What backup to use for home server?

Question

I am using windows home server and was wondering is there any good way to backup your data? I was thinking of clashplan (hdd clone) but not sure if its the best way. any advise for these? I do not want to lose my precious data, thats why i am concern on this issue.

Answer 1

CrashPlan is great - I use it for peer-to-peer backups (letting my family back up to my Drobo) as well as their CrashPlan Central service. I'd highly recommend it. I've also used Backblaze and have had good luck with that. Prior to Backblaze, I used Mozy, and wouldn't recommend it - I had way to may issues, way too many files that weren't getting backed up, so I needed to switch.

(and also selfishly, CrashPlan is a Minneapolis company, so you'd be helping my local economy :) )

Answer 2

Remember that you need two kinds of backups:

1. Versions, so that if you delete a file today, you can get it back.

2. Copies, so that if a hard drive dies, you don't lose what's on it.

My backup strategy has several components; WHS is just one part.

• Each PC backs up to WHS each night.

• My Documents folder is synchronized to each PC and to the cloud. I use the new Live Mesh.

• An external hard drive is connected to the WHS. I periodically use the Server Backup feature in WHS to back up to it.

• I use the BDBB add-in to copy the PC backups to the external HD, too.

• I keep a second, identical external hard drive in my detached garage (in case of a house fire). Monthly I swap them. If I worked in a different place, I would keep the drive there.

• I synchronize my family photos to my brother's WHS, on the other side of the county. And his to my WHS. Which all backs up to the external HD, too.

• Once a month, I fire up a virtual machine and restore a backup to it.

Answer 3

I use the built-in backup abilities of Windows Home Server to regularly backup seven or eight machines without issue. To backup the server itself I use an external drive.

Answer 4

I use Acronis for backup to my local external hard disk, and it supports online back up also.

I use SpiderOak for online file backups. SpiderOak is great for online backups b/c it gives you 2GB free space, and you can backup multiple machines to the same account and even synchronize folders across the machines.

I wouldn't use any online backup for disaster recovery, so I'd always recommend a local backup software like Acronis and make backups to an external USB hard disk or something. If your whole hard drive dies, it'll take a long time to pull down 100 or 200 gigs of backup data from an online provider..

Answer 5

I know people disagree, but with WHS I'm of the opinion that there is no point in backing up your server. If you have a pre-built OEM Windows Home Server, then they all (as far as I know) come with restore media that puts the OS straight back on in it's default state. Provided you have more than one hard drive in your WHS (and if you don't you really should have as you're missing out on a lot of the point of WHS) and have enabled duplication on all your shares, then you won't lose any data doing this, and your previously installed add-ins will be sitting there in your add-ins folder waiting for you to just click Install.

What there is a point in is backing up your data.

I sync my Pictures, Music and Documents folders between my desktop PC and my WHS at least once a week using Microsoft Sync Toy.

All the shares on my WHS are backed up to an external USB drive at least once a month using WHS's inbuilt shares backup feature. I keep this USB drive in a locked drawer at work (so that if a disaster happens at home I still have a copy of my files).

My PCs are backed up using WHS's backup facility, and though I haven't ever done a full PC restore, I have retrieved old files and folders from these backups quite a few times. I mark one backup per PC every 6 months to keep it forever (by default WHS only keeps 3 months of PC backups). I don't use BDBB as I'm not that concerned about the entire PC backups, more about my data, most of which is on the WHS.

Answer 6

I have an Acer H340 running WHS. I have a nightly job that runs Allway Sync (cheap), which backs up my data (not the system stuff) to a Dlink DNS-323. This one has two hard drives. The Allway Sync jobs back up to the first hard drive, and the DNS-323 later uses rsync to copy its content to the second hard drive.

I also use Allway Sync for off-site backups. Once a week I backup to an external USB drive which I store at work.

I don't do any kind of online backups because, even though I have great download speeds, uploads are slow (60Kb/s) and I have a monthly bandwidth cap (60Gb.)