I have a bit of money to spend, so I have been toying with the idea of getting a proper backup system put in place and/or a NAS drive. The infrastructure is all Gigabit Ethernet, so I would like to keep everything Gigabit as far as possible. Ideally I would like a NAS drive for central network storage, then some sort of backup running off that storage. The problem is that the only way I can think of this being feasible is to have 2 NAS boxes, or an external HDD connected to the NAS box. Both of these options are quite costly, owing to HDD prices. At the moment, I have almost filled up my 1TB storage drive, so 2TB or more is necessary. I was thinking of getting a Synology DS212j then filling it with 2 2TB Seagate Barracuda drives (they are the cheapest HDDs available right now). Then the problem of backup comes in. Of course, the other option is to continue using local storage (maybe upgrade the storage drive in my PC to 2TB) and have the NAS as the backup itself. This reduces the potential external access possibilities, which could come in useful at a later date.
Unless you can budget for 2 NAS boxes, or a server and a NAS like I do, then the above would be the cheapest and most practical solution.
That sounds expensive! I am really struggling to come to a decision - on the one hand I want to be able to access my files from the internet, but on the other I would prefer to keep this as cheap as possible.
I was in much the same boat as yourself about this time last month, and after much reading (here and elsewhere) I've gone the HP microserver way. I already have a few (3?) 1TB drives, kindly donated by my brother when he upgraded to 2TB drives and I'm going to start ripping my CD collection in ernest once I get everything set up - lossless of course. I'm currently in the process of deciding between unRaid and Ubuntu server for OS and keep going through Gareth's recent article on the subject-ish to see what I can do and how. However, I think the box it's self can't be beaten for the price... You're getting something like a cross between the DS411 and the DS412+ (£360 and £420 respectively) with the upgrade-ability of the DS712+ (£380-ish) by sticking in a sata raid card, for £160ish - after a £100 cash back...
So do you have any backup on your network? That is what is key - I have collected enough stuff that backup really is necessary now. Would it be possible to have a backup to the same device, but to a different disk? Like two hard drives - one with the 'live copy', that is shared on the network, and the other being the backup. That would certainly cut down on costs.
It's certainly possible, but that wouldn't give you a safe system - lose the one NAS and your 'live' and backup are gone. Two machines, one in a remote location, for a good backup plan. Perhaps go with a 'cloud' solution, so you only have to finance the one machine in a lump, the other is paid for monthly.
It'll be both a duplicate and an expansion on my main system - all my key data will stay on my main PC and I may buy a new large-ish drive 500GB-1TB to allow for expansion but once things get cleaned up a bit I mightn't need that. I'm hoping to set it up to back up any changes in my core data onto the microserver on shut down, this'll mostly be CAD files, and correspondence so shouldn't take more than a few minutes at the end of each day. Further to this it'll be a music server allowing me to delete all the mp3's on my PC, this should free up a decent amount of space. And, again hopefully, it'll allow me remote access to my core data. I don't need a digital backup of my music, it'd be a pest re-ripping it all I'm sure, but the physical discs would be my backup - go on, say it, fire, flood, act of spaghetti, I know! However, that's a risk I'm willing to take! My core data, perhaps not, it's likely that that'll get updated weekly/monthly and stashed somewhere on a static disc, say locked in an old ammo crate and buried in my neighbours garden... I don't do a massive amount with photoshop any-more, so my texture library currently in the region of 5GB isn't likely to grow very fast, though I do every now and then get the urge for a high quality image of concrete... besides that the two biggest hogs for space are my collected uni degree (16GB) and Vista (11GB) so backing myself up isn't too big a deal at the moment.
This is what I do with my Ubuntu server but I take it one step further for better protection. Primary hdd holds live data shared on the network. I then have 2 RSYNC schedules running to sync changed data to the secondary hdd. The 1st schedule runs every hour and syncs primary to secondary but doesn't remove items from the secondary that have been deleted from the primary. The 2st schedule runs on the 1st of every month syncs and does remove data from the secondary that has been deleted from the primary. Better than RAID in my opinion as not only protection against disk failure but also file system corruption. I also have an external USB disk that I sync once a week then lock in my desk drawer at work so remote backup is cover also.
Hmm, the 'external HDD' idea is appealing to me now. I think I can close this thread up here. Thanks to all, and +rep to asura and scott_chegg for your examples. And the 'act of spaghetti'
Sorry to hijack this thread- do you have details on the schedules/scripts you use for backup/copies please? (Looking at implementing a similar solution to backup a NAS automatically to a secondary disk but only interested in file changes on primary etc) Ta!
