Backing up 2TB?
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I have 2TBs of movies that I’m afraid I’ll lose if the NAS device they’re stored on fails. Is it possible to recover the files on these hard drives by putting them in another device, or do I have to have the same product I’m using now? Making DVDs for 2TB of files is not realistic and I don’t really want to buy another 2TB of hard drives just for backup. How long can I expect a typical hard drive to retain data before it fails? One year? Five?
—Norm
This is a problem that’s going to crop up more and more often now that storage size is increasing so rapidly—how do you back up 2TB worth of data? Depending on how your NAS formats its internal drives (for example, if they’re in a RAID), you might not be able to just stick the hard drives in a different device and expect them to work. If the NAS tanks, rather than the disks themselves, you’d think you’d be able to put the drives in a new unit of the same model, but rebuilding RAIDs on different controllers is an iffy proposition.
We know you don’t want to plunk down a few Franklins on backup drives, but we honestly think that’s the best course of action—stick a few large drives in your main rig and back up your NAS to them. You can grab a couple 1.5TB drives for about $130 each; that’ll give you room to back up and room to grow. And although it may seem counterintuitive to back up your NAS to your desktop, what else are you going to do?
As to your second question, hard drives can fail at any time, but we usually expect them to last around five years. It’s not a bad idea to upgrade every few years anyway, as storage gets faster, better, and cheaper.
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jechaucer
August 09, 2009 at 6:57pm
Just like air, food, and water, backed up data is one of life's essentials. Very simply, you buy more external drives. Don't hide behind the excuse you can't afford it. You can afford food and gasoline. Your data is just as important. You must make it a point to back up. NEVER rely on one drive. My life is on my computer. All 46 years of it. I have all my family photos, home videos, receipts, documents, etc. About 4 TB worth of stuff on internal drives. I also have it all backed up on multiple external drives. You can pick up WD 1TB drives for under a hundred bucks on sale. It is an investment that is well worth it. How would you like to go back and try to back up all your DVD's again, or your CD collection, or your documents, etc.? Save your pennies and buy the external or internal backup drives. I am a woodworker. Us woodworkers have a saying about clamps. "You can never have enough clamps". The same goes for extra storage. You can never have enough extra storage, abeit, external or internal drives.
Pilgrim
July 29, 2009 at 7:15am
So what are the drawbacks of using Acronis True Image on another drive?
jakesty@aol.com
July 28, 2009 at 8:04pm
Maybe 1 minute. Seriously. Drives can go anytime and if you're concerned about losing data then never wait. We have had 6 or 8 of the famous Raptor 150GB WD drives with the 5 year warranties all go in the past 3 months, about 1.5 years old. Maybe a bad lot or something, but goes to show you can't trust them to anything important.
The off-site idea is good, but most plans don't have such a high amount of storage available, but one option is to use a program like Crashplan from Crashplan.com. It allows you to backup your data obviously you need broadband, to a friends house. Put a drive there set it up and you have a free offsite. Oh and crashplan is free for personal use.
Msater
July 28, 2009 at 2:22pm
I love my QNAP. If you are that worried abought your data a small extranl drive with RAID is a better choice. I have my QNAP TS-409 with 4 1.5Tb drives in a RAID 5. That's about 4Tb of usable space that is also backed up by itself. If a drive fails you just replace it and don't lose a thing. You can add 3 or 4 drives in the RAID setup and thay can be any size as long as there all the same size. This is the best setup for me ant my 3.2Tb's of anime I have. It would take forever to get back if it wasn't backed up.
All Hail Msater
jeffhex
July 29, 2009 at 6:08am
RAID is a technology designed to increase reliability (reduce the effect of a single drive failure, or in more advanced cases, multiple drive failures), performance (by distributing reads or writes across multiple drive units), and availability of data.
It is not designed to BACKUP data. A well designed backup will protect against data corruption (from malware), data theft (by encryption of the backed up data), data destruction (from physical damage such as fire, flood, etc), and human error (from accidental deletion of important files). RAID may be a component of this backup plan, but it is CERTAINLY NOT A BACKUP IN ITSELF.
You QNAP will probably protect you against a single drive failure, and that may be perfectly fine for you... but do the math - how long would it take you to recreate that anime collection if someone were to:
a) break in an steal the hardware?
b) house or office fire were to occur, damaging the QNAP (smoke? fire? water damage?)
c) someone accidentally or intentionally deletes the data?
What is that time worth to you? Would it be worth spending a fraction of that cost to duplicate your important, expensive-to-recreate data somewhere else?
(yeah, I think about this stuff for a living)
Msater
August 03, 2009 at 12:00pm
Well the question was for what would happen if a drive where to fail. You where looking to much into it. If he where to ask of a way to save his data from a flood or fire then I would of said something different but he asked about a failing drive. I say get a QNAP TS-439 and put 4 1.5 Tb drives in a RAID 6 so you have a 2 drive redundancy. Worrying abought fire or flood is to much. If you have something that important get a 2.5 in external and just put your most important stuff on it then leave it at a family members house.
SpazzAttack
July 29, 2009 at 9:51am
...So what is your solution for the 2 TB drive backup? Do you agree with the "doctor" or have a better idea? I've been mulling over the best way to back up my big drives also and my best solution so far is just making copies to extra discs.
chilisoftware
July 28, 2009 at 1:28pm
Drobo (althought primarily a USB to computer) can backup all your movies and if you run out of space (4 drives in a RAID hot swap) just get another bigger drive and swap one out hot. Keep adding drives as it grows in size - up to several TB's
I started with 500GB (4 - 250GB SATA drives) and am now at 1TB (4 - 500 GB).
Now my movies are safely backed up and I can grow the size as long as they keep making bigger SATA drives. They also have a Network interface to the Drobo.
cheers
M
I Jedi
July 28, 2009 at 12:57pm
This happened to be a pretty big problem for me when I was helping my parents out with moving a lot... and I mean a lot of information. There were several methods to work with, but my Mom ended up making what I was trying to make too hard into a simple task. She just bought a 1Tb external H.D.D.
domih2009
July 28, 2009 at 11:21am
Yes, backup your drive on other drives. However:
- When possible, backup not on a drive on your desktop nor on a machine that does not run 24x7 but rather on a machine that you turn on/off for the purpose of making backups.
- Use drives that are not of the same "generation" meaning have a backup set on drive(s) less than one year old, another set less than two year old, and so on. The probability that all these drives die at the same time is nil. When a drive dies, replace the dead drive with a new one and repeat the cycle.
- Use non-proprietary file systems (e.g. ext3) for the backups. No need to use RAID for backups.
All of the above is easy to do if you keep your "old" PCs and recycle them as file servers.
BinaryMonkey
July 28, 2009 at 10:25am
This is where SSD is really going to shine. With the prices going down and sizes going up, the question of, "How do I back up my backup?" is going to be a short lived one. Obviously redundancy is going to be desired, and having solutions to protect your data is still going to be a concern, but a drive with a theoretical 60 year lifespan is going to make the chore of monitoring and frequently replacing drives a thing of the past.
Cooketh
July 28, 2009 at 9:35am
Could consider paying a few dollars a month to some internet storage site. Just pay 5 bucks or so, upload your data to the site's server, and get it back whenever you need it. It's more expensive in the long run, but at 100 or so dollars a year your failure problem is solved.
quicks0rt
July 28, 2009 at 12:35pm
I would like to know what site is offering 5 bucks or so per month fee for 2TB of storage.
Synux
July 28, 2009 at 3:32pm
Mozy offers $4.95/month for unlimited storage for Personal users. I have an employee who uses it for his personal PC and he has 1TB backed up with them. I don't see why 2TB would be a problem.
jcollins
July 28, 2009 at 11:31am
The problem is, unless you have broadband, backing up terrabytes of data online takes forever.
pcfxer
July 28, 2009 at 9:07am
Hard drives are not "backup" devices. They are just copies of blank, on another hard drive. A suitable backup device may be flash storage (terribly expensive) or tape drives.
Stever
July 29, 2009 at 10:03am
Disc-to-disc backups are becoming incredibly popular in IT because of the speed, cost and scalability. Tape is slow and expensive, though good for sending data off-site. I use disc-to-disc at home, in fact.
You have to decide what issue you're trying to address. Are you trying to protect your data against theft, fire or another disaster? If so, you want to move your data offsite. If you simply want to protect against a system or hard drive crash, then there's absolutely no reason why going disc-to-disc and keeping your data at home won't be a completely appropriate solution.
I cover myself in both ways. I go disc-to-disc three days a week (using Retrospect Pro), then once a quarter I take the removable HD and move it to my bank's safety deposit box, load up a fresh HD into the backup server and go again. I use an Icy Dock hot-swappable backplane solution that makes swapping out the HD very easy.
If we're talking about data that doesn't change - like movie files - don't need to get fancy with dedicated backup software. Just copy the files over to a HD (or two) on another computer and there you go: you're instantly protected against your NAS crapping out. If you want to protect those files against theft or disaster, move that HD offsite - maybe to a friend or relative's house. It can be that simple.
tkddan87
July 28, 2009 at 8:51am
2 1BT drives for a little over 140$. the only down side if you can call it a down side is theyre OEM so no cables, just the drive. you can get them off of newegg.
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