially one designed for and catering to the contracting industry...