Baking up Hard Drive

Please use a "Back Up Approach For Dummies" approach

[rock007]

I publish 1000s of pictures on my website for Ballroom Dancing. It is a newsite that is updated constantly. Every day there are new pictures added and taken down. What is the best, least expensive, and easiest way to back up the web site and the rest of my computer without spending hours doing it?

Please explain in non-technical terms becase I am very new at web design and only learn things as I need them because most of my time is spent laying out the news site for the next day.

-Rocky

[Matt Probert]

Please explain in non-technical terms

Go to your local PC shop, explain what you want to do, and ask them to sell you a suitable solution.

It will probably involve a DVD writer, or perhaps an external USB connected hard drive.

Matt

[trillianjedi]

Let's deal with the website first - Linux or Windows hosting?

TJ

[rock007]

I use Linux at <snip>.

[edited by: trillianjedi at 7:12 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed specifics.... [/edit]

[trillianjedi]

OK.

Do you have "shell" access (using SSH)?

[bcolflesh]

Brush on some butter, then 2 hours at 450 degrees should do it...

For the website/home, look into a mirrored RAID configuration - this will keep you going if one of the drives crap out.

[pageoneresults]

Brush on some butter, then 2 hours at 450 degrees should do it...

Oh, this is too much! Splutter, splutter.

Don't worry rock007, we're laughing with ya, not at ya. ;)

Related...

[webmasterworld.com...]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Norton Ghost?

[trillianjedi]

Well I was thinking more along the lines of a shell script to do a:-

tar -cf backup.tar www
gzip backup.tar

.... then pulling the zip down via FTP.

I have similar setup in a CRON job to do that and a MySQL backup, dumping the lot to my home network via FTP overnight (or at low load time).

TJ

[pageoneresults]

What is the best, least expensive, and easiest way to back up the web site and the rest of my computer without spending hours doing it?

For the website, I would use the built in backup feature of FP. Go to...

Tools > Server > Backup Website

You'll then be prompted to save to your local system. I have two drives, one strictly for data and that is where I backup. In addition to daily backups performed at the server level.

Hard drive backups via Ghost and I really hope I never have to use it. ;)

[rock007]

Yo.

The Joke's on me!

Maybe that is what the problem has been all along. I am over-cooking my hard drive. I've been using 500 degrees.
(How can I change that title, anyway?)

trillianjedi: (Now I will really show my ignorance.)
What is a shell? (And please don't tell me it has something to do with fish!?

Remember, in the subtitle, I referred to a "Back Up Approach For Dummies". I put a very popular website up with little to no knowledge of web design. I saw the need. And it did what was necessary. That is why I chose Front Page. I don't know HTML and I have been so swamped with obligations from the website that I literally haven't had time to take courses or read up on it. So, I am learning as I go.

I think that <snip> has a backup for the sites it hosts on their system. I was looking for a way of backing up everything I have that is on my home computer, including the website.

-Rocky (I used Spell Check on this one.)

[edited by: trillianjedi at 7:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2006]
[edit reason] We don't need to know who your host is ;) [/edit]

[trillianjedi]

What is a shell?

It's a command line login to your server. Let's not go into details though, if you're not (yet) experienced in the ways of Linux I won't take that avenue further anyway.

If you're doing this all locally (at your PC), then yes Ghost is one option, as is the Pro version of WinZIP (which I'm now using at home and has a "zip to DVD/CD-R" option.

I've been using 500 degrees.

I can see we've got some work to do with you! No self-respecting webmaster ever does a hard drive well-done ;)

TJ

[jatar_k]

first I would talk to your host about what backup options are available.

does this mean you don't have any copies of any of these pics on your local computer? (I am guessing it does)

You could download the whole thing to your cpu and then burn it, dvd maybe, sounds like there is a fair bit of data.

you could then just copy the new data each day

how is the data stored on your server/site? is it in a database? is it just plain old files? some of both?

[pageoneresults]

does this mean you don't have any copies of any of these pics on your local computer? (I am guessing it does)

With FrontPage, he is working with a stored local copy so in essence he already has one backup. Using the FP backup routine will create another one for safe keeping where you specify. It could be to another drive, a CD, DVD, etc.

[Moosetick]

If you are the one adding/removing content then you obviously have all the content on your PC and dump it periodically onto your web host. If that is the case you could burn your site to a CD/DVD daily fairly easily.

If you allow users to upload and host pictures on your site then you will need to connect to your ISP and download those files. They will be stored in 1 of 2 ways. Either in a database or as files in a directory. Since you are non technical it is likely they are stored as files.

Provide a little more info for better help.

[rock007]

Moosetick:

That is what I have been doing. I have all of my files categorized in folders and subfolders on my personal PC.
I then transfer the ones that I want to the website using Front Page. When I have left the pictures up for one month, then I take them down.

I was hoping there would be a quicker way to back them up than to create CD ROMs every day until the CD ROM runs out of sessions.

[Conard]

The quickest way to do this with what you have is to pick up a USB hard drive and a copy of Second Copy or other back up program.
Set the backup program to make an exact copy of the data you want once a day, to the new drive.
It will take less than a half hour to set up and you wont have to do anything from then on except maybe check the backup drive to see that it has the copies up to date.