I am going around in circles trying to decide on some backup hardware mostly for my digital photos. I currently have an old Iomega 500G external drive and a 1TB internal I connect when I want to use it.
Choices as I see them for a 2TB RAID 1 setup:
1/ An internal hard drive caddy I can remove and replace hard drives at will; seems good to me and I can get a caddy with a power switch for about £50 and a SATA hard drive for about £70. The IT guy at works does not recommend this method as he says the caddy connections can wear out but I do not know if I will be changing drives that often. How safe is it to keep handeling hard drives - but good as they can be stored off site. Total price for say 4TB storage = £190
2/ An external hard drive 2TB about £80; transfer speeds are going to be quite slow as I only have USB 2. I would need 2 units and I am short of USB slots so I would need a hub or would need to unplug every time I did a backup. This also uses up desk space but I have plenty of space. Again I can store them off site; Total price for say 4TB storage = £170
3/ A hard drive dock - basically as 1/
4/ Nas looks the most convenient but again it is quite slow and is more expensive. I could set it up so I can access it when away from home which could be useful although it could be a security risk if somebody managed to find it on the web.
Reading reviews the cheaper units can have quality problems as well as complicated software. I know two IT guys who have thrown Netgear units away as they could not get them running properly! Anyway a Buffalo or Segate 4TB unit would cost just under £300 - although the Buaffalo terrastation unit at work is so loud it drives me up the wall when its in the room. This would have to be in the house which is OK if the computer fails but not if the house caught fire; I suppose I could put it in the garage. Total price for say 4TB storage = £280 ( buffalo, segate, Lenovo/Iomega ) up to £400 ( synolgy, Qnap Thecus )
5/ The cloud - it would probably take a year to back up my current photos even on fast broadband and would be expensive for the space. From memory I did a test last year and it was something like 2min per photo to upload.
Any thoughts or insights would be interesting and comments on hardware.
RAID 1 isn’t all that useful. I’ve seen cases where a master drive was failing, and the corrupted data was simply mirrored over to the slave drive.
You’re better off having a copy on two different devices, or going full-out RAID5 or RAID10 (not to be confused with RAID 0+1). I’ve seen portable enclosures with 3-5 drive bays, but they aren’t cheap. http://www.sansdigital.com/ was one manufacturer’s products I worked with several years back.
As for the type of drive/enclosure, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and eSATA are available. eSATA drives need an eSATA port to connect to, which is basically just a PCI slot bracket with an eSATA port that connects to an internal SATA port. An eSATA port can be as fast as the motherboard and external drive interface supports. Typically, your best option for this is to buy the drive and the external housing separately. I can offer a few suggestions if you want to go in this direction.
RAID 1 isn’t all that useful. I’ve seen cases where a master drive was failing, and the corrupted data was simply mirrored over to the slave drive.
@Force_Flow;
Now RAID 1 seems illogical for the reason you said - I would have thought it would copy from the source to the two dives. I suppose it is quicker from drive to drive and that’s why it is done.
RAID 5 is out of my price range but thinking about it I could probably setup some backup software to write to each individual disk if I went for a NAS unit as long as the NAS could be setup that way.
I had not seen any eSATA drives; all the ones I was looking at were USB 2 or 3. I have room for a PCI bracket but will have to check for a spare SATA connection; although I could remove the internal 1TB drive.
eSATA complete units are rare and expensive but as you say I can get an external caddy for £40 each then I need the drives and a bracket at £35.
@SpacePhoenix;
At a guess I have 800GB to backup some old data on my current backup drives and some on my PC which has not been backed up for a while. It will go up around 60GB a year unless I suddenly start taking a lot more photos.
I was basing my specs on doubling my storage capacity hence 2TB ( with a second copy so 4TB ).
If you have a good network router and NIC, NAS would be much faster than you might expect. Seagate seems to have one of the most reliable HDDs so I would pick that.
They are neither rare nor expensive. Some eSATA enclosures actually come with the bracket. However, it looks like UK prices are a bit higher than US prices to begin with.
Thanks for the info; I suppose some US products are not sold very much in the UK and so the price is higher. I can get the Rosewill RX-358 cheaper from a couple of American ebay suppliers shipped over from the USA than I can via Amazon. The hard drive price is not so different as they are readily available here. But then again I could get stung for import duty which could make them the same price.
The guide used to be whatever a product cost in the USA it will be about the same here in pounds which in real terms is 25-40% more expensive here.
I am still swinging backwards and forwards between a NAS and external SATA. I was a bit worried about the Startech quality anyway but I can not find any reasonably priced eSATA enclosures I like under £60.
Out of interest Amazon.com are selling the Rosewill RX-358 V2 for $19 and here it would cost me $113 on Amazon.uk
With reference to cloud based backups. Any decent cloud based backup provider will let you do a seed backup on a hard drive, send it to them and they’ll load it in, so you only have to backup the changes since the seed was taken. They should do the same for a full restore, copy it back to a drive for you if you’ve got lots of data.
NAS on your home network doesn’t need to be slow - Gig Ethernet is in theory 120MB/s which is reasonably fast.
As with anything, multiple backups are the best approach, with at least one offsite.
RAID - We’ve seen way more issues with RAID5 than with RAID1.
Thanks for your insight Karl; I suppose with the cloud I prefer to be in control and do not fully trust the system!
The problem with making a decision is I can see benefits of both the NAS and external hard drive. I am thinking that NAS is the way to go possibly with JBOD and the backup software writing to both drives, rather than use RAID but the price is putting me off. But if I buy two hard drives, two enclosures and a USB3 or eSATA to ePCI card that will be just under £300. This makes the price of a Qnap or Synolgy 2 bay 4TB NAS not sound to bad at £350-£400
The single drives are portable, probably quicker but take up space and need extra sockets. Although as I said space is not really a problem and I would like ones that turn off as I do not want to accidentally spread a virus to them .
The NAS is not portable but can be access by anyone either over my home network or via the web. My computer and home network would probably not support Gig Ethernet so it will not be as fast but if I backup at night it’s not a problem.
My wife says I will never hang myself as I can never make my mind up about anything!
Do NOT use JBOD. One drive failure in a JBOD array will destroy the array. The reason for RAID is that it has built-in redundancy and can survive one or two failures, depending on the type and configuration of the array.
eSATA will be faster than ethernet. SATA has 1.5Gbps, 3Gbps, and 6Gbps interfaces available, depending upon the age of your hardware.
However, if data availability is your goal, or if you are backing up data from more than one computer, then an ethernet-based NAS device is the better choice.
The cost of 2Tb and 3Tb drives should fall fairly soon - 5Tb drives are expected to go on sale within the next few months. If you can wait a short while you might save some money.
The cost of 2Tb and 3Tb drives should fall fairly soon
Thanks for the tip - I am not in any particular hurry and will wait a couple of weeks to see what happens.
However, if data availability is your goal, or if you are backing up data from more than one computer, then an ethernet-based NAS device is the better choice.
I am still undecided although NAS drives are a bit slower they seem to be the way to go.
You were right @felgall; the WD 2Tb is £4 cheaper now.
I was up to £690 with a 8Tb nas and suddenly thought what am I doing! I am looking to get two Icy Dock MB559U3S now which have USB3 and eSATA and the next step is deciding on some backup software.
I have been cleaning up my current backup drive and have removed over 20Gb of duplicate files and program downloads. It made me think back and my first hard drive was something like a 528Mb and before that I was using 5 1/4 floppy discs! The Olivette I used at work had two floppy drives - one for the program and the other for storage.
My first ever computer used tapes! It was a ZX Spectrum, my next computer only had a floppy drive (though a % of RAM could be used as a temporary disk)
Hi this is good Discussion about Backup/storage hardware.
Many site give them many space, But one by one differents.
Such as… Google Drive 15GB / One Drive 10GB
Mediafire 15GB / 4 share 5 GB/ and yahoo Unknow .
I am use one drive . One drive upload system very simple. Use easy.
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