Looking for some sort of external device for file storage. Chief criteria is that it be reliable- I'm looking to use it to organize all my files and back them up should I have a computer crash. I don't do the cloud thing for many reasons. Any recommendations? Probably 500 gig would be sufficient for current and future needs. Thanks!
I would strongly suggest something like this: BUFFALO LinkStation 421e 2 Bay NAS
Set it up so that both drives contain the same data (Mirror) and you should be good to go.
Right now, it is hard to beat the Silicon Power A80. 1TB, USB 3.0, Military Grade ruggedized and only $80. Waterproof, shockproof, 500GB and 2TB models available...heck even the USB clips into the side for transport. I love mine!
2 completely separate drives that you make rotating backups to. Safer even than the RAID1 NAS - they're completely isolated from things that could take down the whole array like power surges, corruption or accidental deletion.
I use a trayless SATA hot swap rack in my home server and stick bare drives in it to do this. It's also a very cheap solution.
Suggestions on software to control the mirror? If I have an external drive and want to plug it in 1/wk or 1/mo, what's the best (and preferably free) way to have the data transferred?
And should this be coupled with some sort of anti-virus sweep just prior, to avoid moving something onto the storage device?
If you end up doing some sort of raid array or anything with multiple drives for redundancy, DO NOT use two high quality identical drives with the same lot #. They tend to explode at about the same time.
That "silicon power" drive looks nice and the 2 TB model is less than I paid for my big USB3.0 2TB WD external desktop drive a year or two ago.
At home I have a two slot Qnap NAS box.. 2gb mirrored. It's a server basically, and it can stream music and video, download illegal stuff, allows access via Web, hosts and stores home security camera feeds, etc... and it talks to Windows Mac and Linux just fine.
I store Lots of photos and old work project E36 M3 mostly.
I leave the NAS unplugged mostly and keep daily use files in Dropbox.... I have a WD 2gb external drive that I use as a backup for the NAS, and I use that once a quarter or so...
The WD drive gets stored at work in case my house burns down.
GameboyRMH method is prob the easiest and cheapest... it's also the way my dad does it... if 500gb will honestly do everything then you could get 2 drives and the desktop hot swap usb3 tray for not much over $100... add a fireproof/floodproof safe and you are pretty well set.
I've been thinking of building a freeNAS box with a slightly older pc http://www.freenas.org/... but it is prob more then you need or want lol.
I've done the freenas thing, had some ZFS repositories set up on Solaris x86, tried a windows server for a while, and had just a regular linux server with samba shares for a while and those were all okay, but a bit high-maintenance. Since I can get NFR copies, I also tried backing up with Networker, Backup Exec, and I tried a couple open source things as well like BackupPC. I have to listen to people complain about data storage and data protection all day since that's what I do for a living so the last thing I want to hear from my wife when I come home is that there's some sort of problem with our NAS. Plus my ancient DLT library bit the dust and I was tired of shuttling tapes or DVDs to the bank for off-site storage.
From those science projects, I switched over to using a 1TB Iomega USB drive that I got for free at EMC World a couple years ago and that was okay-ish. They've got some software included that will do the backup process for you and it's okay. Now I'm using a BuffaloNAS Link Station with mirrored drives and that's been working pretty well. I'm also using Carbonite for off-site protection and it's been pretty good overall with the extra bonus of being able to protect my phones and tablets. The downside is that their "unlimited" plans don't cover NAS devices, so that has to be protected with a cents-per-gig plan. I know you're not hot on the cloud thing, but if we can believe the provider, they've encrypted everything before transport so there's some security there, in theory.
If you don't want to go cloud at all, then I'd get a couple external drives -- and what's going to drive that is your RPO (how many days' worth of data are you willing to lose) balanced against how much of a PITA it is to remember to take a drive offsite and the cost of those drives -- and if you're using Win 7, the built-in Backup and Restore isn't that bad. Alternately, many of the external drives come with some sort of backup software.
MattGent wrote: Suggestions on software to control the mirror? If I have an external drive and want to plug it in 1/wk or 1/mo, what's the best (and preferably free) way to have the data transferred? And should this be coupled with some sort of anti-virus sweep just prior, to avoid moving something onto the storage device?
I recommend rsync on Linux, or robocopy (with vshadow, if you're backing up a whole running OS) on Windows.
Running an antivirus sweep before backing up could be helpful, you might even find out that you should do a restore instead of a backup...
Get a USB drive that powers itself from the USB port and be done with it. Amazon has a ton of them in various sizes at various price points.
No need for SAN implementations, mirrored drives, etc. If you're an average computer user the USB drive will do what you ask of it. If you want your data to survive a disaster then use an online cloud backup service. I think one is called dolomite or coprolite or something.
Haha there's one called dolomite. I'd recommend encrypting the data locally before backing it up online though. On Linux, EncFS would be a good way to do this.
Thanks for the input guys. I liked the concept of that robustified HD, but some of the reviews I read of it said it was just kindof an average drive in an overpriced case. Might look into a normal Seagate or similar and just buy a shock case for it.
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