OT: Large external HD for back-up?

[KenElevenShadows]

What would you recommend? I use Glyph, but their 8 TB RAID is really expensive, so I'm looking at other options for external drives. I need this as back-up primarily, so I need reliability, but not necessarily blazing speed.

 

One person on Craig Anderton's forum mentioned that it might be more reliable to get two HDs than it is to get large-capacity RAID unit, while another said the following:

"The main problem with external drives for backup that go above 2-3TB is that you start getting enclosures that 1) have more than one drive "joined" by a custom controller and 2) aren't user replaceable. So what ends up happening, eventually, is that one of the drives dies (or the controller dies) and you're SOL on the backups.

 

If you're really serious about backups in the sense that losing them could cost you in a real way, there's something to be said for spending the money to do it right the first time and get an actual decent RAID-5 or RAID-1 setup, maybe even NAS'd."

 

Is it pretty easy to back up to two drives simultaneously using something like Super Duper Clone or things of that nature? Just curious. Thanks.

 

G-Technology G-Drive 4TB $189

http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-G-DRIVE-GDREU3G1PB40001BDB-External-Drive/dp/B00ND4DV9M/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1416015841&sr =1-3&keywords=g-technology+4TB+-RAID

 

G-Technology G-Drive Professional Strength 4TB $269

http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-G-DRIVE-Professional-Strength-External-0G02537/dp/B009AP6X0C/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1416015841&sr =1-1&keywords=g-technology+4TB+-RAID

 

Glyph 4TB $365

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StuPro4TB?adpos=1o1&creative=55226102161&device=c& matchtype=&network=g&gclid=CIrmo7a8-8ECFQlgfgod3i4ADg (same price on Amazon)

[J. Dan]

I'm no expert on this, but I would suggest that it highly depends on your application and how critical the data is. You're listing 4TB drives - is that what you really need? Have you considered the possibility of daily backups on one drive and monthly compressed backups offsite (I.e. On a cloud or NAS, etc)? Offsite storage either via internet or physical media protects you in case of fire or theft. There are many online services for this besides the typical cloud apps. Maybe not everything needs to be backed up, either. Just some food for thought.

[KenElevenShadows]

Cloud-based storage is great for smaller things, but I have terabytes of data that require backing up. How much can you compress? Is it reliable?

 

BTW, I'm inquiring about external because 1.) I have a media fire safe, and 2.) I want to keep some of this off-site, at a family member's house.

 

But these are photos. I need these backed up. I take up a lot of storage because of the sort of photography I do, including star trails and other sort of things in which 100 photos may be required to create one final image.

[J. Dan]

Ok, the photography angle changes things a bit from my initial thoughts, as does the fact that you're already considering taking drives off-site.

 

My company (a very large corporation....not MINE...my employer) uses MozyPro. I have no idea what it costs - they use it for a very large group of remote users and I'm sure have some sort of enterprise agreement.

 

Like I said, I'm no expert. I use it, but didn't set it up and don't pay for it.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

The G-Technology drives are RAID 0, which stripes the data on two (or more with the right controller) drives. This provides NO redundancy, but faster read and write performance. That is not what is needed for this application. Total drive size approximates the added size of each drive in the array (if drives are not the same size, the array will use the smaller drive size and waste any added space on the second drive).

 

RAID 1 is drive mirroring - using two (or more) drives where data is written to both drives. It does result in redundancy if a drive fails. Write performance is somewhat lower than a single drive, and read performance is somewhat higher. With the right controller and enclosure, it is technically possible to break the mirroring and separate the drives. However, the reverse process of making the mirror again means that one drive must be chosen to be cloned, and ALL data on that drive must be cloned, which is time consuming. The only real drawback is that total size is the size of a single drive.

 

RAID 5 uses at least three drives. Data and parity information is striped on all drives. Drive writing is a bit slower than a single drive. It's primary good point is that data can be recovered if one drive among the group fails, by the controller reading the parity information to re-build the array. Total size approximates the total of n-1 drives (where n is the number of drives).

 

Enterprise grade drives are normally faster and higher reliability compared to consumer drives (also more costly for a given drive size). They usually also draw a bit more power.

 

Drives larger than 2TB MUST be partitioned using the GPT system instead of the older MBR system. Older operating systems don't natively support GPT partitions, although some manufacturers include drivers to add the functionality.

 

Ken - for your purpose - initial cost is less important than complete redundancy and reliability. With off-site and on-site storage, you will require at least three complete systems to be effective (one local and two that are exchanged for the off-site system).

 

The Glyph systems seem to support configuration as RAID 0 or 1. Their Triplicator allows simultaneous making of three copies, using three separate eSATA connected housings. I don't see models with Thunderbolt connection, but there is USB3, Firewire, and eSATA connection. I don't know how well this would work for re-sync after removing one drive to carry off-site and bringing back another - maybe look in the manual and see if they have the utilities needed to re-synch.

 

Their StudioRAID units contain two drives, RAID 0 or 1, and same type of input. Buying several of these might well wind up costing more than the Triplicator plus the needed external eSATA drives.

 

What to use also depends on whether your shop is primarily a one computer operation, or multiple networked computers - where using a NAS device (network attached storage) becomes more efficient.

 

I would also suggest an arrangement where the backup drives can be connected and disconnected - power them up only when making the backup, otherwise completely disconnect them both from computer and power (to prevent lightning/surge damage).

 

I have focused here on devices made for the Mac Market as opposed to PC stuff, although HP and others do make some fine storage devices for Enterprise use in the PC field.

 

It might also pay to check on getting an Office 365 subscription. Originally my Enterprise E3 level subscription provided 25 GB per user, this was changed to 1TB per user, and Microsoft is in the process of removing all storage space limits for the subscription. I use this service, along with Box and Dropbox, on both platforms, PC and Mac, and have everything in the same workgroup with simple sharing setup between all machines regardless of whether they are Windows or OSX. Most of my backup drives are NTFS formatted, although the drive used with the Mac is Mac formatted. Acronis Backup software can be gotten for both platforms, and has more adjustability than the built in Windows Backup or Time Machine.

 

 

Jim Cason

Promised LAN Computing, Inc.

 

 

 

 

[J. Dan]

Jim,

 

Curious of your opinion of the philosophy of having both local and off site backups.

[KenElevenShadows]

Jim, I'm going to print your response out and follow up on this. Thanks for that very complete response. I understand what you are saying, but my head is still spinning from all this.

 

I've got a couple of tech buddies online that are recommending Drobo and Synology, which are basically bays with swappable drives, so I'll check into that as well.

 

I use box.com and dropbox.com to back up vital things (or send files to clients), but it takes forever and a day to back up things that are far smaller than the 6 TB or so that I wish to back up right now, so I don't think cloud-based solutions would be very good for me unless there is something I am not understanding. And I do understand that people compress their files, but how much are they compressed? I'm asking because I have such a huge amount of stuff that I wish to back up. And it's going to keep growing since I use full frame cameras now and 16-bit TIFF files. This takes up more storage than my music files, which is really incredible because those are 24-bit 44.1kHz WAV files, and I also record music every week. Dayam. Major storage issues! :D

 

And yes, the computer I wish to back up is an old Mac Pro with four drives. I am only using one computer.

 

J Dan, thanks. Those are good thoughts, and they are making me think about how I want to do this. I need to have things more organized and orderly instead of having various-sized HDs laying around, which is what is going to happen if I continue down the road, I think, so this is all good.

 

I just don't know very much about this and want to make a good decision, one that will make it easy to take one of the copies off-site.

 

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[J. Dan]

You know, basically my thought is this.... At my day job with one of the largest corporations in the world, I take for granted that they picked the best solution, which is remote storage via MozyPro, but that's most likely based on some enterprise contract. But if it's good for one of the largest corporations in the world in technology, it's probably worth looking at.

 

OTOH, I can identify with your situation and have gone through it myself. I don't backup like I should.

 

So I'm guessing there is a middle ground. My goal, to be helpful for you, is to define the important questions based on what I know.

[KenElevenShadows]

MozyPro, as far as I can tell, while it offers on-site back-up, it also offers cloud-based. And with my connection and gigantic amount of stuff, that's not going to work for me either. I like that it's automatic and idiot-proof. I need idiot-proof.

 

http://mozy.com/product/features/2xprotect-local-backup (says *Windows users only, but other places says it supports OS 10.6)

[J. Dan]

Like I said......large corporation, many windows users. For us.....idiot-proof and windows.

 

Like I said / I don't endorse.

 

My point is that those types of services should MAYBE be considered depending on your needs.

[Theo Verelst]

I don't know about on line "cloud" storage, it might be prone to stealing data, and of course has to include the price of a pretty fast internet connection, and fit in it's bandwidth use plan, or it's fair use policy.

 

I use about 8T of total storage, and cannot afford to back all film and audio files up, only important files, maybe mpeg versions, etc., and I think of the whole storage primarily as Gigs per dollar (euro), which boils down to getting drives which are going to be reliable and fast for little money. I mainly have come down to using current, good Western Digital hard drive units (1 - 3 TB) of the Caviar Green variation, which have served me well for at least the better part of a decade, some being on 24/7. Also a criterion is the bandwidth to the drive, and if it is supposed to be on long: the bandwidth very much depends on the programs/OS using it, the only way I can get the specified around 100MB/s write speed is on Linux using the right setup. If they are on long times, make sure they stay cool, really cool, I mean preferably under 45 degrees Celsius or something, that way they remain functional for a long time I have an extern WD USB2 drive that lasts already a decade, being on 24/7 and used (although usually not much) every day.

 

Think of the energy use, too, a big raid array with additional hardware and "server" type high RPM disks draws noticeable power, which costs money. A "Green" disk draws very little power, is probably more quiet, and doesn't necessarily have a shorter lifetime.

 

So I suppose the "cheapest" solution can be used as a point of reference: you get some 1.5-3TB (depends on what you OS and computer can easily handle) decent drive units, up to the amount of (possibly) redundant store you need, and maybe a SATA-ESATA connector (probably the cheapest and fastest solution), and fill them dragging portions of photo files (chronologically in chunks) to them. Pay attention to un-mounting properly when done.

 

Lowest wear on the drives, options to make redundant copies (labels on the bags the drives came in ?), easy and lightest transportation to other safe places, lowest power use, lowest price.

 

T.

[joegerardi]

How much data? "Terrabytes" is vague at best. However, if under 2Tb of data, as an inexpensive and reliable solution, I suggest the Clickfree C6 2Tb. It's simply a plug and play, and you can schedule incremental backups. I've been using the 1Tb version for a couple of years now doing nightly backups, and it's worked flawlessly. It's also saved my bacon a couple of times when I had hardware crashes. It actually makes an image of your hard drive, does incrementals from that and can restore that image, OS, drivers and all. Small, USB (so one drawback is that it's not overly fast) and convenient.

 

http://www.clickfree.com/product_attribute_selector/show/id/C6D/lang/1

 

..Joe

[MoodyBluesKeys]

Jim,

 

Curious of your opinion of the philosophy of having both local and off site backups.

 

Off-site backups are essential if one's business depends on the data. Various things can happen anywhere, from hurricane damage, tornado damage, fire, theft, and other causes.

Just how far away off-site should be depends. In my case, my office is about 100 feet from my home. That would not provide much protection from hurricane or tornado, but a fire in both locations at the same time is unlikely.

 

Cloud based storage - how useful depends on a combination of how much data to be stored and how fast the connection. Cable based systems typically have much faster download than upload. Trying to fill up my 1TB OneDrive for Business allocation would take quite a while with my consumer grade cable Internet connection.

Security depends on the particular provider. The large business oriented providers are pretty secure (as long as the user doesn't do dumb things). Microsoft's business cloud automatically stores my stuff in multiple locations that are widely geographically spaced.

 

My most important files are not very large, and a daily backup is made using USB to a 16gb memory card located in my BlackBerry phone, which is with me just about all the time. These same files also exist in my Dropbox account. Other larger files exist in my Box account, which is 50GB available. Big things like DVD images exist on at least one computer at home and one in the shop. Monthly complete OS and all data backups are made to added drives using Acronis or Macrium Reflect.

 

When I worked at the Eastern NOC for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet; our non-secure backup devices were two large silo devices each of which held about 10,000 tapes. Two tapes were made of each backup, and a local firm picked up one of those each day for off-site secure storage (and brought back older tapes). Most large businesses have learned that good backups are essential - in many fields they are legally required and even if not, potential liability to lawsuits for lost data makes it necessary. (This is probably getting too far off topic for Ken's question, but his data requirements are rather large).

 

[KenElevenShadows]

How much data? "Terrabytes" is vague at best. However, if under 2Tb of data, as an inexpensive and reliable solution, I suggest the Clickfree C6 2Tb. It's simply a plug and play, and you can schedule incremental backups. I've been using the 1Tb version for a couple of years now doing nightly backups, and it's worked flawlessly. It's also saved my bacon a couple of times when I had hardware crashes. It actually makes an image of your hard drive, does incrementals from that and can restore that image, OS, drivers and all. Small, USB (so one drawback is that it's not overly fast) and convenient.

 

http://www.clickfree.com/product_attribute_selector/show/id/C6D/lang/1

 

..Joe

 

I have at least 6 TB of photo-related things to back up, and this doesn't even count about 2 TB of WAV files for music, so yeah, I have a lot. Thanks.

[The Real MC]

Stay away from ethernet based WD external HD. I could never get mine to work with my Mac or Windows machines. Finally stripped the bare HD out of the case and installed it in my Mac.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

Be thankful it is 2014. In 2000, storage of 8TB of info at pro level would have meant about a dozen 6' racks full of 140G SCSI drives all setup into a storage array.

I've not had best results either with WD stuff. As far as bare drives, I use Hitachi (now part of WD, but Hitachi bought IBM's drive business) and Seagate.

 

I would probably build something that connected by Thunderbolt or eSATA and employed several SATA slide-in drive trays for this application. SAS (serial attached SCSI) get way too expensive for this. In fact, using good SATA drives of about 2TB (present pricing sweet spot) and filling the drive, then pull out and replace with another drive - just keep the whole drive unpowered for the backup. I'd probably use RAID-1 mirroring, setup the mirror - fill the pair of drives, break the mirror, put one drive on-site and the other off-site; then rinse and repeat.

 

Most difficult part would be arranging the data so it could be easily divided into chunks for the size of the backup drives.

 

[OB Dave]

Be thankful it is 2014. In 2000, storage of 8TB of info at pro level would have meant about a dozen 6' racks full of 140G SCSI drives all setup into a storage array.

Not quite that bad but close. In around 2000 I worked on a project that had a massive SGI terabyte RAID array. It was about the size of two large refrigerators and cost about $300k. We actually had two of these - one in our lab and one at the client's site.

 

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Up until now I've been able to avoid any kind of network RAID array at home and hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way. I don't trust the things. Friend of mine had the controller card die on his NAS. The disks were still good as far as he knew, but there was no way to get the data back without the controller card, and the unit was no longer in production. Recovery was a huge PITA for him.

 

I prefer to just buy several 4TB disks, no compression, no fancy shit at all. At 4am, sync software wakes my machine, makes a redundant clone of everything and then puts the machine back to sleep. For my main machine and client work, I keep a drive in a safe deposit box and I rotate the backups about once a month. This is in addition to the hourly backups that Time Machine does. This level of paranoia did not spring from a vacuum. I once had a HD failure that caused data loss. It really, really sucked.

[J. Dan]

With regards to online backups and bandwidth, keep in mind that after the first backup, the whole drive doesn't have to be transferred after that, only new files or files that were modified. If you backup daily, that's not going to be much.

[The Real MC]

Full backup vs incremental (daily, modified/new files only) backup.

 

I love the Time Capsule on my Mac. Easy hands-off backup.

[Theo Verelst]

I suppose the main hazards for data will vary depending on city or rural area, as well as the desire to be cool with the environment (and wallet), but a few considerations about back-up solutions, like they were known down from mainframe and minicomputer ages (where the idea of the "tarred-compressed tape" backup came from).

 

For certain systems, it's fine to have a one or two layer backup scheme, that gives you high probability you can find your text file back that you accidentally overwrote the other day (from a version of yesterday or a few days back), as well as pretty good certainty you will get a reasonably recent set of file versions from backup in case the office blows up or is hit by lightning, etc.

 

For picture work, which I suppose Ken is talking about, just like audio work (which of course I'm not unfamiliar work, it's a bit different than a media server, or a programmers computer. The amount of data is big, and it is possible (but that depends on who is working) that there are huge intermediate project sizes at hand, and specific files that need to be put in storage. Suppose you make a hundred edits of a few pictures in a day, aren't sure yet, and want to work on them tomorrow, but at night the backup software/hardware kicks in and puts the whole temporary project dir on the backup system. If on average you make a few edits per picture that get saved in high resolution (or worse: in an uncompressed format with many layers in the image!), you might be swamping your automated backup with many-fold as much data as you want, and also, it might be hard to keep track, unless you make clear intermediate project temporary directories or something.

 

Also, the process of backing up, and even of restoring can have it's own sensitivity to error, like what happens if during backup your USB or eSata link makes bad contact, or worse: what if there is any form of power glitch? It could be your backup and original get impacted, so it's a good idea to have originals (like on SD card) around until the first successful backup, and to think about the extra machine load when automated backup software kicks in (is it possible to have heavy Ethernet traffic going on (one core maxed out ?) while working with Photoshop, for instance, or can that cause hardware (overheating) or software problems (crashes). The file system used on the backup drive matters, too, for instance there are Linux file systems that keep a journal that makes them recoverable in most cases of abuse.

 

If you're worried about your disk drives' lifetime (even of a daily used backup drive, some are cheap USB3 drives and work pretty fast), in most cases it is possible to use a program from public domain or the hard-drive manufacturer to check what is called it's "S.M.A.R.T." status, which essentially tells you if something is wrong with the drive, starts to get creaky (how fast and with how few errors will it spin up to speed), or how many hours it has been on. At least that gives an idea of how reliable the drive units are, and it's usually free.

 

Finally, for pro use, it might be possible to automate the project flow for backing up and finding back previous photo-processing version, by remembering the processing steps and their parameters, this however must be supported by the photo software.

 

T.

[J. Dan]

Of course, you can specify folders/drives to be backed up or not.

[KenElevenShadows]

I am considering this setup. Although not cheap, it might work for my needs. You're welcome to offer other specific solutions, as I'm really learning!! Thanks for all the advice from everyone so far, and any future comments!

 

Glyph setup with Triplicator:

10 TB for $780 from B&H (Studio Raid is two drives - $78 per terabyte):

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1105017-REG/glyph_technologies_sr10000_10tb_studioraid_storage_array.html

Triplicator for $180 from B&H:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/760429-REG/Glyph_Technologies_TRIP_02_Triplicator_Backup_Device_with.html

GLYPH SETUP IS $2520 FOR 3 10 TB DRIVES AND TRIPLICATOR from B&H ($2340 for the three drives alone)

 

I know this is a RAID setup, but I think Glyph sets up their drives quite well. But if you have an alternate solution, please let me know. It's just that I need a LOT of storage.

 

Question: would using something like Acronis work well with this setup?

http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/mac-backup/

 

My possibly misguided thoughts at this point:

1.) cloud-based solutions will not work because I have a lot of stuff to back up. I have TBs and TBs of WAV and TIFF files that take up a lot of room, and that's already after chucking a lot of unneeded stuff.

2.) I believe I will want to take one of the three drives that is connected to the Glyph Triplicator and back it up off-site, and take the other one, and put it in the fire safe when I am not using it.

3.) If there is a Qnap/Synology/Drobo sort of thing that would work for me, please let me know. I feel confused by these things, and want a simple solution.

4.) I am backing up only one computer and do not require NAS.

5.) I am using an old Mac Pro 1,1 running OS 10.6.8 and has firewire and USB connectivity.

 

Again, thank you very much for your time.

[Theo Verelst]

Hi Ken, without answering the question as to what backup scheme and/or software to use, nor if it is a superb idea to want a triple copy all at once, the basic need of working backups with good reliability to get you data back when needed can be met cheaply.

 

Take a USB3 (or 2.0 if your computer has no USB3) drive dock, for instance like this humble Radio Shack example:

 

http://demandware.edgesuite.net/sits_pod26/dw/image/v2/AASR_PRD/on/demandware.static/Sites-radioshack-Site/Sites-master-catalog/default/v1423148428666/images/55076720_00.jpg ( from here )

 

And whichever number of good drive units, I recommend these from Western Digital:

 

http://media.bestofmicro.com/3-5-harddrive-4TB_HDD,I-T-335045-13.jpg (a 3 GigiByte model is probably cheap and easy to get, like the WD30EZRX )

 

These drives come in a anti-static and somewhat water resistant bag: save the bag, and put the disk in it after having written backups to it. Disconnect the dock, and you've got reliable drives with your data copies for little money.

 

T.

 

[KenElevenShadows]

Thanks!!!! That's considerably cheaper and looks more understandable to me than some of the other stuff I've seen, so it's SUPER HELPFUL!!!!!

 

Here's what I've come up with after a bunch of poking around, a 4-bay variation of what you were suggesting:

 

$146.48 + about $20 shipping: StarTech.com 4-Bay USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station with UASP and Dual Fans (SDOCK4U33):

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-4-Bay-Docking-Station-SDOCK4U33/dp/B00MA1N8GA/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1423160322&sr=1-1&keywords=SDOCK4U33

 

$169 Seagate SSD Hybrid Drive ($42 per terabyte):

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-Hybrid-3-5-Inch-ST4000DX001/dp/B00FQH7MQ2/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/179-7463182-6764613

 

So the total cost would be something like this:

$680 for four Seagate SSD Hybrid 4TB drives (16T total) = $166 startech dock including shipping = $846 total.

 

Are the SSD Hybrid drives good? They seem to get good reviews. Thanks.

[Theo Verelst]

The additional Flash drive for backup purposes makes little sense: the big amounts of data you want to backup will flood it pretty soon, and then you should just count on the max. write speed of the hard drive to become the bottleneck anyway. Maybe there's an advantage to the flash buffering effect when there's a power or Usb cable fail, but I doubt it.

 

The normal achievable bandwidth should be over 100 Mega Byte / s, so copying 1TB would cost about about 3 hours or something. Sometimes sustained write speed to modern drives can be more than double, but Usb3 (Usb2.0 is about 60MB/s) has clock recovery limitations over it's wires, so it doesn't necessarily get all to far in the direction of 600MB/s as it's spec-ed.

 

The only drive of dozens that I used that ever actually blew on me a decade ago was a Seagate, I've very satisfactory used Western Digital mostly ever since. In defense of the blown unit: the computer hadgotten very hot, I've made sure such thing never happened again (40-45 degrees Celsius should be great).

 

More speed could come from Raid, but it would have to be a speed Raid, not a doube/tripple backup array of drives, and you'd probably need a fast machine to get Usb3 up to far above 100MB/s in actual practice. I've good experience with Usb3 drives up to about 150MB/s. So finding a couple of spare Sata3 connectors in your computer and using them simultaneously can give significant more speed if the Cpu is up to it, most other solutions won't make it as fast, regardless of certain suggestions, in most cases.

 

T.

[KenElevenShadows]

Thanks. I've had someone else say something similar, or at any rate, that the SSD part wouldn't help that much.

 

I'll probably stick with Seagate or WD, although I've had good luck with Seagate drives (not their external cases, but their drives) so far.

 

Thanks!

[David Emm]

Full backup vs incremental (daily, modified/new files only) backup.

I love the Time Capsule on my Mac. Easy hands-off backup.

 

I'm with you about Time Capsule. Its a low-maintenance bright spot. I semi-randomly swap 2 Seagate drives in and out for that specific spot. I also have two other outboard Seagates that I update every month or two, then back in their protective bags they go. I'm still making CD safeties for some things as well, despite the format fading. Lastly, I have USB sticks out the yang. On top of my other drives, I have FOUR 64 gb sticks, each containing my entire stash of Logic projects, plus all associated patch files. Then there are the smaller ones bristling with WAVs and MP3s of finished pieces.

 

I'm nowhere near a need for multi-terabyte RAID storage as would befit a pro, but even as it is, I believe in the power of magnetic media to bone me with a haughty laugh, so its belt, suspenders, various straps, duct tape, a hefty UPS and a static strip I habitually touch as a matter of course when I turn the rig on. That's a holdover from my floppy disk days. I'm sure a few of us know all too well how that cute little blue spark can equal MegaDataDeath. I'm so covered in current backups, its like a Packrat disorder that almost earned me a spot in the DSM-V. Its part of the price you gladly pay.

 

Thanks for the information on the different RAID setups. It filled in a small knowledge gap that'll probably keep me at the 2 terabyte size, tops. I'm happy as a USB 2.0/3.0 user for now. The day I think I need Thunderbolt, we'll have a little talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Theo Verelst]

Well, it's been a while since I toasted backup CDs and mutual inter-machine backups on early hfs file systems, currently I mainly use a bunch of gig+ drives on 3 or four machines connected with giga-Ethernet to back up materials, like from my web server. Managing a little under 10Tera Byte isn't done professionally at the moment, but it works, with between machine redundancy kept by somewhere between 30 an 70 Mega Byte per second.

 

A cheap (60 euros on sale) 1TB Toshiba Usb3drive usually writes at somewhat under 100MB/s, before it was 3/4 full, a little faster, that decent to backup to. Putting a High Def sat movie on it of 10GB is no sweat !

 

T.

[Mizu]

Just a caveat on the RAID discussion - RAID 5 does not equal backup. I run two RAID 5 arrays: A Drobo 5D in my office and a Pegasus R2 at home (Pegasus is much faster than Drobo btw). The RAID 5 gives me peace of mind regarding drive failures, but it doesn't protect against user error, file deletion/corruption etc. So my core stuff is mirrored into a 1TB Dropbox account as well that allows for the recovery of deleted files.

 

[Rou]

Hi Ken, without answering the question as to what backup scheme and/or software to use, nor if it is a superb idea to want a triple copy all at once, the basic need of working backups with good reliability to get you data back when needed can be met cheaply.

 

Take a USB3 (or 2.0 if your computer has no USB3) drive dock, for instance like this humble Radio Shack example:

 

http://demandware.edgesuite.net/sits_pod26/dw/image/v2/AASR_PRD/on/demandware.static/Sites-radioshack-Site/Sites-master-catalog/default/v1423148428666/images/55076720_00.jpg ( from here )

 

And whichever number of good drive units, I recommend these from Western Digital:

 

http://media.bestofmicro.com/3-5-harddrive-4TB_HDD,I-T-335045-13.jpg (a 3 GigiByte model is probably cheap and easy to get, like the WD30EZRX )

 

These drives come in a anti-static and somewhat water resistant bag: save the bag, and put the disk in it after having written backups to it. Disconnect the dock, and you've got reliable drives with your data copies for little money.

 

T.

 

Not sure if this would help, but the reliability of the HDDs used for any backup system will also have to be considered... and I came across the article below last year (when I was looking for a large-capacity HDD for backing up my old cakewalk projects with audio/wav clips and even some audio-video projects from my old Windows XP DAW PC):

 

Hard Drive Reliability Report (BackBlaze)

 

The 3TB WD HDDs and 3TB and 4TB Seagate HDDs seem to show an increase in failure rate.