Hi,
A friend of mine has a Computer tower minus the hard drive. I have several HDD which if I can remember might have XP on them as an operating system I see no problem installing my old HDD in the tower and formatting it. I then would like to hook up the tower to my main system and use it as a backup. Can I just use a USB cable(s) from the main unit to the tower? Any special programing required?
Thanks and have a SAFE day!

 

Hi,
A friend of mine has a Computer tower minus the hard drive. I have several HDD which if I can remember might have XP on them as an operating system I see no problem installing my old HDD in the tower and formatting it. I then would like to hook up the tower to my main system and use it as a backup. Can I just use a USB cable(s) from the main unit to the tower? Any special programing required?
Thanks and have a SAFE day!

The problem with that is that you now have masters on the same network and they may or may not play nice with each other. If you could configure one of the devices as a backup storage device -- then maybe, but I think it might be a heavy lift.

 

Hi,
A friend of mine has a Computer tower minus the hard drive. I have several HDD which if I can remember might have XP on them as an operating system I see no problem installing my old HDD in the tower and formatting it. I then would like to hook up the tower to my main system and use it as a backup. Can I just use a USB cable(s) from the main unit to the tower? Any special programing required?
Thanks and have a SAFE day!

I may be wrong, but I don't believe you can use USB to run one PC to another.

The best way is via ethernet. It is well supported and there are many backup programs available for Windows.

If it were me, I'd install Linux on the tower and use it as a backup server. Nice thing about it: Linux is free.

Edit: and Linux plays really well with older hardware.

 

I have never tried it but this says it is possible via USB.
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-transfer-data-from-pc-to-pc-using-usb-cable

 

I have never tried it but this says it is possible via USB.
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-transfer-data-from-pc-to-pc-using-usb-cable

Funny, I've never seen a USB-A plug to USB-A plug cable before. They exist?

 

I've got hardware raid 5 for my all my main server drives, 8TB raid 1 mirror on the backup server using Bacula to image servers daily and I'm still paranoid about adequate backups. I would never trust USB for backups when fast, dependable ethernet is an option.

 

I believe I have used BNC cables on 10BASE-2 as well as 10BASE-T crossover cable to backup one computer to another
(back in the days when NIC cards supported those connectors).

 

I've got hardware raid 5 for my all my main server drives, 8TB raid 1 mirror on the backup server using Bacula to image servers daily and I'm still paranoid about adequate backups. I would never trust USB for backups when fast, dependable ethernet is an option.

I wrote this little gem to capture daily snapshots of my various servers. It runs on the backup server via a cron job. It uses hard links so that only changed files are recorded, but the "-current" soft link always has the latest image.

I can go back to any day by accessing the desired dated directory.

#!/bin/bash

#pull-backup from-host host-path dest-dir

BACKUP_HOST=$1

BACKUP_PATH=`dirname $2`

BACKUP_DIR=`basename $2`

DEST_PATH=${3%/}

TODAY=`date "+-%y%m%d%H%M%S"`

BACKUP_FILESPEC=$BACKUP_HOST:$BACKUP_PATH/$BACKUP_DIR

TEMP_BACKUP_DIR="$DEST_PATH/$BACKUP_DIR-temp$TODAY"

TODAY_BACKUP_DIR="$BACKUP_DIR$TODAY"
OLD_CURRENT_LINK="$DEST_PATH/$BACKUP_DIR-current"
NEW_CURRENT_LINK="$DEST_PATH/$TODAY_BACKUP_DIR"

rsync -caz --delete --link-dest=$OLD_CURRENT_LINK/ $BACKUP_FILESPEC/ $TEMP_BACKUP_DIR/ \
  && mv $TEMP_BACKUP_DIR $NEW_CURRENT_LINK \
  && rm -f $OLD_CURRENT_LINK \
  && ln -s $NEW_CURRENT_LINK $OLD_CURRENT_LINK

Edit: It's not smart enough to do the initial rsync. That has to be done manually the first time pulling from a new server.

 

The Bacula status of one client hp-fd

xxx:~# bacula-console
Connecting to Director 10.1.1.1:9101
1000 OK: 103 sma2-dir Version: 9.6.3 (09 March 2020)
Enter a period to cancel a command.
*status
Status available for:
1: Director
2: Storage
3: Client
4: Scheduled
5: Network
6: All
Select daemon type for status (1-6): 3
The defined Client resources are:
1: sma2-fd
2: nmusic-fd
3: hpdesk-fd
4: nsma2-fd
5: rv-fd
6: hp-fd
7: misc-fd
Select Client (File daemon) resource (1-7): 6
Connecting to Client hp-fd at 10.1.1.2:9102

hp-fd Version: 9.6.3 (09 March 2020) x86_64-pc-linux-gnu debian bullseye/sid
Daemon started 26-Mar-20 14:03. Jobs: run=14 running=0.
Heap: heap=18,446,744,073,709,535,232 smbytes=25,920 max_bytes=1,186,832 bufs=99 max_bufs=769
Sizes: boffset_t=8 size_t=8 debug=0 trace=0 mode=0,0 bwlimit=0kB/s
Plugin: bpipe-fd.so

Running Jobs:
Director connected at: 09-Apr-20 14:05
No Jobs running.
====

Terminated Jobs:
JobId Level Files Bytes Status Finished Name
===================================================================
3775 Incr 4,117 631.7 M OK 30-Mar-20 23:05 hp
3783 Incr 4,569 606.0 M OK 31-Mar-20 23:05 hp
3791 Incr 11,929 600.6 M OK 01-Apr-20 23:05 hp
3799 Incr 2,572 294.0 M OK 02-Apr-20 23:05 hp
3807 Incr 2,249 254.1 M OK 03-Apr-20 23:05 hp
3815 Incr 1,273 155.2 M OK 04-Apr-20 23:05 hp
3823 Full 1,712,378 115.3 G OK 06-Apr-20 00:17 hp
3831 Incr 4,038 725.9 M OK 06-Apr-20 23:26 hp
3839 Incr 33,368 2.651 G OK 07-Apr-20 23:05 hp
3847 Incr 2,372 434.5 M OK 08-Apr-20 23:05 hp
====
You have messages.
*

 

Funny, I've never seen a USB-A plug to USB-A plug cable before. They exist?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-pcs-W...902435?hash=item262b75df63:g:rLwAAOSwa~Ndxzty

 

In the past I have always used cat5 crossover cables on the NIC, but I don't remember the config procedure anymore.

Just use external drives now.

 

Hi,
A friend of mine has a Computer tower minus the hard drive. I have several HDD which if I can remember might have XP on them as an operating system I see no problem installing my old HDD in the tower and formatting it. I then would like to hook up the tower to my main system and use it as a backup. Can I just use a USB cable(s) from the main unit to the tower? Any special programing required?
Thanks and have a SAFE day!

It would be much easier to buy a USB ethernet adapter for each computer and connect them together with a cross-over cable. It will be faster throughput and the adapters are very inexpensive (less than 10 usd each). Network speed is something to consider if your planning to use the second PC to store and retrieve files over the network..

But you should be able to connect the two computers with usb cables then setup a PPP connection between them.
In the past, this used to be done for USB cable modems.

eT

 

Boy, Lots of great answers here!
I am just thinking, I guess I am trying to do an "External Hard drive". I have never seen one. Can I use one of my own HHD's some how to hook up with my system. Obviously power is needed( I do have a working computer power supply) which could be hooked up to the back of the HDD. But data is the next thing. So how does a "real" External HDD get hooked up? From what I can see on line its self contained. and "Pre Packed". What and where is it plugged into?

 

They sell conversion kits to use internal drives as external USB drives.

 

Boy, Lots of great answers here!
I am just thinking, I guess I am trying to do an "External Hard drive". I have never seen one. Can I use one of my own HHD's some how to hook up with my system. Obviously power is needed( I do have a working computer power supply) which could be hooked up to the back of the HDD. But data is the next thing. So how does a "real" External HDD get hooked up? From what I can see on line its self contained. and "Pre Packed". What and where is it plugged into?

Some are called "NAS" devices...meaning "Network Attached Storage". Its basically a dedicated box with a single HD (or an array of hard disks), a network interface, and an embedded operating system like windows or Linux. You set it up to be accessible over a network.

There are others types that are "external" disks that have multiple types of interfaces like USB or SATA. These are usually plug-n-play devices.

But if you have a spare PC you can make your own NAS.

eT

 

If I remember correctly, maintaining a spare network computer as a backup was a real PITA.

At one time I was using both a networked backup machine and a direct connected PC...good riddance to both.

 

In the past I have always used cat5 crossover cables on the NIC, but I don't remember the config procedure anymore.

Just use external drives now.

I can't belive in 2020 that PC's still can't be easily hooked up just like OP said, with a USB cable. Shouldn't it be trivial to write a program, that does this ? Shouldn't there be freeware, and professional products for this ?

 

USB External Hard drive are dirt cheap, and simple to use. I especially like the ones from Seagate. I have 3 of them 500 GB, 1TB and 2TB

 

I can't belive in 2020 that PC's still can't be easily hooked up just like OP said, with a USB cable. Shouldn't it be trivial to write a program, that does this ? Shouldn't there be freeware, and professional products for this ?

No -- that was never the purpose of USB.

 

Just get an empty case for the naked drive. You don’t need a computer just to use a drive. They’re cheap, usually under $20 and under $10 for slower interfaces. Choose the interface that makes sense for the OS and the drive. You don’t want to introduce the weakest link. And you might go upscale if there’s a chance of using the case in the future for a better drive.