Users problem, admin issue...

[MaGneTTo]

hi there, i'm here to ask your opnion on something i'm going to explain step by step.. here it is...
i work in an university, and i'm responsable for about 100 computers... the problem is that we're having to much troubles with backups, the users just don't do them, and we had 2 hd blowing up only this wek, and it's still wednesday... don't need to mention that the 2 hd were unrecovered, and all data on it was lost... but we have about 10 zip drivers (and lots of zip disks), we have a cd writer, and it seems that they still don't do the backups that they were supposed to... here's my idea now, and i want you to comment it, i suggested the buying of a 40g hd, so using samba and quota, i'm going to create a 200mb home dir for each of the users, so they can do their backups at the end of the day... what do you think about it ??

[ 30 January 2002: Message edited by: MaGneTTo ]

[demian]

So you're gonna dedicate a remote server with the 40GB disk so that everybody shoves their files from their workstations to that machine, right? How much more trouble would it be to set up a script doing the same thing at night without user intervention?

Automating backup as much as possible is the only safe way imho. You just can't educate people to do a backup just as you can't educate them to not fscking open random email attachments (http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/01/open.html).

[Keyser Soze]

You are on the correct path, that is what networking is for. Just set it up as a policy, save your data to your user share or I am not responsible for it's loss. Doing it by script will become cumbersome over time as users or machines are added or removed. Is this a unix or windows network? Good luck, whatever the case.

[MaGneTTo]

it's a windows network, and i can't do it using a script because the machines don't stay turned on for like until 6 pm... they just work on weekends, sundays, holidays... and one other thing that i forgot to tell is that we would make a backup-cd of the backup-hd every month, or every 15 days...

Just set it up as a policy, save your data to your user share or I am not responsible for it's loss.

that's exactly my point...

Talking with the users:
"i gave you everything to backup your data, and you didn't, now it's your problem to do it all again..."

if anybody has a solution on how to do it without the users hand, let me know, because it's like demian sad:

You just can't educate people to do a backup just as you can't educate them to not fscking open random email attachments.


[ 30 January 2002: Message edited by: MaGneTTo ]

[Hena]

Actually, in case of personal backups, i doubt it is that problematic. Few times their info is busted, it teaches. Virus is more damaging to admin of system, failure to do personal backups is damage directly to user.

Whether this is the correct way to teach is ofcourse another debate :)

[camelrider]

I haven't tried Win since 95SE but I think you can still insert a script to run at startup which could send an incremental backup to your backup server.

If there is a way to have Windows run a script upon logging out for shutdown it would be a more dependable backup.

This wasn't a big deal on my old DOS box since everyone who used it depended on a menu program that inluded a "Prepare to shutdown" item that ran my backup program before returning a message "It is safe to shut down the system now"
Then I did manual full backups and defrags periodically.
(In those days I could do a full backup of each drive uncompressed to a 200MB tape!)
:cool:

[sans-hubris]

Originally posted by camelrider:
<STRONG>I haven't tried Win since 95SE but I think you can still insert a script to run at startup which could send an incremental backup to your backup server.

If there is a way to have Windows run a script upon logging out for shutdown it would be a more dependable backup.

This wasn't a big deal on my old DOS box since everyone who used it depended on a menu program that inluded a "Prepare to shutdown" item that ran my backup program before returning a message "It is safe to shut down the system now"
Then I did manual full backups and defrags periodically.
(In those days I could do a full backup of each drive uncompressed to a 200MB tape!)
:cool:</STRONG>Is it possible to throw something into the Startup folder in Windows?