Thread: Need Network Backup Recommendation

Over a few years I've become friends with a guy who runs a bar/restaurant business.

His Point of Sale system is also something of a Piece of Shit, and last year I showed him how to get data out of it in a portable way (a CSV file). He decided that Excel was a tool he liked, and so I built some spreadsheets for him.

Talking to him a few days ago, I discovered that he's keeping business-critical data on a hand-me-down laptop (used to be his kid's) that isn't particularly well secured and spends a fair amount of time near drinks and food. I don't know which is more likely - that this thing goes tits-up because it's cheap hardware, or that it dies when the Pepsi of Death gets spilled over the keyboard.

The laptop runs Windows 10. The amount of data is pretty small. I can handle a local backup solution, but he really should have something off-site and network based (I guess we're all calling it "The Cloud" these days).

I don't keep up with the Windows world. Who sells a decent product for a reasonable price?

He doesn't need system-level backup. He won't need to recover a bootable image. If he can, that's great. But at a minimum he needs something that will let him schedule an automatic backup of a few designated directories - basically, whatever the Windows equivalent of rsync and cron is.

It also needs an interface that's a little more approachable than rsync and cron.

I'm considering something like DropBox, but that feels like a not-quite-right fit.

Suggestions, and other advice, would be appreciated.


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Originally Posted by Phyrelight

Dropbox would be perfect for this function. The only downside to dropbox is that you set a dropbox specified location on the system and anything in that directory is synced to Dropbox.

If you don't want the limitation of only files in that single directory being backed up try CrashPlan https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/

I personally prefer Dropbox but I don't have a problem keeping my files in one sub-folder and working on them from there. CrashPlan has filters that you set and it scans the entire system for matches and backs them up. You can go all the way down to targeting just mp3 or larger and doing the persons profile.

Full disclosure, I have used Dropbox personally for years. I have rolled out and supported enterprise versions of both Dropbox and CrashPlan for my work. I have tried the consumer version of Crashplan (free trial through work) and though it was great I didn't feel it was worth the price given that Dropbox is free for 2GB of storage and you can increase that space with referrals. 500mb per referral capping at 25GB for free which is what I have.

It's not a problem for him to keep all his work-related files in a single directory (with sub-directories). There are two concerns I have with DropBox.

(1) directory discipline. I'm not worried he puts work files somewhere else, I'm worried that a bunch of other shit will also get stored in that directory and he'll wind up sync-ing all of it to DropBox.

(2) versioning. If his local copies get corrupted, DropBox will happily update the Cloud version to the corrupted version. Decent backup includes some idea of versioning and/or time-based images.

Part of this is the caveman in me. When I first learned industrial-strength backup, it included sending physical media (DATs or hot-swap HDDs) off-site. They were protected from a fire, but also from being over-written.

Can DropBox do that?

I will look into CrashPlan.

Thanks for the response.


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Originally Posted by dex71

^ Does he have a home machine he could hook to an external drive?

He could upload his stuffs to dropbox, and target his Windows backup to include the Dropbox folder(s) on his home machine.

That's a good question. I don't know what he's got at home, but I'll ask.

One thing he says he has is an external drive. I asked him to bring it in and I'm figuring to use that for daily backups. I assume that Windows (still) has some rudimentary backup included (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Otherwise, I'll point him at something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0..._li_tl?ie=UTF8

The problem then becomes one of convenience. The real-world problem is that the laptop tends to go where it's needed, and every extra thing plugged into it becomes one more thing to unplug (whenever someone takes it somewhere to type up the specials menu for that night) and then replug later on when someone (hopefully) brings it back to the locked 'office' (a big closet).

It'd be nice if he had some network attached storage, but this is a small biz owner trying to make things work. He's gonna want to know why I want him to spend money rather than use the drive he has. That's the point where I don't say, "Because I've played this game before and I know that your team isn't good enough to be that diligent. I will bet my first-born child against your bar that the night this thing goes up in smoke is exactly one month after one of your waitresses (or, more likely, wife) unplugged the drive so she could plug in her phone charger."

The Universe tends towards Maximum Irony.

Anyway, I'll look into DropBox and ask if he has a home machine.


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Originally Posted by Kanati

PERSONALLY, I would use a local backup solution such as EaseUs ToDo Backup and have it do incremental backups to an external hard drive. That software will automatically nuke old backups to keep within a drive space window or X number of days window. THEN, for offsite, dropbox or onedrive, or whatever can sync the backup drive. That gives you immediate retrieval irrespective of bandwidth. Then in the case of meteor strike or tragic destruction of his bar by sharknado, he'll also have the security of an offsite backup. Never settle for a single backup. Redundancies for redundancies when it comes to mission critical data.

I use google drive for a bunch of my personal folders. For my...... media... I move it to hard drives. I was then making copies of those hard drives. But recently I added a tape robot/library with 24 LTO5 tapes (72TB) so I can have something a little more stable than hard drives as a secondary backup. But I don't think he needs a 3000 dollar tape library.

Hmm. That's also a good idea - use the local drive for increments and versioning, and then sync that to a (free?) off-site clown solution.

[pretty sure it's Jason Scott who gets credit for that: iClown, Clown Backup. Clown Services - it's just perfect]

I should have thought of that. I'm too used to a budget and planning. If backup isn't part of the infrastructure, what's the point?

So, uh, EaseUs? Can I just use the native Windows backup?

[I honestly don't know. I lead an almost Windows-free life. My plan was to type "b-a-c-k-u-p" into the Windows help function and go from there.]

Agreed about the redundancies.

The real issue is that all this shit should be handled by his POS system. The guy is just trying to run a business. All the actual data is already in the clown. The problem is that the system has really weak reporting, and little to no analytics. He shouldn't have to export six months of data and fuck around in Excel just to find trends in salad preferences or Gin drinks.

I'm honestly thinking about sending a proposal to the company that sells the software. They've got the damned data. How are they not using analytics as a selling point? ... and will they pay me $$$ to write that for them?

Also - tapes? Last thing I knew about tapes was 4 GB DAT. I had no idea that the tech had... well, it's not quite Moore's Law but 3 TB on a tape? That's news to me.

Lastly, you and I need to start a data security business... because if I ever came across a backup solution that was SHARKNADO PROOF, I would - literally - give them all my money.


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We use crashplan at work for our servers.