Crashplan

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fishdrzig
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Crashplan

Post by fishdrzig » Fri Feb 19, 2010 8:37 am

Question about backups
If I purchase the Crashplan program as recoomended by OD in the Index section, (~$100 year) does this mean I won't have to do any more backups to my external hard drives and upload to a home computer anymore?

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jordansparks
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Re: Crashplan

Post by jordansparks » Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:36 am

It means you will leave your HD attached and quit transporting it. It means you will not have to think about any of it more frequently than about once a month. I still think you need to go to the hassle of restoring to your home computer at least once every month or two, especially after you first set up your backups. You must be confident in the restore process. By following the abover, you will have 3 backups in place:
1. The hard drive.
2. The internet.
3. At home (not as frequent).

And that is acceptable.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

brentwood
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Re: Crashplan

Post by brentwood » Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:46 am

Dr. Sparks said it very well. You don't have to take the external hard drive home to restore it. You can do that. But that is a lot of hassels. I would suggest you backup to one of the other office machines and forget about the external hard drive if you leave that machine on all the time.

Dr. Sparks' suggestion is very good. With Crashplan, at least three places you should backup to are office (external hard drive or other machines), home, and Crashplan Central. Now you have at least one on-site, and two off-site backups. You can restore at home from any of your three backups.

I suggest you purchase three-year family plan. It is $5 a month. You can backup as many computers as you want with unlimited space. Those computers don't have to be at the same physical location.

Last suggestion: stay away from Mozy.
Last edited by brentwood on Fri Feb 19, 2010 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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jordansparks
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Re: Crashplan

Post by jordansparks » Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:07 am

I still like hard drives for backup even if you just always leave them plugged in. It emphasizes that it is a backup, you never have to worry about it being turned off, it's really fast without clogging your network, and you can grab it and move it to another computer if needed. Nice clean solution.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

fishdrzig
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Re: Crashplan

Post by fishdrzig » Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:18 am

This may be a good solution for another problem I have been thinking about. I need a new home computer and wanted to order one with Windows 7 and was thinking of purchasing Crashplan, backup everything from my HomeXP computer and then restoring everything using Crashplan in the new computer? Any thoughts? Will this work?

brentwood
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Re: Crashplan

Post by brentwood » Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:45 am

I think you want to use the backup of the old computer for the new computer. Check out the following article. I never try it. Please still keep the old computer before you are sure it works.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/h ... ing_backup

If you simply want to trnasfer files, copying it drectly through network is much simpler.

nathansparks
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Re: Crashplan

Post by nathansparks » Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:09 pm

You would never want to restore 'everything' from your old machine to your new machine, you just want the data, the documents, images etc.. IF you have been organized, it is VERY simple, just copy the documents from your old machine ovver the network was brentwood ended with, they are already in one folder. IF not, organize your old machine first, then just drag and drop over network. NO need to go over internet.

fishdrzig
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Re: Crashplan

Post by fishdrzig » Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:01 pm

Ok, I just downloaded all the CrashPlan stuff as recommended. I have my local computers ready and also ready to backup online. My question, should I backup my entire C drive or just parts of it online? Question 2 What folders should I backup to my home computer with CrashPlan and which folders to my other office computer with CrashPlan? Thanks for the help. I think I feel more secure doing this now ---- with all the HIPAA stuff to worry about these days.

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jordansparks
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Re: Crashplan

Post by jordansparks » Fri Feb 26, 2010 8:15 pm

No, not the entire C drive. Just very small parts of it. Particularly the two folders listed towards the bottom of
http://www.opendental.com/manual/backups.html

For example, if you were on your server, you would backup the two folders that looked similar to this:
C:\mysql\data\opendental
C:\OpenDentImages
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

fishdrzig
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Re: Crashplan

Post by fishdrzig » Wed Mar 17, 2010 4:38 am

I am still trying to understand the whole CrashPlan backup scenario. At present, I have C: mysql/data/opendental and opend dental images Crashplan backing up online to their servers, to one of my office computers, to my external hard drive and to my home computer. I was trying to import all the info by using the Restore function. I am on the latest v of 6.9 at the office and have 7.0 at home. It takes 3 days to restore the backup? Does this sound right? Just trying to practice in case I need to restore a backup at the office, not really sure how to do it. Any insight would be great. Thank you

brentwood
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Re: Crashplan

Post by brentwood » Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:23 am

If it takes three days to restore the backup, then you must have a very successful office! Just kidding. You must have restored it from Crashplan central. It takes time to go over the Internet for huge amount of data.

If you are at your home computer, you can restore from any backups you have over the Internet except the external hard drive attached to your office server. You can see from the restore screen that that external hard drive is not visible from your home computer. That external hard drive backup copy can only be restored from server computer. Or bring it home, attach to your home computer and restore from there with some settings changed. I read somewhere about how to do it. But I don’t have that configuration, I never tried.

I usually restore from Crashplan for mysql backup only. I don’t restore opendental images that often through that since it is slow that way. It takes only seconds to restore the database from crashplan. I restore from the backup on my home computer to my home computer for both mysql and open dental image files at least once a week. It is very fast since both of them are on the same machine. The crashplan backup is on a different hard drive.

I usually restore directly over the open dental files on my home computer. So I choose :”most recent”, “original location”, and “overwrite”. Sometimes you will see error messages that the files are in use and cannot be overwritten. You need to stop the mysql service, do the restore, and start the service again. Mysql will lock the files for certain period of time after use. So you just recently use Open Dental and try to restore, you will see that. It has nothing to do with Crashplan.

klinlv
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Re: Crashplan

Post by klinlv » Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:55 am

With Crashplan Central you can "seed" to them, then the online backup is only a few minutes daily. They send you a drive that you backup to and it save a great deal of time after you return it to them they download it and the you do your daily or many times daily backup depending on your settings. The same is true for restore, they can send you a drive to attach to restore from if you have a catastrophic failure. The seed drive for backup was about $120 never had to do the restore so not sure of cost or timing. i also have onsite backups (other usb drives) and use crashplan to my house. ... come to think of it I must be paranoid...

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DavidWolf
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Re: Crashplan

Post by DavidWolf » Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:21 am

The best reason to have a external hard drive backup is not to protect from a data crash, it is to protect against a hardware crash. If your server goes down you can restore the backup to a different computer in a matter of minutes and start using it as an emergency mysql server.
I found out the hard way that it does not matter how safely your data is backed up if your server crashes you are completely helpless until you can get OD open on at least one workstation.
____________
Cheers,
Dave Wolf

fishdrzig
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Re: Crashplan

Post by fishdrzig » Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:12 am

Hypothetically, if I had a server crash, what steps would I need to follow to get OD running on another computer? I ask because I would like to practice how to do it so I know.

1. What would I need to back up on my external?
2. When I connect my external to my other computer, how can I get OD up and running?
3. I presently use CrashPlan and have a WD passport for the external.

Thanks for the advice.

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jordansparks
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Re: Crashplan

Post by jordansparks » Tue Mar 23, 2010 2:10 pm

"Practice" by restoring to your home computer frequently. If your office goes down, carry in your computer from home. At least that's one reasonable approach.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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drfredc
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Re: Crashplan

Post by drfredc » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:47 pm

Another option for manual backup is to buy a portable "Passport HD drive" (~$80+). They are small, pocket sized, USB 320G plus HDs that you plug into a computer's USB port and boots into a backup and/or restore mode. After configured the first use, on subsequent times you plug it, after a few simple clicks it backups or restores what you need, you unplug and you're on your way home. The backup process can also be encrypted and password protected, which is important for clinical and accounting info...

However, if the purpose of the backup is to have access to the clinical OD info at home, you might be better off with logmein.com (or others similar services) that allow you to securely connect to your office server over the internet. That way you (and trusted staff) can remotely check pt info, make appointments, record RXs and more on your office system from your home or anywhere in the world you have internet connection. One time, my front desk was sick. But not so sick that she couldn't log in and help sort some stuff out with the staff over the phone -- sort of exactly like how the OD training is done...

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