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[Flobalob]

After much torment and sleepless nights...Doing cost / benefit analyses about the cost of hard drives vs. gambling against the inevitable catastrophic crash of my data in my future...Here's what I came up with...
My main library is on 120GB USB 2.0 drives (2 of).
You know how expensive those are.
I ended up buying a 200GB WD ATA60 internal hard drive for $174 as opposed to a 200GB WD USB 2.0 drive for $375.
I then bought a CompuCable FireXpress 525DX firewire / USB hard drive enclosure for $64. It's big, ugly and very loud due to it's cheap cooling fan. However, It's easy to have it handy to drop a relatively cheap IDE drive in there, copy all your music files to and then stick it back in the garage again.
You can then take the backup hard drive to a friends house and come fire, flood or the revolution, you can be back up and running again in no time. I thought it was so cool I had to tell everyone. It only takes 30 seconds to pop a new drive in it and it supports large drives (over 137GB) which most competitors enclosures don't.

Listening to: 'Cascades Of Colour' from 'Release' by 'Ananda Project' on Media Center 9.1

[Robert Taylor]

I have a different approach...

I have an integrated Promise RAID 0/1 controller on the motherboard of my Media Server. This was running twin 80Gb drives mirrored - safe, but I lose 1/2 my capacity.

I have now bought a full Promise IDE RAID array controller board. I'm still running mirroreddrives, but the controller lets me do full RAID 5 with nice cheap IDE drives.

The controller board has a slot for a SDRAM stick up to 256Mb which becomes the array's cache.

As soon as the Aus Government coughs up my tax refund (soon), I will buy another 2 X 80Gb drives. Then I will have 4 X 80Gb drives in a RAID 5 array, giving me 240Gb of usable space, protected as long as only ONE drive fails.

I don't wanna do any backups...

So far my mirrored array has saved me from one disk crash, worth the effort IMO.

[nila]

Lunch - that is a good backup solution against hard drive failure but it doesn't protect you at all against viruses, software errors, accidental deletion of files, tag mess up's etc.

[Robert Taylor]

Oops! Forgot to mention that I have also added another "mirror", and once synced, it was detached and put in a "safe place"...I dunno what I'll do once my RAID starts getting a bit fuller...

I am also reasonably careful about my machine (ie. sits behind a Linux firewall, always has latest AV with updates etc etc.)

Of course, there's no such thing as "foolproof" eh?

[DocLotus]

RAID 0 or 5 mirrored drives are nice except for one problem...
If Windows decides to go by-by & totally refuse to boot under conditions like it had happned to me on three occassions, then the mirror does nothing.

I could not get into Windows, SAFE Mode, or even do a restore from last good srartup.

Thank heaven, I had a complete backup on another HD.

Back up is not any problem at all.  I use the one built into Win XP.  It runs totally automtically everyday.  It does a total on Sun & a daily on M - S.  Works great.

In another thread (at a later date) I will discuss how to have an internal swappable Mobile Rack setup with as many swappable HD's as you want similar to the way servers do it.

The cost is also cheaper (as little as $10 US) per rack. It is also totally noiseless.

[jleerigby]

I have a removable hard drive caddy.  I think that's what you call it!  A bit like the old push in / pull out car radios - A fixed caddy attached to an IDE port and an internal drive in a portable holder that pushes in to the caddy when you need it.  Cost me just £12 and supports drives up to ATA133.  

I have 2 x 120GB WD Caviar SE 8MB drives - 1 for main and 1 backup.  I back up all my files using WINXP backup about once every 2 weeks and then keep the spare drive off-site.  

This is a simple solution that protects me against fire, theft, damage etc.  My mobo supports raid / mirroring / striping but I don't bother as I don't want to introduce the additional complexity to my system and it wouldn't protect me against a burgalary.

[LisaRCT]

I also use the HDD Caddy's . . .  have a 200GB ATA133 in the system and one in the caddy.  (I do the same with a pair of 60GB drives in the system and another pair in caddy's.) I was lucky and scored 3 of these on eBay for under $3.oo each. (my costs on the pair of 200GB ATA133 drives was about 50 cents/GB . . .  thanx eBay    )
My motherboard supports RAID, however after running into a situation where I could not get into the RAID array due to a failure, I decided to keep it simple as well as removable for increased data safety (because this is not a back-up but rather a copy, I can also simply install this drive anywhere and it is readable with no special software, no fear of 'invalid backup volume', 'unable to access/create/restore RAID array, etc).
The disadvantages: the caddy's are IDE and thus not hot-swappable, they are not convenient for connecting to other systems (such as a friend's PC unless equipped with the same type caddy's), they can tend to run a bit on the hot side depending on your systems cooling configuration.  
I do hope to change at least one drive over to a USB enclosure for portability.

[Doof]

I'm running 2 200GB drives on a mirrored RAID array as well.

You're right, it won't protect against viruses. That's what NAV is for.

It won't protect against hackers. That's what the firewall is for.

It won't protect against Windows not booting. But that's why I have Windows installed on a completely seperate drive. I can format it on a whim and know that all my data is still on my mirrored drives.

It won't protect against a fire wiping out everything in my apartment. But then again, if that happens, I've got more important things to worry about than my music collection.

It won't protect against my own stupid mistakes. That's why I don't make any.

But if I did:

Delete a file : I just use file recovery software

Screw up a tag : I just fix it. It doesn't take very long, and I'm well beyond the stage in my library creation & maintenance where I'm doing any mass tagging. Plus there's always MC's handy Undo.

Personally, I'd much rather do it this way than wait for 60GB of data to transfer between two drives just for the once a month time when I accidentally change all my files to have the same Artist or something.

[gkerber]

After much torment and sleepless nights...Doing cost / benefit analyses about the cost of hard drives vs. gambling against the inevitable catastrophic crash of my data in my future...Here's what I came up with...
My main library is on 120GB USB 2.0 drives (2 of).
You know how expensive those are.
I ended up buying a 200GB WD ATA60 internal hard drive for $174 as opposed to a 200GB WD USB 2.0 drive for $375.
I then bought a CompuCable FireXpress 525DX firewire / USB hard drive enclosure for $64. It's big, ugly and very loud due to it's cheap cooling fan. However, It's easy to have it handy to drop a relatively cheap IDE drive in there, copy all your music files to and then stick it back in the garage again.
You can then take the backup hard drive to a friends house and come fire, flood or the revolution, you can be back up and running again in no time. I thought it was so cool I had to tell everyone. It only takes 30 seconds to pop a new drive in it and it supports large drives (over 137GB) which most competitors enclosures don't.

Listening to: 'Cascades Of Colour' from 'Release' by 'Ananda Project' on Media Center 9.1

The prices you are quoting sound quite high?  Where do you live?

CompUSA had Maxtor external usb2/firewire 250 gig drives for $280 a few weeks ago.  The case is quite sturdy compared to some of the external enclosures I looked at.

[gkerber]

I have a different approach...

I have an integrated Promise RAID 0/1 controller on the motherboard of my Media Server. This was running twin 80Gb drives mirrored - safe, but I lose 1/2 my capacity.

I have now bought a full Promise IDE RAID array controller board. I'm still running mirroreddrives, but the controller lets me do full RAID 5 with nice cheap IDE drives.

The controller board has a slot for a SDRAM stick up to 256Mb which becomes the array's cache.


So far my mirrored array has saved me from one disk crash, worth the effort IMO.

But what if your house burns down or you are robbed?

RAID has advantages, like it works automatically, but offsite backup, like a removable drive protect against fire and theft too.  More work though.

I had my house broken into many years ago, my computer (Amiga at the time) was taken and every floppy disk and hd I owned.  That included all my shareware source code which I was selling.

I had a 6 week old backup on floppies at a friends house, I lost some, but all was not lost.  I've been religious about offsite backups since then.

[DocLotus]

Doof;

Did you ever accidentally re-format your drive C?

On three separate occasions I almost did it.  One time after hitting the OK button, I thought... wait a minute, was that drive D, or was it C?

At the time I was running RAID & all my data would have been lost.  RAID would have been no help at all in that situation.

I can tell you I was sweating bullets until the format got done as 20 years of data files were on drive C.

Luckily, it was D & not C with all my data.

That was the third time it almost happened so I swore that never again will I take any chance with all my hard-earned data files.

When you are having major computer problems & nothing seems to work it is amazing how the "I never takes chances" goes out the window.  I sometimes am willing to try almost anything to get back up & running & that is when you make mistakes (such as re-formatting the wrong drive).

So I swore that I will from now on have many separate removable drives that can be pulled out of the computer & put away in a safe place when I have problems in the future.

Many drives not only provide totally safe back up but it also provides a back up history.

Through the years, I would sometimes be working on a file for many months only to find that somewhere along the line it got partially corrupted.  This happens sometimes on spreadsheets.  The ONLY solution is to go back in time to previous backups until I find a copy that is not corrupted & combine the new data with the old file.  This method has saved my behind on many occasions when doing development for customers on long-term projects.

How would you tell the customer "I lost the file & have to do it over again"?

RAID is nice for SPEED, RAID is OK for drive security but in my experience most users will have to reformat the drive & completely reinstall Windows long before they experience any hard drive failure.

I now have 5 hard drives & none of them has ever failed but Windows has gone South on me 3 times which required a reformat & Win reinstall. I am so glad that I had very strong back ups for my data files.

This is not to say that I will not sooner or later loose a drive, but when I do a strong back up is a must.

I now have 5 drives, 1 in the computer & 4 removable.

Of the 4 removable drives 3 are from automatic backups & 1 is a long term exact copy of all my data files including Documents & Settings, IE Favorites, Start Menu, Audio-Video, Games, Program Files, Images-Graphics, & my Downloaded Program files.

I always keep at least one drive off site so if anything happens to the computer such as it being stolen or worse, I still have a fairly current backup set that I can get my hands on.

20 years of data is just too much too loose & I'm not about to take any chances with it from now on.

[Jaguu]

Being a computer professional, I could not rely on a single pc. PC's are not like cars - If your car breaks, you take it to the garage and get a spare car until your car is fixed. If your pc breaks, you might have to buy a new one. So I wanted a solution with a spare pc, which became my video converting and backup pc.

I connected them with 2 GigaEthernet adapters and use the free Karen's Replicator (http://www.karenware.com) to backup my 80GB D: Drive (with all user und media data) to a 120GB R: Drive (Replica-Drive) on the second pc. This is totally automated and very, very fast!

If PC 1 crashes I can immediately switch to PC 2, redirect the home directory and continue working (downtime: < 3 minutes).

For absolute security. I will need to have a second 120 GB disk on pc 2 in a caddy, so it can be stored off-site.

Advantages:
1) No more hassles with backup/restore progams
2) No more hassles with backup on cd's
3) No need for a dvd writer
4) No need for Raid, although pc 1 has Raid 1 right now.
5) Backup PC up in a couple of minutes.
6) No more hassles with WinXP restore
7) No waste of disk space because of Raid
8 ) No hassle if Raid Controller should fail
9) Background jobs (like video converting) on backup pc
10) Remote control with VNC of backup pc.

Although hd-caddy and off-site disk not yet implemented - carefree pc life!

About Raid: Still have Raid 1, but after plenty of thinking and talk with other home network cracks,  came to the conclusion that Raid is not an optimal solution in a home network for 2 reasons:
1) Human error is duplicated on the mirrorerd disk
2) Raid controller crashes may make both disks unusable, so that it still needs an expensive backup strategy (either tape or messy cd's/dvd's.

Of course the main disadvantage is the cost of the backup pc, but compared to other backup solutions it is in my opinion the best solution in term of money and time wasted.

And as an added extra: I have two subnets: the GigaLan and the InternetLan which gives extra shielding of the two pc's from the internet! I can share drives via GigaLan, but not via InternetLan!

[Doof]

Doof;

Did you ever accidentally re-format your drive C?

No, I've never done that. I learned the difference between the letter C and the letter E a long time ago.

One trick I learned a long time ago is that if you're interested in C:, and don't need D: or E:, then disconnect them. That way you can't accidentally format them, or repartition them.

The same goes for using Ghost. I only leave the 2 drives I'm copying from\to in the machine. Then all I have to do when I fire up Ghost is determine which drive is bigger than the other.

Is RAID perfect? No. It's not. But for somebody like me, who just doesn't do regular backups, it's better than nothing. I'm not about to go out and spend the money on a second PC or on a bunch of external hard drives and start asking neighbors if I can store them at their houses just to protect some music and a bunch of porn.

There is nothing on my PC I can't live without. And only one file that would be a pain in the ass to lose. That's my Microsoft Money file, and I do keep a copy of it at work as well.

Everything else on my PC... yeah, it's important to me. But honestly, if it all suddenly dissappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't be a huge loss.

But I think some of you are confusing the average home user and those who's job actually involve their PC. Work related data is a completely different beast than personal data.

Here at work we maintain a RAID 5 array AND offsite storage of nightly backup tapes, on a 5 week rotation in a fire-proof safe. At home, this would be extreme overkill.

[DocLotus]

>>> One trick I learned a long time ago is that if you're interested in C:, and don't need D: or E:, then disconnect them. That way you can't accidentally format them, or repartition them. <<<

That's what I do now with removable drives.  Love the extra security of knowing that all my data is safe.

[Doof]

It's all a matter of personal risk. Some people feel they need more protection of their data than others. I happen to feel that my data, while important to me, is not worth the extra cost involved with setting up some elaborate backup scheme to insure I will never lose it.

Besides, you take somebody like me, who, up until setting up the RAID array, had NEVER done any kind of backups whatsoever, and this is better than nothing. I'm the type of person who just will not run a backup. I just won't dedicate the kind of time it takes to do it. Granted, doing so saves you a lot of work later, but again, I don't value my data that highly.

I'm protecting myself from hard drive failure. Not myself. I can generally fix the problems I cause myself. Hardware failure is a different beast altogether.

[Jaguu]

Doof,

well, there are a few more files that are indespensable. I use Quicken for financials and it has 4 important data files  

But, if you do a lot of IT and other community and private projects, you will get a tremendous amount of valuable data accumulating on your disks over the years. Data (mostly Office files) that you use as a reference, idea supplier, templates etc. - you probably do not want to lose all that.

True, this amount could be backed up on a single cd. But I found it more convenient to have all data (user data, settings, media (music, images, video) on one single drive and use a single backup solution. Personally, I found that cd burning is quite a time consuming job, even with a fast cd burner, too much hand work. I came from the Unix world and there automation was really easy and cheap to do.

On the other hand, after having invested plenty of time scanning a few hundered images and carefully tagging about 1000 music tracks and about 5000 images, I simply would not like to be so "doof" as wanting to loose them.

Certainly, there is a life without a pc, but then better never start using a pc at all! But if you need a pc for work but also for enjoyment, you better get the best stability, reliability and safety as possible.

You probably do the same with your diving equipment, don't you?

One other thing I learned long time ago: splitting programs and user data on separate drives (this has always been the case in the Unix world). If you have to reformat C: and properly backed up D: (Data), then it takes less time to restore the OS and your data is quite safe. For this reason I now use a minimum of 4 drives C:,D:,P: (for programs) and T: for (Temp).

Unfortunately there are still some programs (such as MC9 ) that write data to C: and need extra tweaking to get all their data on D:

[JimH]

Unfortunately there are still some programs (such as MC9 ) that write data to C: and need extra tweaking to get all their data on D:

Can you provide any details?

[Doof]

well, there are a few more files that are indespensable. I use Quicken for financials and it has 4 important data files  

I use Money. There's only 1 file to worry about.

But, if you do a lot of IT and other community and private projects, you will get a tremendous amount of valuable data accumulating on your disks over the years. Data (mostly Office files) that you use as a reference, idea supplier, templates etc. - you probably do not want to lose all that.

I do IT work. But that's at work. Where we run nightly backups, etc. etc. I keep my personal life (and data) and my professional life completely seperate. Again, if I were using my home PC for work related stuff, I'd have a less cavalier attitude about the data on it.

On the other hand, after having invested plenty of time scanning a few hundered images and carefully tagging about 1000 music tracks and about 5000 images, I simply would not like to be so "doof" as wanting to loose them.

Are you implying something about my name?

I understand what you're saying. There is and was a lot of work involved with ripping all my CD's and scanning all my photos. But in the end, it's only music and pictures. Both of which I have on another medium (CD and the original film). If I was suddenly forced with having to do it all over again, I probably wouldn't bother. I find myself becoming less and less dependent on and enamoured with my PC (and PC's in general) as the years go by. They're neat, but my heart lies elsewhere.

You probably do the same with your diving equipment, don't you?

True. But last time I checked, my life wasn't dependent on a proper backup of my music and pictures.

One other thing I learned long time ago: splitting programs and user data on separate drives (this has always been the case in the Unix world). If you have to reformat C: and properly backed up D: (Data), then it takes less time to restore the OS and your data is quite safe. For this reason I now use a minimum of 4 drives C:,D:,P: (for programs) and T: for (Temp).

I do the same thing, more or less. Except I use C: for OS and apps, D: for games, and E: for all data.

Unfortunately there are still some programs (such as MC9 ) that write data to C: and need extra tweaking to get all their data on D:

Agreed. MC's not as bad as some, though. It just defaults a lot of folders on the C: drive or in it's own Data folder.

[DocLotus]

>>>  I'm the type of person who just will not run a backup. I just won't dedicate the kind of time it takes to do it. <<<

Time ? What time ?

Windows XP Backup takes no time at all  It is totally automatic.

All I do is plug in another drive every 2 or 3 weeks & I'm good to go for the next 2-3 weeks.  I have the back up set to do all the work without my intervention.

It does a complete backup each Sunday & daily backups M, T, W, T, F, & S.

A daily backup runs so fast that I usually don't even know it had ran.  Most of the time a daily takes about 3 - 4 minutes & I still can use my computer while it is going on.

I also have the backup configured to run at times that I usually am not using the computer such as when I watch the evening news on the TV (through the A-T-I video card & MC).

[Doof]

How much data do you back up?

At last count, I was at 80 GB. Even copying that much data from one hard drive to another in the same system takes too long. It's even slower trying to move that much data across the network.

[Jaguu]

Can you provide any details?

I have the following directory settings:

MC9 Main: C:\Programs\J River\Media Center
MC9 Base Path: D:\Media
MC9 Library Path: D:\Users\Jaguu\AppsData\J River\Media Center, example D:\Users\AppsData\J River\Media Center\MyLibrary
MC9 Cover Art: D:\Users\Jaguu\AppsData\CoverArt
MC9 Playlists: D:\Users\Jaguu\AppsData\MyPlayLists (for exported PlayLists)
MC9 Backup: D:\Users\Jaguu\AppsData\Backup
TV Channels: D:\Users\Jaguu\AppsData\Channels.reg (just in case!)

Now, let's assume that C: crashes and I have to reinstall WXP and MC9 from scratch. Then I would loose the following data that need to be downloaded again causing an extra amount of work:

1) Any Extra MegaSkins
2) Any Extra MiniSkins
3) Any Extra FullSkins
4) Any Extra Visualizations
5) Any Extra Visualizations/TrackInfo
6) Any Extra Label Themes

If all data would be in D:\Media\Jaguu\AppsData, then a backup/replication of D: would be enough.

You may ask, why not backup the C: drive as well? From experience (in business and at home) I do not consider a restore of the OS and program files reliable and safe enough. Remember: Open files are not backed up without very expensive extra software. And I like consistency: All data in one place.

And if I resume work on a backup pc, I would like to have all my data in place.

By the way: another thing is lacking in MC9: Any kind of backup of the view schemes. They have become very elaborate by now and it takes quite some time to rebuild them in case of a crash.

[Jaguu]

At last count, I was at 80 GB. Even copying that much data from one hard drive to another in the same system takes too long. It's even slower trying to move that much data across the network.

This is where replication comes in handy. The first time it takes some time (I remember something like 50 minutes for about 40GB over a GigaEthernet network. But then, only changes are replicated and this only takes minutes (unless you do a mass retagging of all your media files   )

[TimB]

I had a spare computer so I use Karen's Replicator (it was recommended to me from someone here!) to backup thru regular Ethernet (not giga), it copies any new, changed or deleted files over to my backup PC every night.

-=Tim=-

[Jaguu]

But there must be a better way? Right?

1) The cheap, easy way is using xcopy with all its options

2) In the Windows Resource Kit there is a tool called robocopy (=robotic copy?)

3) I use Karen's Replicator as mentioned above, which is freeware and allows disk to disk replicas or disk over network replicas and probably also disk to external disk replica.

4) There are probably plenty of other sync/replica tools on the web. Do a google search.

[LisaRCT]

Another similar (albeit not free) is Second Copy . . .  lots of options (sync/copy/replace/compress/etc), will work over networks, etc

[gkerber]

This is going to sound silly to some of you, but how do you do replicating of data under Windows. I'm a Unix guy, so I've actually installed Cygwin on Windows so that I can use rsync. But there must be a better way? Right?

Cygwin is very good, and a full C++ compiler too and those programs will run in DOS too.  And gvim for windows too.   I always wonder how anyone can edit source code without vi?  ( I know I just opened an editor religious war...)  It is about a hundred times harder to copy a line in source code using windows editors than it is in vi....

Just amazing what is available for free.

[DocLotus]

I used Second Copy 2000 for a couple of years.  It is nice but..

* It has all the limits of ZIP compression...
 - Can be very time consuming to make custom backup sets.
 - Very slow backing up large groups of files.
 - Is limited to a maximum of 2 GB per backup file.
 - Is slow restoring files.
 - Will not backup some files that are in use.
 - Has no true "shadow" copy like a full backup program.

A much better way is Backup Exect.  A version of it is included in Win XP...
* Uses true "shadow" copy so all files can be restored.
* Can backup Windows "System State".
* Is very fast.
* No file size limit.
* Restors are very fast.

[LisaRCT]

I used Second Copy 2000 for a couple of years.  It is nice but..
<SNIP>

A much better way is Backup Exect.  A version of it is included in Win XP...
<SNIP>

OK, but are the files either encoded/compressed/locked into a volume/etc?
I do not use compression with Second Copy so I do not need to Restore,  should one fail I can simply swap the matching back-up HDD and back up onto the new replacement drive while I am up and running or as I sleep.  
I guess I am gun-shy of backup programs as I have had vital backups that were unable to be restored/read/etc and were useless (bad volume / volume directory not found / ewhatever) in spite of having been verified.  I prefer a simple raw copy with no compression/encoding/etc.

[LisaRCT]

Thanks PensiveChimp, that says it better . . . a 'usable copy'.

What I do now is run Second Copy with a 'EXACT copy' setting . . adds new files, replaces changed files, and deletes obsoletes.  It also dumps the deleted fies into a 'safety folder' if i like so I can check that they are indeed something I wish to delete before makng the final 'flush'.  Only the most recent version of any file will remain in there (this can be set from 0-? copies if you are really paranoid) and this folder gets manually emptied when needed.
This seems bulletproof (so far  ? ), is fairy seamless, and yields a 'usable copy'.

I am always lookig for ways to improve things so I am still open to ideas. For now this seems to work and beats the heck out of my old system (which was NONE).

[Influxor]

i don't currently have a backup, but it has been weighing on my mind as my drives start to age... im thinking of simply doing a 100 or so cdr 's as a backup..  but man it will be time consumeing

[LisaRCT]

" I wonder if they'd give you a kick back for a resounding review?  "
LOL could use the bucks  
Actually, with the available copy modes in Second Copy, you can do almost anything you like . . . Simply create the desired 'playlist' or as actually known, "Profiles".

Choose: Simply Copy, Exact Copy, Move, Compress, Exact Compress, or Syncronize.
Run any profile manually or automatically; every several minutes, hours, days, weeks . .  you get the idea.
I backup to or from network drives and if they are not available at the time it simply marks the profile with an error and moves on. A log informs of errors, files copied, etc.
It loads with windows on my system and runs in the background. You can also set copy thread priority within the options to speed up copies or slow them down and avoid interference with other running software.
I have it running constantly doing automatic backups of all my work . . .  simply my entire contents of the "My Documents" branch . . .  which covers my pics, records and documents, some software, email, etc.  In several years I have never lost any of this thanks to Second Copy.
My music library (200GB drive) gets done manually onto it's removable twin approxomately once a week depending on my nervousness  
Yes the first time I did a backup on my 200GB it took forever . .  but that is to be expected with any backup. Now it depends on what changes and additions I have made since last backup.  Recently it has only taked 1-3 hours . . .  usually while I am busy and away from my PC to update my music drive back-up
So far I have not found a better answer for my needs.

BUT, before you make the jump I would reread Doc Lotus's post . . .  not sure what was meant about a 2gb limit   ? and some other comments.  Doc, care to go into a bit more detail?

[Jaguu]

The advantage of replication versus backup/restore solutions is the fact that with the first one you con set it up to get an exact copy of the first disk and simply swap disks in case of a crash and do not have to care whether a restore will work or not!

Before you are going to spend 30U$ try Karen's Replicator which is free. It may not have the amount of feature of a 30U$ program, but it does exactly the job it is supposed to do unless you are really paranoid. In this case I recommend a HD caddy with an extra disk to store off-line.

Replication may not be the solution for backup up of the Windows operating system!

[Influxor]

i dunno, as far as $$, i can get 100 good cdr's for like $40 or less...  so cheap, but the time is something else will take like 3 days consisitant to backup approx 12,000+ tracks to those.   and shelf life of cdr is still a question of mine...... might be better to try to cram it all to a 120 gig HD then put the drive in da closet i guess... lol

[gkerber]

i don't currently have a backup, but it has been weighing on my mind as my drives start to age... im thinking of simply doing a 100 or so cdr 's as a backup..  but man it will be time consumeing

I tried doing backups to cdr at first, and it was such a pain I never got around to finishing or keeping up with it.

I've learned if backups are too painful, I don't do them.

I do hd backups to a spare hd now.

[gkerber]

I had a spare computer so I use Karen's Replicator (it was recommended to me from someone here!) to backup thru regular Ethernet (not giga), it copies any new, changed or deleted files over to my backup PC every night.

Thanks for the tip about Karen's Replicator - it's working great.

[gkerber]

Wow! I just reread your message and, wow! CompUSA Online has it for $430. Amazon has it for $350. Are you sure about that price? If so, that's darn good.

It was a few weeks ago for that price.  I got 2 for backups.  I keep one at home and one at the office.  I do a backup to my home unit, and then take it to the office and bring home the one that was there.

Paranoid?  Maybe.