Combining full system image with online backup

Question

I want to implement online backup for a couple of my clients. There are a few obstacles though:

1. The large amount of old data (over 100GB) will make this quite expensive to store online.

2. The slow upload speeds (1Mb) will take a long time to do the initial backup.

3. ISP won't be too happy with that upload.

I was thinking along the following lines:

1. Make a full system image (using Ghost or similar)

2. Set the online backup to store files changed since the image was made.

What is the best way to do this? Is there an easier method?

Answer 1

I've been using a mix of crashplan and various full disk imaging software to handle my backup needs - crashplan lets me make a backup to a hard-drive which i can move over to a remote system easily, and the full disk image helps act as a known good restore point. I periodically update the full disk image, and crashplan keeps a constant online backup.

I don't back up system files, usually just user files to crashplan to reduce the size of backups.

I'm using my own drives/systems throughout, so its no additional cost, and so far has been troublefree. I can also recover both a subset of, or entire systems as needed.