In Part I of this series I explained how my apartment was burglarized and how my first attempt to secure the place fell short for me in a few areas. I stated three goals that I had for the future:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my alarm and video surveillance systems.
In this post I’ll show you what I’m doing to fulfill the first of my goals, creating a backup strategy for all of my data. Sounds boring and well it probably is but honestly this took a lot of thought, research and work. I hope I’m covered – if anyone sees any holes in my process or has any suggestions please leave a comment!
I was REALLY lucky that the thieves didn’t take my Windows Home Serve (WHS) because I didn’t have a backup strategy. Yes I KNOW! I would have lost all of my digital pictures and home videos. I shudder to think about it. Makes me almost sick to my stomach. The losers DID take my laptop but I already use Windows Live Mesh to sync my documents between my computers (laptop, home desktop and work desktop) so I didn’t really lose anything on the laptop.
I have even more reason now to make sure my WHS is backed up offsite and in (close to) real-time. My video surveillance software, Blue Iris, records directly to my WHS. I was having a very hard time keeping everything straight in my head so I started of with a simple diagram:
Lets see if I can explain what I’m doing without writing a novel then go into more detail about each piece below: My documents are synchronized between my three main machines and my Live Desktop via Live Mesh. My home computers al all backed up (complete images) to my WHS. My work computer is backed up nightly to a WHS at work. My media (photos, home videos, music) are backed up to KeepVault Online from my WHS. My media and computer backups are also backed up to a rotating backup disk that I move to work once per month.
A little more detail about each piece of the puzzle:
Live Mesh
Awesome service. Keeps my documents synchronized in near real-time between my laptop, home desktop and work machines. I love being able to save a doc at work then come home and open it and work on it. No emailing work back and forth. It just works. If I have one complaint is that on occasion the “Mesh Operating Environment” or MOE process takes up quite a bit of processor cycles. This seems to become less of a problem lately – so maybe Microsoft has been working on the issue? Be warned that Mesh is NOT a backup solution. If you delete a file from one machine… POOF it vanishes from all of the machines that are syncing to that file AND it’s gone from your Live Desktop. Mesh is part of my backup strategy but only in that it syncs my documents on all my machines and allows the other pieces of the strategy to work effectively. In case I do accidentally delete a file and Live Mesh does it’s duty and kiss it everywhere I have several options to recover that file such as ShadowCopy and my mightly WHS backups. Mostly though Live Mesh provides an immediate fail safe in case one machine (or hard drive) dies, gets stolen or burns up in a fire.
WHS Computer Backup
My Windows Home Server backs up all of my home machines every night. WHS computer backups have saved many people’s asses… including mine when a hard drives in both my home desktop machine and my laptop died. Recovery was simple and painless. In addition the WHS backups allow EASY upgrades to new hard drives. Remove old drive, insert new drive, recover the backup to new drive. (No the drives do not need to be the same size.) Done! To augment the WHS backups I use a WHS add-in called WHS Backup Database Backup (BDBB) to backup my computer backups to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly).
Keep Vault
As of this writing KeepVault seems to be the only online backup service that officially supports Windows Home Server. I signed up for 100GB of online storage for $99 per year. Cheap really - $8.25 per month - skipping a couple lattes would cover the cost and the peace of mind it gives me is WELL worth it. I use the KeepVault WHS Add-In to backup my media (pictures, music, home videos) and surveillance videos directly from my home server. I also use KeepVault to backup my media to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly). Keepvault encrypts and compresses all information that is backed up to the cloud and to the external drive.
External Hard Drive
I have an external SATA –> USB hard drive dock (a Thermaltake BlacX Duet) connected to my Windows Home Server. I drop an extra hard drive in one of the slots and let KeepVault take over. The KeepVault WHS add-in has a tab for local backups… so I point it at this removable drive and let it do the work of backing up all of my media and WHS BDBB backups to the external drive. I have an reoccurring Google calendar item to remind me to swap out the hard drive once per month. Right now I move them to my work office (which is about 20 miles from home). I am considering a safe deposit box for more secure storage.
So there you have it my personal backup strategy! I’d love to hear any comments of criticisms!