ECE: PC Backups

There are several methods for backing up a personal PC:

• CDRW drives are highly recommended for persons with critical data. The best way to be sure of data security is to be vigilant and redundant. This means doing it yourself, and CDRW (or DVD if you have very large data sets) is an easy media to use.

• Copying important files to your networked home directories is another good method. The central servers are backed up in their own time and this provides for a solid, redundant solution. The large caveat here is that users need to be fully aware that all such storage will count against their personal disk quota. Compared to the potential storage space on a PC, user home quotas are very small and extensions to that quota are not granted. Judicious selection of files to be backed up in this method is required.

• For faculty and full time staff, ECE also offers a central PC backup server. It is an IBM X-series server with approximately 600GB of usable space which is shared by all the users of the system. From a windows system (or smbclient), this space is accessed as:

  \\iago\pcbackup

  The server is considered stable. Even so, it is still highly recommended that users back up their most important files to a local media, such as CDRW.

Tivoli Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is the "official" backup solution provided by the department for the Windows operating system. . To have this software loaded on your PC, contact the site staff. Initial loading and configuration can be done for you, though it is recommended that you are present at the time of configuration. As your PC storage changes, you may need to make modifications to the CDP system.

For non-Windows OS, please contact site for assistance.