Win Server Backup Hardware Question - Tape drive or External USB

Hi all,

Was wondering if someone could advise.

Looking to implement a better backup strategy however I'm not sure I can afford a tape drive+tapes.

What does everyone else use here to backup a server?

Would 5 external USB hard drives not be sufficient enough?

Any help appreciated

 

depends on what youre backing up i guess. i use two 1TB external usb drives and ntbackup which works well for me. im going to be picking up backup exec soon though.

I swap drives every week, so at most my backups will be week old.

 

I forget what the system is called but its from Dell. RD something or power vault, anyways - They are laptop sata hard drives in a case that fit in a front bay of the server. Tape yuck!

 

Would be backing up State, Exchange, File Server etc.

Currently using two 500gb Externals and NTbackup. I want to implement Backup Exec soon as it has bare metal restore cababilites which NTbackup does not.

 

Some additional things you may want to take into consideration when engineering your backup solution:

- Determining how far you need to be able to go back.
- Frequency of full backups (vs. incremental)
- Off-site storage of backups
- Encryption of the backups in case of theft or loss

 

Agreed.

1. We have only the two backup externals at the mo and are changed every week so backups would only go back a week most. Of course going back this far isn't really practical unless needed.

I'd like to have a drive for each day so we would lose minimal time.

2. At the moment, its full backups all the way. I know you can configure incremental etc but Full Backups are safer, just takes alot longer to backup.

3. The second backup drive is stored at my house all week until I take it in to change it for the other.

4. Encryption is something I haven't really thought about as of yet, however it is a valid point.


Are External USB drives a worthy component compared with tape Drives?