Recommendations for Backing Up Scientific Instrumentation Host PCs

[RickV]

I work in electron microscopy and need to be concerned about developing a robust procedure for backing up the three host computers (Win7 Pro) for the microscope and my own laptop (Win10 Enterprise). I have a WD Elements portable drive to use if this is useful for additional storage of the backup or restore files I generate.

I used Macrium recently while performing some hardware upgrades to home computer and it failed. I noticed the sticky for clonezilla as well. Of course, there is also MS Backup yet, I am not familiar enough with either of these applications to know which is best for my lab needs.

Note the instrumentation host computers in the lab are:

1 - hp Z440 Workstation
https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business-solutions/z440-workstation#!&tab=features

2 - Dell OptiPlex 7020
Dell OptiPlex 7020 Mini Tower Owner's Manual


3 - hp 800 G1 Tower

Thank you.

 

[samuria]

What do you want to backup data or whole system? If it's data how much are we talking about? It's down to how mission critical data is. Depending on size saving data to the cloud is a good option as you can retrieve it anywhere in the world. People often backup to local drives the problem is a fire, robbery, natural disasters which can cause you to loose PC's and backup

 

[RickV]

samuria,

I consider it best to backup everything. I have several places I can locate the files on the network in addition to the portable WD. I do not presently have a Dropbox or other similar account but, it sounds like I need to create such an account. I want to store multiple copies of these backup files (at least two).

 

[samuria]

It depends on what your running in our labs everything ran on virtual PC reason being if the PC dies it's a problem getting another the same to restore backup to. With virtual PC it can run on any of so if PC dies you can copy virtual pc

 

[RickV]

Are you referring to Virtual PC from Microsoft or, any general software similar to this? Regardless, I am not running any of these host computers from a virtual pc application such as VMware, MS Virtual PC, etc. I do not know if any of these systems can be operated from this type of software but, I suspect it may be feasible. I can convey that I am only likely to be able to consider this as an option for one of these three host computers. This may or, may not be, a technical limitation. Rather, the manufacturer is not talking with us because, we do not have a service contract. Two of these host computers communicate on a network. I am fairly certain the third operates independently of this.