Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:45:14 +0100, LR <lrme@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> We have been using a couple of freecom 500GB drives
>> <http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=3402&CatID=&sCatID=>
>> which we use as storage for up to six people rather than system backups
>
> It's "only" 100Mbits/sec on the ethernet port. The SATA drive is
> probably 3Gbits/sec. With a gigabit interface, you can go much
> faster. I've been benchmarking my backups and simply copies across
> the network. In my never humble opinion, gigabit ethernet is a
> definite requirement.
>
> Ummm... don't forget to backup your backup. I use two NAS boxes. The
> 2nd box is replicated from the first. I haven't found anything I like
> yet. I'm doing compressed image backups of the main NAS server, but
> have not found any software or company that makes me feel safe.
>
>> and I was hoping I could either use one of these on the USB port or use
>> our portable USB drive as I don't wish to add a switch to the network,
>> having only 3 ethernet ports is annoying.
>
> Add the switch but remember that the bottleneck will be the
> 100Mbit/sec ethernet at the NAS drive. If all your traffic shares a
> common cable or port, it's a bottleneck.
>
>> We have recently been given a
>> 320GB USB drive which now contains backup's for the windows machines
>> <http://www.goclickfree.com/products_portablebackup.php>
>> but I haven't had a good play with it yet.
>
> Nothing wonderful about those drives. I can't tell if they're FAT32
> or NTFS. The latest fad in backups is to backup by file type. Most
> vendors have added that feature. For example, the Arcsoft TotalBackup
> software that came with the Simpletech drive will do that:
> <http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediabackup/>
> The catch is that most of these products are totally useless for
> backing up the entire drive and getting literally everything. That's
> what I want. I want to be able to restore a machine to its original
> condition without missing anything. Sure, I have to deal with big
> bloated files and useless garbage, but that's the price of image
> backups. Besides getting everything, image backups are also much
> faster than file by file. One image backup program I've bought and
> tried 1.5GBytes/minute to a USB2 drive.
>
>
>
>
I like the Acronis TI products for that.