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I'm working on a new backup strategy right now, and I'm open to some suggestions.
I have a FreeBSD/ZFS file server. I have been running 3 USB 3.0 drives in rotation, swapping one out about once a month. It does daily regular rsyncs, and once a week does a checksum rsync. The drives were over 90% full, so I was starting to seek a replacement when one of the drives died. It was a Seagate external, so no real suprise (they aren't well ventilated).
Since they were almost full, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but didn't want to spend a ton of cash. So, I bought a 5TB Seagate (durr). I changed my backup so all my documents/backups went to the remaining two 3TB USB drives (both WD's). Then all my media backups went to the 5TB, changing it to once a week only backups.
Now I've had another of the 3TB WDs fail. These are all a few years old, so I guess they are just getting to EOL. While I was working on getting things back to normal, I rebooted the server and USB freaked out. It booted my UPS off, stopped recognizing the 5TB, and wouldn't disconnect the missing 3TB (zpool export). I restarted, got it to see the 5TB drive, and export/disconnected it. I use a StarTech USB3.0 controller with NEC chipset, as the server doesn't have built-in USB3. I had a little bit of panic thinking if anything happened to the array, the rest of it would have been gone as I only have the one 5TB backup.
I only have about 600Gb right now of backups/documents/pictures. I've thought about getting a few 2TB 2.5" externals, as I have good luck with the smaller drives, and maybe getting another 5TB drive to rotate media backups. Fairly costly, and I'm worried with two drive failures pretty close (and occasional USB3 unreliability), that I might continue to see failures.
Another option, more desirable maybe, is to actually have a backup server. I didn't really want to spend that much cash right now, though. I could use the board from my old server, but it's pretty old and uses a lot of power. Eventually, when we buy our next place, I'd like to have a shop and put the backup server in the shop. I'd still need to off-site the irreplaceable stuff, but it would provide pretty good resiliency--and if both buildings burnt down, I have more to worry about than what's on the backup. With a backup server, I could also switch over to zfs snapshots, which is probably a better method.
The server also has an eSATA port. I've not really used eSATA with FreeBSD, but it should work fine. I just don't want to have to restart every time I swap a backup. I could buy 3 eSATA enclosures, and some drives that are big enough for now, and go that route.
I've considered replacing the USB3.0 controller as it's older than the server. I also thought about removing it and just using USB2.0. However, weekly rsync backups can take almost 24 hours, so I think that would extend that by a long time. It might work for just my documents backups.
Those are kind of the options I am looking at. I'm open to any ideas that may be more appropriate, or which of these would be best.
I have a FreeBSD/ZFS file server. I have been running 3 USB 3.0 drives in rotation, swapping one out about once a month. It does daily regular rsyncs, and once a week does a checksum rsync. The drives were over 90% full, so I was starting to seek a replacement when one of the drives died. It was a Seagate external, so no real suprise (they aren't well ventilated).
Since they were almost full, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but didn't want to spend a ton of cash. So, I bought a 5TB Seagate (durr). I changed my backup so all my documents/backups went to the remaining two 3TB USB drives (both WD's). Then all my media backups went to the 5TB, changing it to once a week only backups.
Now I've had another of the 3TB WDs fail. These are all a few years old, so I guess they are just getting to EOL. While I was working on getting things back to normal, I rebooted the server and USB freaked out. It booted my UPS off, stopped recognizing the 5TB, and wouldn't disconnect the missing 3TB (zpool export). I restarted, got it to see the 5TB drive, and export/disconnected it. I use a StarTech USB3.0 controller with NEC chipset, as the server doesn't have built-in USB3. I had a little bit of panic thinking if anything happened to the array, the rest of it would have been gone as I only have the one 5TB backup.
I only have about 600Gb right now of backups/documents/pictures. I've thought about getting a few 2TB 2.5" externals, as I have good luck with the smaller drives, and maybe getting another 5TB drive to rotate media backups. Fairly costly, and I'm worried with two drive failures pretty close (and occasional USB3 unreliability), that I might continue to see failures.
Another option, more desirable maybe, is to actually have a backup server. I didn't really want to spend that much cash right now, though. I could use the board from my old server, but it's pretty old and uses a lot of power. Eventually, when we buy our next place, I'd like to have a shop and put the backup server in the shop. I'd still need to off-site the irreplaceable stuff, but it would provide pretty good resiliency--and if both buildings burnt down, I have more to worry about than what's on the backup. With a backup server, I could also switch over to zfs snapshots, which is probably a better method.
The server also has an eSATA port. I've not really used eSATA with FreeBSD, but it should work fine. I just don't want to have to restart every time I swap a backup. I could buy 3 eSATA enclosures, and some drives that are big enough for now, and go that route.
I've considered replacing the USB3.0 controller as it's older than the server. I also thought about removing it and just using USB2.0. However, weekly rsync backups can take almost 24 hours, so I think that would extend that by a long time. It might work for just my documents backups.
Those are kind of the options I am looking at. I'm open to any ideas that may be more appropriate, or which of these would be best.