Backup Solution for 300,000 + Files

[cfe_admin]

Alright, my usual backup solution is a simple Windows Backup to a remote drive on a networked machine. This doesn't seem to be an option this time around, however.

I've got a drive housing ~300,000 files, which amounts to around 250-300 GB of data. If I do attempt to run a standard Windows Backup then I'm told that I have an estimated 2-3 WEEK time remaining. I've done a little research into tape drives/etc, but I thought I'd appeal to your collective experience. Can anyone recommend a good economic solution to back up this amount of files in a reasonable time?

Thanks for any/all feedback.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

If:

1. All the files that you need to back up are on one drive
2. Having only a few past backup copies is sufficient

then an inexpensive but pretty good solution would be to do image backups of that drive to another drive, using backup software that can do differential/incremental images.

Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows will do this.

That plus a second hard drive (that's larger than the one you're backing up) will work fairly well.

If you want to go up to an enterprise level solution with a modern tape drive, it can get really expensive really fast.

 

[cfe_admin]

Thanks for the input! I've implemented your idea, but using R-Drive Image software for a friendly $45. It still took about a day for the full backup to complete, but being as the the differential's will take far less time, and that the system was still usable during the backup, I think this will work well.

Thanks again.