Andy, A couple of things: First you need to examine why you need File Vault. It is scary technology to me because it ties up your whole user folder into one encrypted archive, that, in the event of any kind of corruption, would make very necessary that backup you had better have done very recently.
Also, there are several applications that I have heard of that don't play well or at all with FileVault enabled. You're right about the fact that it will make larger backups necessary every night. Big time. Everybody's whole user folder, every night. The only solution to that is to get a large, fast backup. That means dumping any thought of USB as a viable solution. I'd suggest a FireWire DAT, AIT or DLT drive. Plan on $800-$2000 for the drive. Your media costs are going to be higher, too: 40? to $1.00/GB for the various tapes that hold 20-40GB. Another option is an external DVD drive. Drive, media costs and maximum capacity lower. The first thing you do is find out how much space you will need on a nightly basis and choose a medium that will work well for you. With tape you should be able to get a whole normal backup and several incremental backups on one tape. With DVD you are probably going to want to use one disk per night. Remember that FileVault, as you mentioned, sort of messes up the concept of nightly incrementals. Man, I HOPE you don't have any heavy iApps (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, etc.) users on your network. You can get a Sonnet Harmoni for the iMac that will add a faster processor and a FW port for about $250. For less than $150 you can get a Beige G3 from MegaMacs.com and add a FW card for less than $100. YMMV I have set up several clients with DAT, AIT and CD backups solutions. Feel free to ask more questions, on- or off-list. jonathan On Feb 6, 2004, at 5:15 PM, macgroup-digest wrote: > Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 22:55:51 -0500 > From: andrew arnold <a0arno01 at Louisville.edu> > Subject: MacGroup: Backup suggestions? > > I have an iMac on a network that serves as our "server". It is a 350mhz > model with usb and ethernet, no firewire. I have been backing up using > a > CD-RW burner and Retrospect on the iMac. I know many of you use > Retrospect. > > I am required at work to begin using file vault on all the machines > (6). I > have read that this will increase the size and time of backups > dramatically, > because the whole user folder must be backed up when there is even a > small > incremental change to one of the files. > > So my question is this: Is there a USB-DVD burner or USB tape backup > drive > that would be a better option than a CD-RW? Or any other bright > suggestions??? > > Thanks > > > Kind regards, > Andy > a0arno01 at athena.louisville.edu > -- Jonathan Fletcher jfletch at newmediaconstco.com | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be February 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
