[Closed] Buying Hard Drives to back up laptop.

I like eSATA/USB 2.0 HDD docking stations, like this:[img] [/img]

You can get dual disk models, and then just choose whichever SATA HDDs are a good price per GB at the moment.

Joe

I'm in a similar dilema and have chosen to go down the NAS route, with an enclosure that will hold up to 4 x 2TB.
Just started investigating the pros & cons of the various RAID configs. I'm not a techy but think I'll be going with a software RAID 5 rather than the hardware RAID 1, but any advice gratefully received.

Bought the box (HP ProLiant microserver) but still searching for deals on HDDs.

Some very good deals here - including NAS ones too...

I would not rely on a raid mirror or similar as an only backup, in my experience, if the controller dies, it can sometimes hose both/multiple disks, leaving you screwed. It shouldn't happen, but it certainly does, even with fancy enterprise grade raid servers and fancy disks.

Having all your data in one place also potentially leaves you screwed if your house gets burgled which is a pain.

Taking at least some of your data round to a friends house or similar on a regular basis is probably a good idea, or some kind of online backup.

Having said that, I backup a lot of stuff off-site (projects I'm working on etc.), but my personal photos I currently only have two or three copies of in various places around the house, as online backup is too too expensive for that much data.

joemarshall - Member
I would not rely on a raid mirror or similar as an only backup, in my experience, if the controller dies, it can sometimes hose both/multiple disks

Is that also true of a simple harware RAID 1? Can that not be recovered from either disc? Sorry if stupid questions, I know next to nothing about this stuff.

Theoretically, the RAID information is stored on the disk rather than the controller, so it should be recoverable in the event of a controller failure.

The 'gotcha' is that home RAID is a different beast to the high-end RAID controllers you'd find in enterprise-class servers. So in practice it's a bit of a lottery. It -should- work, assuming you replace like-for-like, but I wouldn't like to have to rely on it.

RAID has its place, but for the scenario you describe I'd suggest that it's not the answer.

I think for your application I'd buy three disks. I'd have a single disk connected as an online backup at any one time, and periodically rotate it off-site with the others so that you've always got a live backup, a recent off-site backup, and a scratch drive ready to go live.

More reliable, cheaper, and infinitely more simple to deal with if a disk dies.

Avoid Raid, majority are controller based and a nightmare to recover (speaking from experience after losing both a Buffalo Terastation, and a Lynksys NAS enclosure). You really want a straight write through Drive enclosure preferably with e-sata connectivity.

I have a similar requirement within a commercial photographic environment and have used both Buffalo Duo drive's and more recently an Edgestore 10 8 Bay array.

Using Smartsync Pro, I have a folder allocated on the Server whereby anything that is put into the folder is copied to the first of two archive drives. This is set to run on folder changes.

Each night at 2am a second job runs which copies the files off the same Server folder, to a second archive drive then when complete deletes the originals. I now have two copies of each file on two separate hard drives.

A weekly job then syncs both ways the two external drives with no deletions to ensure nothing gets missed and archives a copy to a 1TB cloud folder.

When full a list of all the files are taken using Printmeastro and added to a spreadsheet for reference with an allocated disk number, one disk is kept on site, one disk is kept at home and the cloud copy is deleted (the intention of the cloud copy is to act as a backup if anything happens to the Edgestore / premises)

Prior to the Edgestore used a Sharkoon Drive caddy so when files are required simply plug then into that, now have the most recent archive drives located within the edgestore.

If you've enough SATA connections (and cooling) this could be done internally on a PC, but its a faff to swap over and theres the risk of losing everything in one go ...

And I wouldn't go over 500GB in drive size to keep risks down, and write speeds up (found the 1TB disks incredibly slow by comparison ... no idea why?)

Hmmm. Some food for thought in here. Thanks guys.

OK, so RAID 1 or 5 as a backup strategy might not be giving me the assurance I would like.

Let me expand on my requirements a bit.
1. I want to have adequate backup for valuable data, eg photos.
2. I want to share data over wifi to various laptops running a mixture of XP/Vista/W7, plus PS3 etc. That data would include pictures, music video and possibly films, hence the NAS box idea.
3. May put a graphics car in the box and attach it direct to the TV and amp too (If it proves a quiet enough beast) or consider some kind of media player and site the NAS remotely)

I've bought one of [url= http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF06a/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009.html ]these[/url] with space for 4 SATA drives in caddies plus another in the ODD bay (probably stick the OS on this).

Sounds like I should be considering two data drives in the box, forget RAID and just copy all between the two, then a periodic swap of one with another drive kept remotely.
Is that the general gist of it?
Ta.

The 'gotcha' is that home RAID is a different beast to the high-end RAID controllers you'd find in enterprise-class servers. So in practice it's a bit of a lottery. It -should-work, assuming you replace like-for-like, but I wouldn't like to have to rely on it.

Even fancy ones aren't guaranteed perfect - I've seen an HP disk array suffer a dead controller and needing to come back from tape backup, can't remember exactly why, but it can happen.

This reminds me, must run a backup of my laptop.

Jesus christ. I thought someone was just going to tell me 'buy this'.

So, any recommendations for a NAS enclosure. I quite fancied one I saw that did RAID 10

I want to have adequate backup for valuable data, eg photos.

See my earlier post.

I want to share data over wifi

Share your live data on a network share.

attach it direct to the TV

See previous.

Even fancy ones aren't guaranteed perfect - I've seen an HP disk array suffer a dead controller and needing to come back from tape backup, can't remember exactly why, but it can happen.

That's a whole other conversation (-:

I quite fancied one I saw that did RAID 10

God just killed a kitten.

[url= http://www.maplin.co.uk/1tb-freeagent-goflex-desk-external-drive-396163 ]Buy this.[/url]

£20 off at Maplins right now. I use Buffalo, Verbatim and Seagate drives and haven't noticed any appreciable difference in write / read speeds. I've got 500GB, 1 and 2 TB drives and they all seem to do the job at the same speed.

The Seagate drives come with their own software which automatically backs up anything new it finds on your HD but I don't use it as it creates a morass of different backups within backups and I prefer to create folders myself based on date and (photo) subject matter.