Incremental vs Mirror Backup for Working Files

[danaltick]

For the Working Files folder, is it necessary to perform incrementals, or would a mirror be sufficient.  Do you ever find yourself needing to go back in time with your working files.  I'm assuming from the book that mirror backups are fine for the primary archive.  Thanks.

[peterkrogh]

I use a mirror.
Peter

[danaltick]

Great, that makes is easier.  Thanks.

[Mark Beckelman]

Peter -- I'm a bit confused here.  When I attended your ASMP seminar in NJ last week, you said that you did not use a mirrored RAID configuration, yet I see in the posting here that you do...

I've currently got two mirrored RAID setups, and have been having continual problems with one of them "degrading".  I've run diagnostics on both of the drives in the problem RAID and haven't come up with anything wrong, so I'm not sure what is causing these problems (unless it's an issue with the Firmtek enclosure itself).

if I decide not to do a mirrored RAID, then is carbon copy cloner the answer for my working file backup? (and if so, can you suggest specifics as to setup, preferences, etc...?)

Thanks!

Mark Beckelman

[Rick McCleary]

Peter (and Dan),

I think it would be helpful for you to define terms, such as "incremental" backup vs. "mirror" backup.  What specifically happens during an Incremental backup, and during a mirror backup?

I think Mark's question reveals the same confusion many of us have.  Peter, I assume Mark is confusing your statement about not using a RAID (in favor of a JBOD) with your statement about backup strategies (incremental vs. mirror.)  Or MAYBE, the sentence I just wrote reveals MY confusion!

At any rate, feel free to expound on all things backup.

Thanks.

[peterkrogh]

Mark,
 I use an additional drive on my server to "mirror" my working folder.  Basically that means that it creates an exact copy of the folder.  essentially, what this software does is to make every file on the backup look exactly like the primary.  There is no going back to previous versions of the file, they have been erased.

There are also incremental/ archive backups that will create a versioned archive of the files so that you can roll back to previous saved versions.  As you could imagine, this adds a lot of storage needs to the backup, and well as complexity, and reliance on backup software to create a restored copy.  I find this to be unnecessarily complex.

This is apart from RAID, which is a drive configuration where different drives appear as a single drive.  A mirrored RAID writes to two drives at once.  I have two distinct drive volumes ("FlavorFlav" on the Workstation, and "Backups" on the server) that hold the Working files folder.  It gets "mirrored" automatically each night, and manually after each valuable download from media cards.

Does that clear it up?

Peter

[Mark Beckelman]

Peter -- thanks for the clarification.

Under what circumstances do you use Chronosync vs. carbon copy cloner?  I've been using Retrospect for general backup each night, but you make a good point about the incremental backups (and the backup software to restore).

Mark Beckelman

[peterkrogh]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable copies of my drives.  CCC can only work on drives attached to a computer, not over a network.

I use Chronosync to backup files over a network.

Peter

[Mark Beckelman]

Peter -- As I am not working over a network, is there any reason to use Chronosync, or will Carbon Copy Cloner do everything that needs to be done?

Mark

[peterkrogh]

Mark,
Chronosync has some handy stuff for scheduling backups.  CCC may do similar stuff.  I stopped investigating this part of CCC when it would not work over the network.
Peter

[Mark Beckelman]

I had mentioned on one of my earlier posts a problem I was having with my mirrored RAID setup:

I've currently got two mirrored RAID setups, and have been having continual problems with one of them "degrading".  I've run diagnostics on both of the drives in the problem RAID and haven't come up with anything wrong, so I'm not sure what is causing these problems (unless it's an issue with the Firmtek enclosure itself).

I contacted technical support at Firmtek and got this response:
"The degradated RAID is a sign of an issue with the RAID software, not the controller, enclosure or drives. There are commercial utilities like SoftRAID from SoftRAID, LLC which have more sophysticated  RAID handling than what is essentially a free part of MacOS-X."

Does anyone here have experience with this SoftRAID?

Mark Beckelman