how often do you backup on a dedicated server?

why do backups take up so much resources?

[javahava]

we have about 4 large sites (in terms of file sizes, photos, etc.) on our dedicated server. unfortunately, i learned cpanel copies the whole thing every night when doing backups (instead of just copying changes). it seems to be affecting performance when backups are being run. do you do backups daily or weekly? i'm tempted to move to weekly backups, but perhaps i am tempting fate. what other backup solutions do you rely on?

[NeedScripts]

I prefer CPanel does it daily, as it is automatic process and worth the cost extra HD, especially when you are running good sites.

[Blackie]

The answer depends on how important the information on you server is and how often does it change?

Any parts of a website that change more often then others? Then you can back-up only those directories daily and the rest less frequent.

I hope you got the idea. Its only you who knows how often to backup.

To give you an example how different it could be: I have one website having backup twice a day, another one having daily backup of MySQL database and weekly of the source code, and the third one having weekly backup on everything.

[GaryK]

javahava, my websites are on a dedicated server and two of them are very photo-intensive. Both in terms of quantity of photos and the size of each photo.

I use an FTP program that can synchronize files/folders daily so I'm only backing up stuff that's changed. That way I always have a full backup of the site on a HD here at home.

Once a week I make an image of the local HD, burn it to several CDs, and store them in my personal vault at the bank.

This way if my house burns down, gets blown away by a hurricane, or is burgled I've lost at most one week of data. I can rely on my members to make up for the lost week with their own backups.