I need a backup solution

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Smitty2k1

Gawd
Joined
May 31, 2005
Messages
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I need a good expandable backup solution that basically travels with the hard drives themselves. Either a raid card or a software solution that can "survive" a reformat or motherboard/cpu swap.

I would like this because my current gaming rig acts as a server. Eventually the hard drives will be migrating to a server case with a (most likely) different motherboard and possibly a linux instead of windows.

Any suggestions?
 
I don't understand why the backup needs to "travel with the drives themselves"...? Can you not just get an external drive and take a copy of everything?
No need to make things complicated by trying to add unnecessary tech like RAID cards, which are nothing to do with what you're trying to acheive.
 
Why not just build a separate storage server / NAS device? WHS is pretty cool and easy to expand. Or there is FreeNAS and about a million other options.

I think you need to step back and really figure out what your needs are.
 
Concentric said:
I don't understand why the backup needs to "travel with the drives themselves"...? Can you not just get an external drive and take a copy of everything?
No need to make things complicated by trying to add unnecessary tech like RAID cards, which are nothing to do with what you're trying to acheive.
Click to expand...

I have about 5TB of data so that won't fit on an external drive.

Currently and in the immediate future, all the hard drives will be stored in my workstation/gaming pc. When I finally do build a dedicated NAS/WHS I don't want to lose anything migrating to a new motherboard/cpu/case. I guess that's what I mean by "travel with the drives themselves."

While I really think the best solution for me is to just do nightly backups of the hard drives onto redundant drives, I don't like the fact that I will have to have 10TB of hard drives to only have 5TB of storage. I like software/hardware RAID solutions so I don't have to buy double the drives, but I don't like how they tie you down to specific hardware (that I know of).

My JBOD array of 5 hard drives has been working PERFECTLY over the last several years but I know eventually something is going to fail and I want to be ready when it does.

Does that make any more sense?
 
Smitty2k1 said:
I like software/hardware RAID solutions so I don't have to buy double the drives, but I don't like how they tie you down to specific hardware (that I know of).
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Linux software RAID and probably other OS based software solutions (i.e ZFS or whatever FreeNAS uses) can be moved to different hardware usually without issue. With Windows where your best bet in terms of software RAID is the onboard RAID chip i.e the ICH9R and ICH10R storage controllers, there are some dedicated RAID controllers by LSI IIRC out there that can actually read, support, and run RAID arrays created on the ICH9R and ICH10R storage controllers.

So you're not actually locked in to specific hardware depending the hardware you're using and OS you're using.

Oh and you want to look up FlexRAID:
Flexraid Basic:
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexRAID
http://www.openegg.org/FlexRAID.curi

Pros:
+ Uses data based parity in which parity data is only kept of the file actually stored, not like with traditional RAID where parity data is is kept of the entire hard drives, regardless of whether or not you have data on those drives.
+ Allows use of different sized drives as a result of the data based parity setup
+ Free
+ Can be used with either Linux or Windows.

Cons:
- Not realtime parity so if the data needs to be protected at all times, not a good idea to use FlexRAID
- The FlexRAID needs periods of time of no usage at all in order to re-sync the RAID
- If multiple users are editing stored files, flexRAID is not recommended

Notes:
* FlexRAID Live does not have the cons of the FlexRAID Base. However it has not been released yet and even it is, it would still be a bit experimental at that stage.
* A little old but still good reading:
http://www.overclock.net/htpc/694948-has-anyone-tried-flexraid-their-media.html

It sounds like you want to find a OS agnostic solution for file storage/backup. FlexRAID might be your best bet.
 
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