[Billyd65]

Go with John on this. If you can afford it, definitely go with a gigabit switch with at least 8 ports. Then connect from the the modem to the router then to the switch. That will leave you some room on the router to expand further when the need arises. Alternatively, if your computers are going to be in different rooms, put a switch in each room and home run them back to the router. I only suggest this for ease of mapping where each device connects. I have seen people connect one machine to the local (in the same room) switch and then the next machine all the way back to the switch in the router. Makes find problems a lot harder.

[newbienet123]

hi guys.

first of all thank u so much for your advice. I hope you'll forgive me for not following your advice as i ran into problems with getting hold of the brands you guys recommended as they had none in stock and they could not tell me when they will be available.

Instead the guy at the store gave me a lacie 500gb network drive and said that this will be sufficient for my needs as i only need to backup to a network drive. I hope this will do the job and from what it looks like it seems very simple to connect.

I also bought a Netgear GS608 Switch which is an 8 port 1000mbps ethernet switch...i assume this should do the job?

Now i have a few questions regarding the setup:-

1. First of all, cobian backup might be suitable for my network backup, but will i need to install it on every pc or just one and how do i setup an automated backup, so that it backs up the necessary files to a the network storage on for example friday at 4pm?

2. Is this picture the way i need to setup the full network? :-



3. Lastly, the two new computers will have windows 7 professional installed. Will this cause any network issues as the old three pc's have already got windows vista business?

many thanks again and i look forward to hearing from you.

[JohnWill]

The switch and NAS is fine. The only "fly in the ointment" is the possibility that some of those Netgear switches don't support jumbo frames, which are necessary for maximum performance. If the serial number starts with 1FK, it supports jumbo frames. Of course, that NAS also doesn't appear to support jumbo frames, so I guess the point is moot now.

1. You would have to configure Cobian on each computer that is going to have the automated backup.

2. The diagram looks fine.

3. No problem with a mix of Windows, I have everything from 2K through Windows 7, they all play nice together.

[newbienet123]

thanks john,

i'm only backing up at most 1-2gb per day, so surely the performance is not going to be of a huge concern?

also other than cobian is there any other good backup software you can recommend? What about windows own backup utility? is that any good?

thanks

[JohnWill]

1-2 gigs a day probably won't be much of a strain, I'm sure that mix of equipment will be more than sufficient.


I would recommend against the Windows backup utility, especially since you have different versions of Windows in the mix.

There are many backup applications that you can get for free or buy for very little money, and you'll have consistent operation over the whole mix of workstations.

I like Cobian because it allows you to keep generations of backups so you can go back in time if a file gets deleted and then backed up. It'll still be on the older generations, it's like a network unerase. Since you don't have that much data from each workstations, you can probably keep a pretty deep set of generations for the backups.

[newbienet123]

cheers john mate, your a star. The only reason i didn't want cobian backup is that someone told me its drains your system resources, although i don't know as i've never used it myself.

Also lets say i set cobian backup to install every wednesday at 12pm and someone comes along and turns off the pc before that time and cobian misses the schedule, then does cobian try to backup again once the pc is on or will it wait until the following wednesday at 12pm?

thanks

[JohnWill]

That's total BS! I've been using Cobian Backup on all my machines, and there is no noticeable impact on processor or memory. Cobian's service and their interface module use a grand total of less than 2mbytes on my systems, and there is no registered CPU usage when it's just waiting start a schedule.

I don't see an option for Cobian to run a missed backup. My method is to use Sleep for my systems, since that cuts the power on a modern system to the same level as shutting it down. I use Task Manager to wake up the system for my backups, Acronis True Image for am image backup of the whole boot partition, and then Cobian Backup and Beyond Compare for selective backups of data and to the network.

[newbienet123]

well thank you for this info. I may have managed to answer my own question as i found a topic about missed backups and cobian. The guy is saying that the option is here:-

Under Tools-> Options-> Functionality I put a tick in "Run missed backups" and in "Run without asking".


here is the full link:-

http://www.cobiansoft.com/forum/Defa...g=posts&t=2706

maybe you can let me know if this option exists mate? Its also a possibility you may have an older version of cobian?

regards

[JohnWill]

Not to worry, just looking in the wrong place, the option exists, it's effective for all the backup jobs.

[newbienet123]

lol! no worries. But i should let you know...if u read the forum link info, there seems to be a problem at the moment where if a backup is missed, cobian doesn't work properly:-

http://www.cobiansoft.com/forum/Defa...g=posts&t=2706

Beejay:

It seems it could be due to the engine sometimes starting later than the interface.

Cobian:

That is exactly the poblem. This will be fixed on version 10.

[JohnWill]

Thanks, I hadn't used that option, so I didn't realize it even existed. I have those backups scheduled in the middle of the night, and I have task manager waking the machine for the backups when necessary.

[newbienet123]

Sorry for the late reply john. The reason for that is because i've been very busy setting up the network and software. Hey presto its all done and its thanks to you guys. So a big thank u to everyone...especially john.

I have a new home setup which i'm thinking of changing or adding to it, so hopefully you guys can give me ideas for that, although i'm going to start a new topic for that.

Once again thanks a million!

[JohnWill]

Glad we could assist.


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