How often do you back up?

Michael-AdEx · Aug 31, 2010

I am just wondering how often the other admins here backup their websites and what methods you use in order to make sure your data is secure?

I am considering doing this myself, have backups with the hosting company, at the same time download nightly, weekly and monthly backups of all data to my PC via SyncBackPro, which is then forwarded onto another hard drive, like an external one in a station with other drives, I forget what they are called. Would that be a good idea or is there something better than that I could be doing?

Share your methods too if you want as it may help others :wink:

Lisa · Aug 31, 2010

Twice daily - first thing in the morning and last thing I do before shutting down at night. I then keep a copy of each backup on the harddrive, a copy on an external drive and a copy on a DVD-R ... paranoid much?

dieselpowered · Aug 31, 2010

My host does nightly backups...I also backup just before I call it quits for the day.

DavidMcHenry · Sep 1, 2010

dieselpowered said:
My host does nightly backups...I also backup just before I call it quits for the day.

Just checking to see your methods of securing your backups.

1. Don't rely on the hosts. They never have backups...ever.
2. Do you download your backup nightly to your home PC?

Personally I have a schedule. My server files hardly ever change so I only do a file system backup once per week, which gets automatically downloaded to my media server/ubuntu box at work.

Database backups are done nightly, and every other day they are downloaded to the ubuntu box as well, and then I manually delete all but the last monthly backup that was made to save disk space.

AlanCIT · Sep 1, 2010

My server runs a backup every night and just dumps everything on to a second hard drive. I'd like to start backing up to an off-site location but I'm too lazy/cheap to bother setting it up. The only thing I would like to change, and probably will at some point soon, is the frequency of the MySQL backups, would like them to be every few hours.

GTB · Sep 1, 2010

I do daily complete backups. Of both database and all site files. And also keep archived versions from days before. All done to my computers HD.

Ryan_R · Sep 1, 2010

I've got a cron job that runs hourly, daily, and weekly that keeps loads of backups of everything for me...I have an hourly backup of all databases for the past 12 hours, a daily backup for the past 14 days, and a weekly backup for the past 4 weeks. On top of that, I've got a file (public_html) backup that runs every day.

Maybe a bit overkill, but with how cheap storage is these days, why not?

CallieJo · Sep 1, 2010

I download backups of all files anytime I make changes, before and after.
I frequently download backups of my databases for my most important sites. Too time consuming to do it for them all.
And my server does auto backups to another server every week.

2dub · Sep 1, 2010

Ryan mentioned having a chron job do the back up for him what reliable automatic backups are there out there?

zappaDPJ · Sep 2, 2010

We use a cron job to backup all our SQL once every 24 hours and I manually download to a local drive once a week.

I also manually download the entire installation to a local drive after any major file change is made.

I do know for a fact that my host provider takes a backup very regularly because they recently had a major failure that took out the majority of my sites. After they rebuilt everything, as far as I could tell, we didn't lose a single byte of data.

Blair20 · Sep 3, 2010

my host do the job i have no idea about it . . . may b once a day .

zappaDPJ · Sep 3, 2010

Blair20 said:
my host do the job i have no idea about it . . . may b once a day .

You might want to read through this thread http://adminextra.com/topic/3391-cr...my-websites-oh-well-thanks-for-nothing-hostv/. It demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt whey you should still take your own regular backups.

[Edited to include the link, the entire point of my post. Now has anyone seen my keys?

]

Michael · Sep 3, 2010

Blair20 said:
my host do the job i have no idea about it . . . may b once a day .

Don't fool yourself. Make your own back ups, else you'll be writing a topic like THIS ONE.

Michael-AdEx · Sep 3, 2010

2dub said:
Ryan mentioned having a chron job do the back up for him what reliable automatic backups are there out there?

SyncBackPro I think is the best solution myself, you could even do both, you can never be too careful, with SyncBackPro you would be able to download your sites files and databases incrementally everytime you switched on your PC and even set it to create duplicates if needed. It really is flexible

Twink · Sep 3, 2010

Mike54 said:
Don't fool yourself. Make your own back ups, else you'll be writing a topic like that one

I can't stress enough how important it is to do your own and if the site is busy I'd do it twice a day better safer than sorry later lol

:clown:

Weatherz · Feb 6, 2012

I have my own VPS, so I have an automated backup every 3 days. I tend to have enemies, so it really helps.

Shawn Gossman · Feb 6, 2012

I run a dedicated server, as a benefit my hosting service backs up my dedicated server every hour, every day. I have an area where I can access it. I also have a cron job set to back up my forums once every hour, every day and I manually back them up once a day to my computer which eventually go to a flash drive.

That may seem a bit too much but IMO it never hurts to prepare

Biker-AdEx · Feb 6, 2012

Hourly backups? Overkill. And puts more strain on the server than needed, especially with a large site. Daily backups are more than sufficient. Do them when site activity as at its lowest, usually late at night.

Shawn Gossman · Feb 7, 2012

I use a "files forever" type service with my host

Its a low rate and that is where I store things. Besides, I purchased a quite large dedicated server, I am sure my backups (which I tend to delete after a while) are not even touching the server

Adam H · Feb 7, 2012

I currently run a 12 hour backup of databases, Weekly backups of files and databases. ( full backups ) . I also have a nightly backup on the email and documents machines to upload to a non public server which is powered by a cool little problem you can all download called filefort .

How often do you back up?

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