best way to back up 4TB

[savager1]

Hello,

I currently have about 4TB of data that I have backed up. It is currently backed up on a opensolaris box with 4x 1TB drives running RAIDZ1. The data that I have backed up is not critical. That said, I would like to keep it. Now, from my understanding RAIDZ1 is similar to RAID5, which survives if one disk has a failure. I've already had to replace/resilver the disks once. The drives must have been part of a bad batch as there were 2 different disks that had the same issue...but that's another story. But basically RAIDZ2 is basically like RAID6 I believe, which can survive 2 disk failures and still operate. Now, I am running close to capacity on this NAS. The NAS isn't turned on all the time. It's pretty much a backup station. The reason why I created it to be a NAS running opensolaris is that I got the hardware cheap and I thought it would be funky to play with opensolaris.

I would like to add another system/device so that if more than one drive fails in my NAS I won't lose data. I have loaded up my gaming pc with another spare 2x 1TB drives and 1x 460GB drives. I was going to buy some more drives and copy over the data from my NAS to those other 4 drives, but haven't started that yet as I wanted to get the correct technology/setup this time.

Ideally I would like a new system running all new hardware, but that's not the issue I can build a new system or even buy a dell server if required. The issue is working out what technology is good for backing up 4TB of data. Should I go NAS/Tape/FreeNAS/software that comes with Thecus device or just standard disks...

So, in summary I guess I would like advice on a system such as Thecus/QNAP or build my own system and then what backup/NAS software to use? If you want you can recommend parts as well..if you want.

Thanks

 

[mmmmmdonuts]

2x2TB drives. I love the Samsung F4's.

I would just buy an external docking bay and if you have e-sata run them through that. This is what I use Startech eSata

Or if you don't want a dock put the 2x2TB into your gaming rig. I prefer not to do this though in case of surges which could take down the entire system. Thats why I am a big dock fan.

 

[_Gea]

if you want to have the same level of data-security and protection against silent data-errors,
then you should create a second (or third) mirrored or raid-z(1-3) pool for backups.

After a backup, you could export and unplug this pool.
(or use a second machine on another physical place)

Gea

 

[GeorgeHR]

I would give the same advice as mmmmmdonuts.

USB-3 is another option. As is cases for the drives rather than the docking station. I have both depending on how much I will be moving the drives.

 

[ex0du5]

Whatever backup solution you choose, I think it would be prudent to make it an offsite backup.

 

[ChrisBenn]

If you want to protect against multiple disk failures in your nas then the best bet is to do what Gea suggested and move to a raid-z2 or raid-z3 (two or three parity disks, so data integrity is preserved with two or three hard drive failures).

If you want an additional backup of your nas then yeah, I would just go with some external hard drives and rotate them off site. (Disk failure redundancy in the backup of your backup seems overkill - if you really need that level of protection then build a duplicate nas, sync it up on a schedule with zfs send/receive, and the keep it offsite).

Chris