Backups Anyone?

The one thing that everyone seems to ask me about are backups. How to do them, what should I backup and is there anything that will automate the process of backing up? So in this post I'm going to explain a few of the ways I backup, what I use to backup everything and exactly what it is that I backup.

First off, I'd like to say that Mozy is going to be your best friend in this whole setup. So if you don't have a Mozy account, go sign up for one. There are two packages that are available, free and paid. The free package will afford 2GB of space and the paid package will afford unlimited space. I'd suggest going with the paid package, it's only $4.95 a month and you really do get unlimited space. I'm currently utilizing 30GB of space on my Mozy account and I've been backing up more and more.

So, to get started here we need to determine how we want to set this up. Currently Mozy supports OS X, but it's in beta and take my advise, don't use it yet. Don't get me wrong, it works, but it just doesn't work very well. When I was running it on my Mac Pro, it would work for a few days and then get a connection error and would never recover. I'd have to totally remove the application, with a removal script and start from scratch. So I decided to get smart about it. I noticed that the Windows version of their application wasn't in beta, which meant it should work without a problem.

Now I know most of you do not have access to a Windows machine, or don't want to have access for that matter and I'm with you. But I decided to take an old Windows computer that I had stored in the attic, from before I switched over to Mac and turn it into a small backup server. So I hooked it up, installed a VNC server on it and cleaned off everything I didn't need. I also installed some Apache software on there and phpsysinfo so that I could monitor the system over the web.

After all of that was setup, I hooked it up to the Internet, opened some ports in my Airport Extreme so that I could VNC into it and all port 80 requests would be routed to it and that was it. Now most of you probable won't need everything I've mentioned so far. A Windows computer that is hooked to the Internet and can run 24/7 is all that is really needed.

Now Mozy requires that you pay for each computer that is being backed up on your account. I currently only want to backup my Mac Pro, but don't want to use the Mac version of the software. So I run iBackup on my Mac Pro, which backs up everything I want, on a daily basis, to the Windows backup server. Then on the Windows server I run Mozy and I simply backup just the Mac Pro files. Technically in the Mozy control panel it sees the Windows computer, but it's actually backing up a Mac computer. I don't think Mozy is going to mind me doing it this way, until they get the Mac version of the software in order, but if they do an extra $5 a month isn't that bad.

Now that Mac version of their software might work for some, but for me it didn't hold over to well. But for those of you that do not have access to a Windows machine, then the Mac version might have to suffice. So what I'd suggest doing is picking up a cheap USB/Firewire backup hard drive, personally I like the My Book put out by Western Digital. I own the 250GB USB version of the My Book and love it.

Once you get a backup drive, or another internal hard drive, you can move onto backing up all the things you really want to back up. The best application I've found to do this with is iBackup. Now I've tried just about all of the free backup applications and some of them are good, but most didn't come close to what I wanted to do. Mainly because I don't want to mirror my hard drive, I simply want to backup important data and iBackup does this for me.

So now that we know what we're going to use to safe guard our files, let's move onto what we'll use to back them up to where ever it is that we need to back them up to. iBackup is the perfect application to backup certain files and not the entire hard drive and it even comes pre-configured with profiles for backing up the things that really matter. You can however use iBackup to backup an entire hard drive, but I haven't had good luck using it for the entire hard drive. If there is more than 100GB's worth of data, it tends to get a little unresponsive and tends to freeze.

This is fine for me because I don't want to backup my entire hard drive, I just want my home directory, which is actually all I backup to Mozy. The reason for this is, I do a mirror of my hard drive onto an internal hard drive that is the same size as my main hard drive. So I don't need to worry about my main hard drive going bad. But I do want to double backup my important files; like family photos/videos, college files, client project files and other work related stuff. These files are my life line and if I loose any of them, I'll be in a world of trouble not to mention really sad ;(.

So yes, I mirror my main hard drive and I also backup my important files to an off site backup location, Mozy. This insures that I'll never loose them. Some ask me why I'm so dillagent with my backups and the main reason is because I have lost important files before and I didn't like the outcome (The wife was really, really, really mad!!!), so I make sure that all of our computers are backed up 100% X2.

For anyone that is interested, here is a picture of my current network and computer setup. From top to bottom I'll describe what each peace is and what it's used for.

First we have the Internet, of course or for some a searies of tubes. Then we have a Surfboard Motorola Cable Modem. Hooked to the cable modem is an Airport Extreme and hooked to it is a Vonage router that allows two phone lines. The Airport Extreme allows for three wired connections and unlimited wireless connections. Currently I only have two computers and the Vonage router hooked to the Airport Extreme, my Mac Pro and the Windows backup server. Next we have our wireless connections, we have a MacBook in the dinning room that is there if anyone needs to use it and to watch online TV from time to time. In the office my wife has an iMac that she uses and then we have an HP Notebook in the bedroom that is used nightly.

Mike Bowden is the owner of Sinco Tech, a small web hosting firm dedicated to small or startup businesses. Him and his wife run a large blog network where they do everything from reviews to tech support. More of their work can be found at BowdenBlogs.com.