Ville

January 02, 2010 at 2:39am

I've been facing the same predicament for some time now. The total amount of data that needs to be backed up is currently about 4-5Tb. The primary storage is a RAID-5 array, and some of it is duplicated once or twice a day to a LAN server array which runs RAID-6 (dual parity). But like others here have mentioned, RAID is not a backup stragety. For starters, having all the data *online* at once bothers me. All it takes is one lightning strike to fry all systems at once.

So, for now, while waiting for a more cost-effective and more elegant solution I've installed a Vantec Hard Drive dock which makes it easy to use bare drives as storage "cassettes". When not in dock, I keep the drives in WiebeTech hard drive cases which also make it easy to take drives offsite when needed.

I suppose there is something to be said about repeated insertions/removals of the bare drives and how long their SATA connectors can withstand such use. Depending on the budget a "mobile" drive tray such as Addonics "Diamond" drive trays might be a better choice... but terabyte drives currently costing about $100, the extra $25 (for a tray) seems excessive, especially when couple of dozen drives are in rotation.

ilantech

October 05, 2009 at 5:40am

RAID 5 is not a backup system. & just copying your data to another system is not good enough. you need to have the ability to save version of your files & DB for has long as you can, that can amount to up to 50% more than your main aray data capacity.

I would sudjest building the cheepest system you can, with the bigest disk you can RAID with no redundancy what so ever & install a good backup software. you do not need redundancy or speed on a backup system.

the beauty of the thing is that the more often you check for changes the less the delta is & the less intrusive your backup is & the less quick it need to be! you can even put the old files versions (the realy important data) on an smaler mirrore array if that important to you.

 

ilan

Vladislav_Draculva

October 03, 2009 at 10:10am

I notice a lot of people preaching RAID 5...but in my opinion RAID 10 AKA RAID 1+0 is the best of both worlds for data backup...RAID 0 uses parity...RAID 5 uses redundancy... RAID 10 USES Redundancy and parity...ultimately though...I use offsite storage as my prefered backup strategy...from two different companies...because one comany I use is based in Cali...so they could get earthquaked/Mudslided?burned off the face of the earth...best of luck to all in you quest for affordable backup solutions...

tolian49

October 02, 2009 at 6:03am

Not sure how you define affordable, but there are several online backup services that will back up nigh on limitless amounts of data for a very reasonable fee.  I just started using Backblaze after reading about their very cool storage server design.  For $5 a month or $50 per year I can backup unlimited data from any locally attached drive on a single computer.  It takes eons to backup 1.5TB of data, but once it does then everything just stays incrementally synced.  In the event of a disaster you can request a zip file of all your stuff to re-download, or you can pay them to send you an external hard drive.  I know there are several other services out there like this, but for $50 a year you can essentially backup everything.  For a home user that seems a far better option than trying to fiddle with tapes.  Plus there's the advantage of the backup being elsewhere so if there's a natural disaster your backup harddrive doesn't go poof with your primary storage since they're in the same demolished house.

Crazybillybob

October 01, 2009 at 2:06pm

I'm using the Dlink NAS.... It has 1Gb copper nic, and can do Raid 1...but only holds 2 disks. That way my bits are safe.... But the offsite rotation is the ultimate in saftey!

jabbit

October 01, 2009 at 12:41pm

Actually, the MyBook Studio II IS a bad choice for backing up data. True, it is 4 TBs of hard drive space. But, it is (2) 2 TB drives in a RAID 0 array. So you are now relying on the integrity of 2 hard drives to store your data. Not wise in a back up situation.

 Like the other person said, and Atom-based build would probably be a bit cheaper, not as pretty, but FAR more secure and stable. I would use (4) 1 TB "Green" drives and I would have much more confidence in something like that.

Modred189

October 01, 2009 at 12:24pm

Build a cheap HTPC with an atom core, and then grab a bunch of WD 1TB greenpowers for cheap NAS/Backup/media

sfltrack

October 01, 2009 at 11:54am

Better buy two devices and rotate one off site. I'd stick with

raid 5 if you don't rotate backups off site.