Looking for recomendations for imidiate harddrive backups

So I know before I work on a customers computer I should make a complete backup in case I damage it more. I'm wondering what the best tools for this job are.

I know I can start on Google and find 1,000,000 plus sites pushing their products but I'm wondering what the techexams community is using. My assumptions without researching it first are I would need to keep a large external drive available and probably a laptop with some bit copy software. I expect I will need start doing system maintenance and virus removal on company systems soon so I want to ask for the right tools up front.

Thanks for any input!
Jon

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GForce75

Just a question. Do you have any paperwork in regards to liability and etc? As a backup solution, there are tons like you are mentioning, but are you referring to just the use of home computers, govt computers, large org computers?

Jon_Cisco

My company has under 100 employees and probably 30 PCs that I would likely be supporting. Currently they just try to fix things without making a backup first. So I am trying to take it a step in the right direction and I'm wondering what might be both effective and simple.

Backing up hard drives is not something I have ever had to deal with but it seems like the right way to go. When you start trying to fix something you never really know what is going to happen next.

cyberguypr

I'm all for backups, but in all my years doing desktop support I never had the luxury of time to backup very single machine I touched. Unless it's a VIP or there's a very specific reason why I would need the machine state to go back in time, I never bothered backing up. Is there any centralized storage? If so, solid policy establishing that important files must go to the H: drive and everything else should be considered volatile helps a lot.

MTciscoguy

I am surprised they don't have network wide backups. I would probably have them pick up a couple of 2TB external USB drives, many of them include good enough software on them to do what you are talking about.

Jon_Cisco

There is a bit of a mess for sure and what I am looking to do is push them in the right direction. I expect some machines won't get backed up but I am looking for the ability. In the past they have has a few issues that could have been avoided with a backup.

I'm thinking that with the size of this community there must be at least one tech with real world experience walking into a customer site and making a backup before doing a reinstall or virus removal.

MTciscoguy

I have a couple of pocket size SSD external drives at 256gb, that I have used for backing up a unit when I have to work on it, easy to carry, don't need a power supply and it is not so slow it takes all day. Believe it or not, it is not as common as you might think to have a tech do a back up before working on a computer.

Jon_Cisco

A bit of background on me. I am looking to switch careers in the next couple years and have been doing some IT work at my company but it has never been my responsibility. I'm just one of the computer guys so I get a lot of the tasks.

Since I'm looking to make a jump into IT I figure I might as well spend some time helping out where I am. Set up a basic IT infrastructure for them. No budget so I got to start small. Management does not put a lot of effort into IT so I'm not going to get anything fancy. I am working on getting a backup system in place but don't see it happening in the next 9 months.

No central storage. No domain. So that's what brought me here. I want to be able to cover my own ass and take a few risks trying to help them out. Being able to perform an immediate backup provides me a little cover as I experiment with new solutions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jon_Cisco

MTciscoguy wrote: »

I have a couple of pocket size SSD external drives at 256gb, that I have used for backing up a unit when I have to work on it, easy to carry, don't need a power supply and it is not so slow it takes all day. Believe it or not, it is not as common as you might think to have a tech do a back up before working on a computer.

When your making a backup are you using any software or just copying important files? One of my problems it the users don't really know what the have or need. So it's tricky when I start moving things on them. Most of them are production focused and view the computer is something in the way of them getting there work done!

cyberguypr

Ah, the background info helps clear up a lot of things. Which OS is on these machines?

Jon_Cisco

Mostly windows xp and 7. I have been dumping the xp machines for a few months but some of the software is legacy and I expect to be stuck with it. I also have 4 Mac OSX machines in my department. They are less of a concern for me but the same principals will apply to everything. So far no windows 8 but we get employee laptops occasionally so that will show up soon enough.

Several vendor supported machines are windows server 2003 and 2008 but It's unlikely I will ever be working on them other then to open support calls.

edit: basic business model is buy whichever machine is on sale the day they need one. So all makes and models lol!

MTciscoguy

Jon_Cisco wrote: »

When your making a backup are you using any software or just copying important files? One of my problems it the users don't really know what the have or need. So it's tricky when I start moving things on them. Most of them are production focused and view the computer is something in the way of them getting there work done!

I just use the mirror software that came with the SSD, for what needs to be done, it works quite well, I can define no compression and just make exact copies of the files, so if something does go wrong, they at least they have their files, if they are windows machines, then I search for documents, which can include spreadsheets, letters, access files. I like the new version of windows 8.1 with it's "File History" back up system. It is always frustrating to figure out what they actually need to back up, but when I work with a company, I try to get everyone on the same page on how they store files, so I have a half assed map of the company when I go into work on something.

Plantwiz

I've had to back up drives as you mentioned Jon. Over the years have used a number of different methods from DOS commands, to fancy software, various devices, etc...

Main thing is to get it done and many times (over the years) it simply comes to budget and time.

A while back I purchased something like this:
StarTech SATDOCK2REU3 2.5" & 3.5" Black SATA II USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station and Standalone HDD / SSD Duplicator - Newegg.com

Worked (and still works) great. I don't have a ton of need for it, but if you simply need/want a copy of a drive (the old one) you can make this investment for your toolbox and have the company invest in new HDD for their old little sneakernet setup they have running. This will allow you (or them) to buy some HDDs to copy data over until that day when you can migrate over to central storage.

Sounds a little lame to go about things this way, but for those who like to keep their data on HDD for a while, this is a way they can see and understand until you can educate them into better methods.

TheFORCE

cyberguypr wrote: »

I'm all for backups, but in all my years doing desktop support I never had the luxury of time to backup very single machine I touched. Unless it's a VIP or there's a very specific reason why I would need the machine state to go back in time, I never bothered backing up. Is there any centralized storage? If so, solid policy establishing that important files must go to the H: drive and everything else should be considered volatile helps a lot.

What he said above. The size of the company doesn't really matter. Talk to the management or your manager for better IT solutions, if there are only 100 employees,chances are many of them use the same applications. Create an image that you can put on a machine really fast, then all you have to do is install the few different applications they use. As far as the back up, same thing, if there are only 100 users, chances are they share information between them, from spreadsheets, to reports, to using same folders for access. This solution will save you a crazy amount of time and resources! And the most important thing is, you do not even have to spend crazy amount of money! Just buy a Synologly NAS or a QNAP NAS and set some directories, create shortcuts on their desktops and have them save their documents there. Pretty easy stuff, simple and affordable! and they will thank you for it.

Jon_Cisco

Thank you all for the responses. I will look into the StarTech doc since it is a cheap solution. In my head I pictured some sort of usb connection that you would plug in and hit go.

I have some limiting factors that require I go very slowly.
1- The company has not shown an interest in improving there current setup.
2- The company has no IT staff.
3- IT is not my primary job function.

That is an over simplification but it is exactly why I was trying to approach the computer repair as if I was a tech walking in from outside. Walk up to an unknown machine and start with backing it up. Then try to repair or replace it.

I have lots of ideas for them but I have to start small.

Jon_Cisco

TheFORCE wrote: »

Create an image that you can put on a machine really fast, then all you have to do is install the few different applications they use. As far as the back up, same thing, if there are only 100 users, chances are they share information between them, from spreadsheets, to reports, to using same folders for access.

I have seen imaging solutions but I was under the impression they required machines to be the same make and model.
All of our manufacturing equipment would have a custom software and possibly hardware configuration for each box. Would the best way to approach this be to start creating images as we install new equipment? It's more long term then what I am interested in today but I do want to steer them in the direction.

Here is a list of a few things I am trying to get them to consider.

1-Set up a Domain
2-Create a Backup Solution
3-Update the networking
4-tighten security

I can go on forever but again this is not something they are looking for so I have a sell it every step of the way. So it needs to start as free and move up to very cheap at this point.

thanks again for all of the feedback.

discount81

I would do 2 things if you are in this situation, it is not ideal and users data shouldn't be stored on a desktop or laptop, it should be centralized.

But you are in a tough spot

1) I would ideally have a file server of some description set up to store these backups, whether it is a windows server, FreeNAS or even if you can buy a $200 Synology or QNAP NAS, put some 4TB disks in there and create a CIFS share to store the backups on.

2) Purchase some kind of backup software, I like Acronis but Paragon and others are also good, this software lets you create a Boot Disk or USB stick to boot from, you boot into it and create a full image of the machine and store it on the file server.

As for deployment, you said you have no Domain, personally I would consider creating one to make your life easier, you can use Windows Deployment Server, create a universal image and it won't take long to deploy each machine, much quicker than manually installing windows on every computer.

MTciscoguy

I just installed a inexpensive NAS on a small company network a couple of weeks ago and they love it, 2 4 gig HD's in a raid configuration and it is working out great for them.

wd40

The problem with having a small network device is if it is not backed up and it crashes for whatever reason you lose all staff data, if files are stored locally then 1 PC crash = files of 1 person lost.

Priston

I've used the DOS version of Norton Ghost before.

MTciscoguy

There is a point, when talking about back up, we can all become to redundant, now a days, when I install an NAS and set it up for a small office, I suggest they also get a cloud account off site.

--chris--

Jon_Cisco wrote: »

I

1-Set up a Domain
1b. - Set up folder redirection for the desktop via GPO (push as many of the user folders to a central spot, then back up that central spot)
2-Create a Backup Solution
3-Update the networking
4-tighten security

I added 1b to Johns list. Folder redirection is a great solution to the workstation backup problem. As long as the users arent creating special folder on the root of C or something wierd like that all of their data will get backed up when you backup the redirected location.

If you dont have a domain, I believe you can set this up even without it. I think you can do a reg hack to point a folders save location to a UNC path (\\exampleserver\redirected\username)

Once folders are redirected, all you have to worry about are the applications & settings within those apps as well as email (if using pop/imap).

--chris--

wd40 wrote: »

The problem with having a small network device is if it is not backed up and it crashes for whatever reason you lose all staff data, if files are stored locally then 1 PC crash = files of 1 person lost.

Crashplanpro.com is $10/month for unlimited off site backups of data for one device. Redirect folders to central device (server?), store there and backup nightly via crashplan.

I coworker uses crashplan for his personal stuff, he has 8 TB of data in it and has restored from it a few times without issue.

MTciscoguy

Great information in this thread, lots of good ideas, but I think we may have gone beyond the scope of Jon's questions!

LOL

cyberguypr

Since the key thing here is that there's no budget, options are limited to whatever open source/free tools the OP can gather. I see a lot of good ideas but most involve money which is not there. As a stop gap approach, I would recommend using Clonezilla (free! )to backup the machines to a cheap external drive. That will give you a perfect copy of a machine that you can restore if stuff hits the fan. There's a slight learning curve but it's a great free solution. Keep in mind that if you want to make images hardware independent you'll need to sysprep them, do some testing, and spend more time with them. When there's budget later on you can definitely move up to bigger and better things.

Jon_Cisco

Thanks guys. I'll be looking into this over the next few months.
I working on becoming the official IT person so I implement a number of the changes reference here.

Priston

cyberguypr wrote: »

Since the key thing here is that there's no budget, options are limited to whatever open source/free tools the OP can gather. I see a lot of good ideas but most involve money which is not there. As a stop gap approach, I would recommend using Clonezilla (free! )to backup the machines to a cheap external drive. That will give you a perfect copy of a machine that you can restore if stuff hits the fan. There's a slight learning curve but it's a great free solution. Keep in mind that if you want to make images hardware independent you'll need to sysprep them, do some testing, and spend more time with them. When there's budget later on you can definitely move up to bigger and better things.

It sounds like this is one of the best alternatives to Norton Ghost (which is now discontinued apparently). I'll have to look into Clonezilla if I decide to swap out my HDD with a SSD. I've been putting it off and I might just end up building a whole new computer.