Thanks, Bill.
Do you use dump/restore, tar, or cpio/apio with your HD setup, or maybe
find/cp?
-Robert
Bill Ehlert wrote:
>
> Robert,
>
> Here's how the backups work for us at our dental office.
>
> Patient data is collected during the day via 10 small Win98SE work stations
> and saved on a 20 GB Linux server. Digital images like X-rays and patient
> photos take up about 10 MB per patient. The office manager controls when she
> wants to synchronize server files to the removable hard drive cartridge. She
> clicks an icon on her desktop to run my script to do an incremental backup
> of only new files and just those files that have changed. She can synch any
> time she needs to, but normally does this at the end of the day, before
> shutting down, or if a thunderstorm is approaching. Yes, its true, we do
> live in the lighting capitol of the world.
>
> Incremental backups take less that 5 min on a drive that has old data on it.
> (It takes less than half hour on an empty or freshly formatted drive because
> all files are copied to the backup.) For example, on Friday she will have
> the old Monday hard drive online waiting to be synched. When she says
> backup, new or any changed files from Tuesday through Friday are updated on
> the Friday backup. Now the Friday backup has the entire database and is
> current with the Friday server. The dentist takes the drive home and returns
> the next day with the old Tuesday drive ready to repeat the cycle.
>
> The dentist verifies the backups on his home system and has access to ALL
> patients records in case of an emergency. Off site storage protects him in
> the event of fire or theft at the office.
>
> The 20 GB removable drive stores all patient data not just incremental. We
> had a nightmare when we tried to use CD for incremental backup. The office
> manager had to log what was on each CD and make an index for each patient.
> It was a major job keeping track of what data was on each CD. The office
> manager had better things to do and the dentist said NO.
>
> To restore the CD backups in the event of fire would have been a long and
> agonizing journey. I just did not want to go there. Restoring from the
> removable hard drive is a snap. I ask the office manager to press the
> restore button and we go to lunch - its done when we get back. She feels
> good and I get a free lunch.
>
> So, Robert, think it out and understand what you really need in the way of
> backups. The size of your database will determine what media you should
> choose. You may get by with tape or CDs.
>
> Bill
>
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