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Useful for backing up the server's OS?


hansolo77

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I've not looked into this much, as I don't have any of the providers you list.  But I was wondering if the potential of this add-in could be used to back up your server's OS drive into the Cloud storage of your provider.  And if so, how would one go about doing a restore should an OS drive become useless?  I'm looking for something I can automate that will keep an "updated daily" of incremental (not complete every time) backups for my server, should the unforeseeable time occur that I lose everything.

 

I've been asking around in IRC, and it looks like the Seedbox I'm subscribed to would allow me to use their drive space they allocate for me to be used as a backup.  I could simply run an sFTP connection to it, and upload my OS drive right now.  However, there's no automation to it, and no way to do incremental updates.  Plus, I don't know if something like that is capable of completely backing up EVERYTHING (hidden/system files, etc).  And as it would be, the OS would be there, but there would be no way to restore those files back without first reinstalling the OS and the FTP programs. 

 

Does such a thing exist that I'm looking for?  Would CloudDrive provide this for me?

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Windows Server Backup would do this (or Veeam Endpoint Protection, as well). 

However, both are for local disks (or Veeam allows network shares).

 

And yes, you could absolutely use StableBit CloudDrive for this. 

The problem in any case will be the restore (especially the bare metal restore).  You'd need to clone the drive to a new drive, which could take a while.  

 

Having a dedicated, local drive for OS Backup is the best bet.  A cheap, 2TB USB drive would be perfect for that. 

Additionally, Windows Server Backup allows you create a schedule with Multiple USB drives (as long as all are attached when the backup job is created), so that you can cycle the drives off site. 

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I missed that you had replied to this...

 

I currently have WHS 2011 setup to create a backup of my OS drive using the built-in WHS function.  The problem I'm afraid may happen is the drive I'm using is in the last drive bay of my enclosure, and there isn't any fan holes, so that drive is constantly overheating.  I'd like to have an offsite backup for safety sake should that drive actually fail.  Years ago we had a fire, and my server OS drive was damaged and died.  This was running WHS v1.  Luckily, I was able to get the drive working long enough to do a CloneZilla copy to a replacement drive before it died again.

 

I have an external drive enclosure that is USB.  It's basically a hot-swap caddy that I can put different drives in on the fly.  I had originally configured WHS 2011 to use that with a spare 200gb drive I had laying around.  The problem with that is there is a power button on the caddy, and if I turn it off, WHS 2011 yells at me all day about the backup drive being unavailable.  If I turn it on, it never shuts off, even if the computer is in standby, so the drive overheats really quickly.

 

Currently, my OS drive only uses 27.8gb of it's 120gb capacity.  I suppose I could buy a small USB stick (32/64gb) and just leave that plugged in.  It's not going to get hot at all.  Mechanical drives just create to much heat.  But I'd also like to have an online option "just in case".

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Ah, okay.  
And I'm sorry to hear about the fire. :(

 

 

As for the server Backup functionality, it allows you to specify multiple "backup drives".  When a backup runs, it backs up the contents to ALL of the drives.  If one or more are not available, it skips them. It was designed this way, so you could have multiple backup disks, and cycle them offsite, for just this reason.  

The caveat is that all of the drives much be attached when you create the backup schedule initially. 

 

So you could have a USB drive and an internal drive specified as backup drives. Then it shouldn't be an issue if the USB drive is not connected/powered on.  And this way, you could take it offsite without an issue.

 

 

 

As for backups, Microsoft recommends using a disk that is 50% larger than what you're backing up. So if you're just backing up that 120GB drive, you should use a 180GB drive, at the minimum.  

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So I'm coming back to this and going to play around with it some.  I haven't installed it yet.

 

Does the program have the option to very minimalistly add a remote location directly?  As I said above, through use of FTP or sFTP?  If so, I would simply create a folder on my Seedbox "Backups".  Then configure CloudDrive to connect to the Seedbox via sFTP and use that folder as a "virtual drive".  Then all I would have to do is tell the built in Server backup to use that "virtual drive" as one of the backup locations.

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Personally I don't bother backing up my OS in most cases, as I know I can reinstall the OS and most of the apps I use daily within a few hours.

What I absolutely DO backup is documents/files that can't be replaced if lost.

Tend to use Crashplan (To a machine I own) and SpiderOAK (Cloud) for backup.

 

Testing cloud drive on one of my machines to backup a few virtual machines to OneDrive and Hoping they'll be able to support Hubic at some time, this tends to be stuff that I'd like a backup copy of but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost it also the files tend to be rather large so I wouldn't want to use Google/Amazon.etc as the costs would quickly mount up.

 

Actually also looking for an alternative to Crashplan for backing up to my own server, but the problem is most of the Apps don't do encryption + incremental uploads/Block level.  The ones that do tend to be enterprise focused and cost a fortune.

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I'm just the opposite, I haven't reinstalled my OS in a long time. Lots of restores though. Though, more and more, I tinker on VMs before applying to my system. Just more stable that way.

 

And I have so much stuff on my server and desktop systems that it would be a nightmare to rebuild everything. 

 

 

Actually also looking for an alternative to Crashplan for backing up to my own server, but the problem is most of the Apps don't do encryption + incremental uploads/Block level.  The ones that do tend to be enterprise focused and cost a fortune.

Yup. Pretty much. Or any good multi-client backup solutions... :(

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