Backing Up to External Hard Drives from DPM

Microsoft Data Protection Manger does not support external hard drives. You’re choices are to backup to disk and copy to external later, backup to SAN/DAS, or backup to tape drive.

From a Technet DPM FAQ:

Storage Pool Configuration
What types of storage can I use with DPM 2007?
DPM 2007 supports use of any of the following sources for server storage:
* Direct attached storage (DAS).
* Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN)
* Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage device or SAN, providing that the iSCSI storage device has received Windows Hardware Certification.

For many small businesses a tape library or a SAN solution is out of the IT budget.The need is still exists for an off site backup. There are two options to get around this and they are:

1. There is a utility that allows you to configure an external hard drive as a tape drive. This makes DPM think the external hard drive is a tape drive. This application is called Firestreamer. Firestreamer creates a Virtual Tape Library from your external hard drives. You can download a 3 month trial of this utility here: http://www.cristalink.com

2. You can go with external e-Sata drives. DPM will not know the difference between an internal sata drive and an external e-sata drive.

NOTE: Microsoft does not support backing up to external USB drives using DPM. I am not sure if they support backing up to external e-Sata drives.

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