> Seems like the best idea for for restores but how many discs do you 
> have? We run a fortnightly timetable. If a student deletes all 
> their work by accident they may not realise it until two weeks 
> later. If we recycle the discs by overwriting older copies this 
> would mean that we would need at leasst 14 discs!
> Howard

Just make folders for each day - it obviously depends on how much stuff 
you need to back up but disc space is *very* cheap because you can use 
standard IDE discs for this; they don't have to be spectacularly fast 
because each day you're only writing to the backup disc/folder the files 
which have changed today. In most cases, that's not going to be very much.

The same incremental technique can be used for tape but it's really hard 
work whenever you want to restore because you end up going through lots of 
tapes to get the files you need.

Steve

srochford@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>> Seems like the best idea for for restores but how many discs do you 
>> have? We run a fortnightly timetable. If a student deletes all 
>> their work by accident they may not realise it until two weeks 
>> later. If we recycle the discs by overwriting older copies this 
>> would mean that we would need at leasst 14 discs!
>> Howard
> 
> Just make folders for each day - it obviously depends on how much stuff 
> you need to back up but disc space is *very* cheap because you can use 
> standard IDE discs for this; they don't have to be spectacularly fast 
> because each day you're only writing to the backup disc/folder the files 
> which have changed today. In most cases, that's not going to be very much.
> 
> The same incremental technique can be used for tape but it's really hard 
> work whenever you want to restore because you end up going through lots of 
> tapes to get the files you need.
> 
> Steve
Much of the 'changed' stuff that I want to get back is an accidental 
deletion of an entire folders worth of work. So I guess this would mean 
looking back through the incremental backups to find the last time that 
folder existed and then restoring that.

Can you recommend a good bit of backup software?
Also do you back up over the network server to server or is there a more 
direct link? I often work until quite late in the evening (and then 
start again remotely when I get home!) and can definitelytell when the 
backups start as the whole system slows down.
Howard