Best Solution for Data Redundancy?

[glbtrekker]

Hi all, I need help determining the best solution for backing up the data on my pc. Currently I have about 1 TB of HD photos (30mb+ per photo x 10,000+), videos, etc. that I need to protect before I loose it due to hard drive crash, etc.

I was simply going to get an external hard drive, but noticed that none of the products available today received good reviews with about a third of them dying within a year. I don't want to continually replace the whole unit, so now I am thinking about "building"/buying a NAS.

While I've built a couple of desktops, I have no knowledge of an NAS. So, I'm here seeking advice. Here's what I would like to do:

1. Back up those photos/video's asap before I loose them! (I've had a RAID 1 configured before, but realized that would not protect me from everything).

2. I want the backup to happen automatically, incrementally, and immediately with each save. (Don't simply back up at the end of the day...a lot can happen in a few hours)

3. I want to be able to back up all of my home devices (1 pc desktop, 2 pc laptops, 1 ipad, smartphones, etc.) to this device (wirelessly for portable devices)

4. It would be nice to be able to stream my photos and videos to my DLNA flat screen (.cr2 and .mts)

5. I do not need a print server, web server, etc.

I should also add that I do have a core i7 pc and have 7 open slots in my tower, and thought about just adding a few hard drives in there, but I was thinking something external to the PC might be more protected from viruses, lightning strikes, etc.?

I have been looking at Synology with WD Red drives, but don't know which Synology I need. I have been looking at DS214+, DS214play, DS713+ and DS414. I'm looking at these because their website suggests that I need one of these more expensive units when dealing with my Hi Res photos. However, I would like to buy the least expensive model which would meet my needs. Suggestions?

 

[GeorgeHR]

For years you have had no problems and now disaster waits around every corner.

I would buy a couple hard drives and install them as internal drives. If you want to use some type of removable mounting, do so. If you want external dirves buy cases and put the hard drives in them.

I would set up a batch file that runs every day that uses Xcopy to copy newer files to the hard drives. It is a 2 line batch file.

If you are paranoid move the backups off site once a week. Swap them with previous backups. worse case you lose 1 weeks work.
I would use the task scheduler to run the batch file once a day. You can run it once an hour if you want.

 

[Quartz-1]

A NAS will not protect your data from your house burning down.

Just get yourself a couple of USB 3 external hard drives and back up manually every once in a while. Keep at least one portable HDD offsite - at a relative's for instance.

 

[iroc409]

You could install crash plan and maybe a couple extra hard drives and let all your systems backup to each other, and use their online services to off-site your data.

I personally have a FreeBSD/ZFS network file server. It works great, but you have to roll your own.

 

[glbtrekker]

For years you have had no problems and now disaster waits around every corner.

I would buy a couple hard drives and install them as internal drives. If you want to use some type of removable mounting, do so. If you want external dirves buy cases and put the hard drives in them.

I would set up a batch file that runs every day that uses Xcopy to copy newer files to the hard drives. It is a 2 line batch file.

If you are paranoid move the backups off site once a week. Swap them with previous backups. worse case you lose 1 weeks work.
I would use the task scheduler to run the batch file once a day. You can run it once an hour if you want.

I wish! I actually had a number of hard drive crashes in the past and unfortunately I have lost valuable data before. I tried an external hard drive once (it died) and tried an internal RAID 1, but had a virus and of course it affected both drives equally .

I might go the internal route, at least for the time being, but would also want something external to the PC and potentially offsite. That's one reason I was considering Synology to be able to set it up as a remote backup. However, I don't know how much trouble I would have with bandwidth. Of course, this wouldn't work to well for streaming media.

A NAS will not protect your data from your house burning down.

Just get yourself a couple of USB 3 external hard drives and back up manually every once in a while. Keep at least one portable HDD offsite - at a relative's for instance.

Yes, I've considered that...or theft. I would like to do something off site, but I know me...if it has to be done manually, it will be forgotten

You could install crash plan and maybe a couple extra hard drives and let all your systems backup to each other, and use their online services to off-site your data.

I personally have a FreeBSD/ZFS network file server. It works great, but you have to roll your own.

I like the idea of crash plan...didn't know about that one. I could get two internal drives, install one locally and another at the PC in my office at work and use crash plan to back up to both drives...hmm. That might work...only thing, it's only once a day unless you pay a monthly fee and I need the backup to be instant (I write about 40 pages a week in my profession and loosing it all on Friday night could be disastrous - I use Dropbox now...but that will not work for all my files).

I'd still like to hear someone chime in more about NAS. What would the benefits be of going that route in my situation?

 

[Nate7311]

I like the idea of crash plan...didn't know about that one. I could get two internal drives, install one locally and another at the PC in my office at work and use crash plan to back up to both drives...hmm. That might work...only thing, it's only once a day unless you pay a monthly fee and I need the backup to be instant (I write about 40 pages a week in my profession and loosing it all on Friday night could be disastrous - I use Dropbox now...but that will not work for all my files).
?

You said the magic word. "Profession" If you are protecting data you make your living with/on, then what's the problem with a nominal recurring fee vs. extended downtime and or lost sales due to data loss? I understand the frustration, now that we're coming into the "Age of Subscription" where every business wants to set up recurring fees. I hate the concept myself, but $5/mo compared to $300+ upfront for rotating backup hardware, and the manual process of rotating that hardware is a no brainer in my mind...

When you think about backup, it's not just a precaution against a PC crash. Take into account, fires, tornadoes, Godzilla, <Insert disaster scenario here>. What if your house burns and your PC with your data and it's backup drive are side-by-side?

 

[glbtrekker]

You said the magic word. "Profession" If you are protecting data you make your living with/on, then what's the problem with a nominal recurring fee vs. extended downtime and or lost sales due to data loss? I understand the frustration, now that we're coming into the "Age of Subscription" where every business wants to set up recurring fees. I hate the concept myself, but $5/mo compared to $300+ upfront for rotating backup hardware, and the manual process of rotating that hardware is a no brainer in my mind...

When you think about backup, it's not just a precaution against a PC crash. Take into account, fires, tornadoes, Godzilla, <Insert disaster scenario here>. What if your house burns and your PC with your data and it's backup drive are side-by-side?

Understood, but the reality is that the amount of data that I use for my profession is limited ~1GB. Dropbox can handle that for the time being...but the idea of backing up nearly 1TB over my slower DSL connection...scary.

 

[Nate7311]

Yup, sounds like most of us. The initial backup may take a week or 2, but it'll be up there. Only changes get updated, and those would be basically transparent.

 

[GeorgeHR]

I hate the concept myself, but $5/mo compared to $300+ upfront for rotating backup hardware, and the manual process of rotating that hardware is a no brainer in my mind...

When you think about backup, it's not just a precaution against a PC crash. Take into account, fires, tornadoes, Godzilla, <Insert disaster scenario here>. What if your house burns and your PC with your data and it's backup drive are side-by-side?

I hear identity theft is frequent. I also hear that for $10/month on can be protected from it.

Yet most of us don't spend the money. We don't view it as a good deal.

$5/month for offsite data storage is mire than most people want to pay, because it is not a good deal.

It is hard to argue about $5/month v. $300 up front. But 1TB hard drives cost $70 - 14 months of offsite storage fees. So a wash.

On the other hand the guy has problems with viruses. Something I don't have problems with despite no attempt to protect myself with firewallls or anit-virus software.

---

The reality is that fear often makes people do too much to limit consequences.

 

[PointandClick]

I really think for what you're looking for, Crashplan is your best bet.

Get an internal (or external) for home and one for work. Have your home machine back up to the local drive, the machine at work and to Crashplan Central. Bam 3 backups in 3 different locations.

As far as I'm aware, the free Crashplan app isn't limited as to the timing of the backups. In fact I thought it was default to actively backup.

I used to not give a second thought to having a backup. In fact back in my Windows days I thought regular clean OS installs was a fun filled night. Then I got married... Let's just say 6 bucks a month for Crashplan is better than having to tell the boss that all the pictures are gone. Yes it's another expense, but in the grand scheme of things $6 is nothing, and is hard to beat for unlimited backups.

For my setup, I have a ZFS server that stores all of our movies, music, pictures... pretty much everything. My desktop doesn't really have much of anything stored locally other than stuff I'm currently working on. I have Crashplan setup on the server to backup. Instead of paying for the family plan I can have all machines backup to the server, then the server backup to Crashplan.

The intitial backup is a pain. In fact the only thing I have on Crashplan right now is pictures and documents. Crashplan is pretty flexible with how and when stuff is backed up. I have my pictures and documents in a set with the highest priority so they are always backed up first. I can then create separate sets for media that is replaceable.

 

[iroc409]

You can have Crashplan send you a drive to "seed" your backup so you don't have to back up 1TB across your connection. I've seriously thought about implementing it--the only real delay has been my OS choice (not Crashplan compatible).

 

[PointandClick]

You can have Crashplan send you a drive to "seed" your backup so you don't have to back up 1TB across your connection. I've seriously thought about implementing it--the only real delay has been my OS choice (not Crashplan compatible).

Yeah, it's nice to have the option, but it's not worth $125 to me. It'll only take 6-7 months to seed all my movies with bandwidth caps.

Out of curiosity, what OS are you running? Solaris support is one of the reasons I went with Crashplan.


It looks like I was wrong about about the continual backups with the free version (their new site is a mess), there's also no backup sets. Still, $6 a month... most people throw more than that away on coffee, booze, whathaveyou a week.

 

[glbtrekker]

Thanks everybody. Ordered a WD 3TB Red drive today (I know that's a NAS drive, but will only be used for storage) and downloaded crashplan (free). Plan to install in local PC, back up hard drives (to save transferring all the data over the internet) and then remove the drive and reinstall at my office away from home for incremental backups. What problems will I face with this? Will crashplan recognize that the data already exists after I move the drive, or will it try to recreate it again?

Also plan to purchase an SSD (for OS and program files) to free up an additional HD on my PC to use as local 2nd backupy.

Btw, I'm running Windows 7 64bit.

 

[uOpt]

A pretty solid solution is two external drives and have one in the office or other off-site.

A problem with any backup that doesn't have shelf copies or snapshots is that memory corruption on the primary machine can scramble data and overwrite the limited number of backups before you notice. That's where some real storage comes in.

 

[spankit]

As you can see in this thread there are a million different options as to how you can go about solving this issue and I'm going to add another. OwnCloud (www.owncloud.org) is a great application. I have just begun using it be essentially it allows you to setup a dropbox like folder on your NAS. There is a plugin available for FreeNAS and there are various threads on the web about it running on QNAP and Synology devices with a bit of work.