[K12OSN] offsite backup?

[Dan Young]

Paul Lemke wrote:
> Out of the 4, I like the USB hard drive the best. I'm just worried about
> reliability. I can imagine the secretary taking the hard drive home with her
> and dropping it on the floor and then it's busted. Or it falls off the desk
> or something and they are screwed. 

As you said, they are cheap. Buy two and rotate.

> So the questions... 
> 1. Is a USB hdd backup a reliable solution?

I'd think it's reliable enough if you have some redundancy. Maybe
Mon-Wed-Fri on one, Tue-Thu-Sat on the other?

> 2. What other alternatives are there that i'm missing?

A slow uplink might be OK if you're only transferring diffs over the
network (see software recommendations) and doing it only during off-peak
hours (at night). Maybe not too expensive if someone trusted can either
host at home or at a partner organization.

> And what software would you recommend? 

Some things to check out:
backuppc.sf.net
www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
www.dirvish.com
www.rsnapshot.org/
www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

These might be applicable to either offsite or rotated removable hard
drives. Whatever you do, test your backups. Only thing worse than no
backups are backups you _think_ work, but really don't.

-- 
Dan Young <dyoung at mesd.k12.or.us>
Multnomah ESD - Technology Services
503-257-1562