Having been a system administrator for a university, here are some comments
on backups.

1. NEVER overwrite your backup - ALWAYS alternate backup media so that you
overwrite an older copy. The reasoning: if your backup operation fails and
you also find that your hard drive has failed, you just destroyed your only
backup! If you alternate, then you still have a good backup; you only wiped
out an older backup.

2. It is usually a good idea to ARCHIVE some backups. That is, keep old
copies of backups along the way. At the university we kept (forever) a full
backup for each month. During the month, we kept a full backup for each
week, but these tapes would be reused once the monthly backup was completed.
During the week, we would do a backup each day, but only of the files that
were changed since the last weekly backup.

At home, I like to keep backups of perhaps a couple times a year, and still
have some that are even over 5-years old. If you are like most users, you
will delete files that you no longer need. What if you later decide that you
did want that file after all? Having an old backup of before you deleted the
file could be a great help.

An additional comment regarding media. I currently use a USB external hard
disk to do my backups. This is because it runs so much faster that way. My
old backups are on 4mm DAT tape - expensive hardware, but cheap tapes
(relatively). DVDs are not bad, but here is my problem. My hard drive has
almost 100GB of files on it! It would take over 20 DVDs to do a full backup.
Even with DDS4 DAT tape it would take 5 tapes. Backing up to an external
hard disk is not a problem because my USB drive is 200GB in size. However,
the hard drive does not lend itself to ARCHIVAL storage. So I have started
to use DVD of selected backups for archives. I am starting to give up on DAT
tape because it is more awkward to do.

Just some suggestions.

Peter
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The NoSpin Group
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> -----Original Message-----
> Sven, I try to back up my personal files to CD-RWs.  I simply
> don't know
> whether to:  1) backup to the SAME disk (that is, rewrite
> over old files),
> or use a NEW CD-RW each time.  Can you advise me?  For
> instance, if I backup
> My Documents today and again in three months, would I use two
> different
> CD-RWs?  Sorry if this shows how un-geeky I am.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Barbara Allen

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