I currently have 2 x 200 Gb hard discs, which contain my Myriad data files and PCM audio, along with Autotrack data. My Windows XP operating system runs on a partition of one of the 200 Gb drives. All this in a home studio setup.
I've recently purchased a Lacie 400 Gb backup drive, and I'm now looking at backup software.
Can anyone recommend some ?
I purchased Norton Ghost, but this is not really suitable - you have to backup everything again each time you save an image of your drives - which takes forever with 400 Gb !
I've thought of software RAID, but I can't find any software of this type.
Another product that looks interesting is Dantz Retrospect, which will do an entire backup in the first instance, and then only backup new files during subsequent backups, which sounds ideal.

Anyone's thoughts on this are appreciated.

Cheers.

Chris.

Believe it or not, sometimes the simplest solutions are the best...

Internally we use a utility from Microsoft called Robocopy (you should be able to download it somewhere from microsoft - http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=robocopy)

Its an easy to use but very powerful file copying utility that comes as part of the Windows Resource Kits - at it's most basic level it's a beefed up version of the old XCOPY command, but it also contains all sort of clever options to delete any files in the backup copy when they are deleted in the original (say deleting a cart) as well as only copying changed files etc.

The main benefit is that it is too stupid to not copy \"open files\" - such as the audiowall cart lists and the Q-NXT databases etc.

Bigger backup programs inevitably skip these files becuase they are in use (quite sensibly in the majority of cases, just not so much so in the case of Myriad), Robocopy just does it without question.

An example of the way we use it is :

robocopy \"\\\\server1\\myriad\" \"\\\\server2\\backup\\myriad\" *.* /E /R:2 /W:5 /SECFIX /TIMFIX /XO /XD \"\\\\server1\\myriad\\temp\" \"\\\\server1\\myriad\\temp2\"


As a note, the newer copies of Robocopy (XP010 etc.) have replaced the SECFIX and TIMFIX params. The equivalent would therefore be:

robocopy \"\\\\server1\\myriad\" \"\\\\server2\\backup\\myriad\" *.* /E /R:2 /W:5 /COPYATSOU /XO /XD \"\\\\server1\\myriad\\temp\" \"\\\\server1\\myriad\\temp2\"


which makes robocopy copy everything from the myriad share on server 1 to server 2, only waits 5 seconds per file it it encounters a problem with before retrying 2 times, makes sure that security details are copied, makes sure that the \"timestamp\" of the files is correct, skips older files, and eXcludes the temp and temp2 Directories

At it simplest though:

robocopy \"\\\\server1\\myriad\" \"\\\\server2\\backup\\myriad\" *.* /E

will backup everything but in this case not delete any files on server 2 that are now deleted on server 1 - not much point having a backup if the file you accidentally deleted is also deleted from the backup!

We run robocopy every few hours to make sure that our backups here are always pretty much up to date.

Hopefully this will help you along the way!

------------
Peter Jarrett, Technical Director
Broadcast Radio Ltd.

Bill Bailey: No win, no fee, no basis in reality. Just a room above a minicab office in Acton and a steady stream of greedy simpletons whose delusion is only matched by their clumsiness

Am I right in assuming that this tool has to be purchased with the full resource kit? It seems you can download a selection of the tools from

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.asp

however Robocopy doesn't seem to be there!

Actually, to reply my own question, I've found this page from a forum:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=152258&start=0

Not tried it in anger yet but the link in the last posting seems to come up with the goods.