Mirroring Equipment

To mirror your backup data, you will need mirror. Your mirroring equipment should have at least the same storage capacity as your Backup Storage Group. You can always use a mirror hard drive with more storage capacity than your Backup Storage, but you cannot use a smaller capacity hard drive.  When you can mirror to a hard drive or appliance that is portable, you can fulfill your off-site storage disaster recovery strategy.

You can mirror to a removable hard drive or to a disk storage appliance. A removable hard drive is created when a standard hard drive is installed inside a cage that can be easily pulled from the computer case. A disk storage appliance is a self-contained hard drive in a box that connects to your computer via USB, FireWire, or a standard network connection. 

When you decide that you would like to mirror your backup data, you can mirror to:

Mirroring to a Removable Hard Drive on the Same Computer
An economical way to comply with your company’s off-site storage initiativeis to install a removable hard drive on the same computer running your Backup for Workgroups Backup Server. With a removable hard drive on the same computer, you could mirror the Backup Server data to the removable drive and take the mirror off-site at the end of each workday. Add new drives that can be inserted into the removable drive cage to create backup rotation. Rotating the removable mirrors provides another layer of protection because one copy can always be stored off-site.

Mirroring to a Removable Hard Drive on a Different Computer
You do not need to install your removable media on the same computer running your Backup Server. The mirror can exist on any computer on your network that can be accessed through a share point available to the Backup Server.

Typically, you will find it necessary to power down the computer holding the removable drive before removing or rotating the media. You may want the removable mirror media installed on a different computer to avoid powering down the Backup Server.

Mirroring to an Appliance
Several third-party vendors offer plug-and-play storage appliances with large data capacity at attractive prices. Typically, these are small, stand-alone hard drives that attach to your computer through USB or FireWire, or they may connect to your network. You may decide to mirror your backup data to one of these storage appliances. These devices are handy because you can plug them in, perform the mirroring process, and unplug them to take off-site if desired.

Mirroring to Another Computer
You may already have servers that are being backed up by a third-party backup tool. You can use Backup for Workgroups to aggregate your backup data and mirror it to a server that is covered by this backup plan. To take advantage of your existing solution, use Backup for Workgroups to mirror your Backup Storage data to a share point located on one of these existing computers.