Home / server / Questions / 58202
In Process
PowerApp101
Asked: 2009-08-25 17:03:53 +0800 CST

Archiving old files without buying a full archiving system

  • 772

I have a large Windows file server with about 2TB of data, about half of that is over 2 years old (based on modification date). What would be the best way of archiving off that old data, using scripts or whatever, but without spending big money on a full archiving (HSM) system?

The purpose is to reduce the backup window, because all that old data is backed up every week when really it never changes and can be backed up much less frequently, thus reducing tape requirements.

BTW the archive would be on another disk, with read-only permissions.

Has anyone implemented something similar? How would users access the archive easily?

windows backup archive

3 Answers

  1. I do all of my backups with Rsync. Even if the server is Windows (which mine are) you can backup with a Linux computer or even use a Windows version of Rsync.

    Rsync will check which files have been modified since the last time they were backed up and only sync the difference. It will even do binary diffs and only transfer the changes of the file instead of transferring the entire file.

    The bottom line is Rsync is really useful and extremely efficient. The only downside is that you have to make your own scripts to use it effectively. I wrote an article on how to make daily, weekly, monthly backups here: http://www.marksanborn.net/howto/use-rsync-for-daily-weekly-and-full-monthly-backups/

    • 5

  2. If you use PowerShell, you could use a script like the following. This would go through each directory on the root of E:, match only files that are older or equal to 8/24/2007 (two years old) and move them to the path stored in $archiveTarget.

    $sourceDir = "E:\"
$archiveTarget = "\\server\share\arhive\folder\"

Get-ChildItem $sourceDir -recurse | Where-Object {!$_.PsIsContainer -and  $_.LastWriteTime -le "8/24/2007"} | ForEach { Move-Item -path $_.FullName -destination $archiveTarget }

    You could change the variable to target specific drives or folders, one at a time, until you're done. Use PowerShell's -whatif argument to see what would happen without actually moving anything. Could also pipe the results to a text file.

    • 2

  3. Try http://www.mltek.co.uk/archivemanager.aspx.

    I was searching the web for the same kind of solution and I found them. Looks like they do a really cheap 'lite' version that can move the files somewhere else (using a UNC path), then even leave seamless stubs behind so it looks like the files are still there.

    Could be worth a shot.

    • 0