Hey All, Another one of my multiple questions I'm afraid After loosing one of my 1TB abruptly I realise its all very well using drop box for saving the smaller files that I have, I really need to sort out something for the big files I've collected. Currently I have(had) about 2-2.5 TB's worth of music samples / music / movies. Music and Movies, while painful slow to redo, could be ripped again but my samples and music work is something that as it all built by myself would take years to redo and some of it might well be impossible to recreate. Firstly, I'm looking for a decent backup solution, Ideally something that I can turn on as and when I need to back up, or something that I'd turn on when I turn my PC on, I'm not, atm really interested in something running 24/7. Ideally I'd like 1-3 TBs of storage as well as it backed up. I've looked at NAS devices and that Baby HP Proliant with the £100 rebate and I'm not sure whats the best option for me. I'm not sure what my budget is for this at the moment, as I might have to spend a load recovering my dead drive. Although I realise that if you want the security you have to spend the money. I suppose I could shell out for a 3TB drive and just have a piece of software back up new files from my other HDD's? Would be the cheapest option. Any advice on good software to just copy new/changes after doing a bulk copy? Secondly, Does anyone know or had experience any good companies in the UK for HDD data recovery. The drive is probably mechanically broken (or the PCB) and alot of the samples and music I've created is something I really want back. Also I don't really know where I'd stand regarding having some pirated games on the hdd, I had a load of stuff stolen when I was back at uni years ago and It wasn't covered with insurance, so basically I downloaded some of it again. No excuse I know but I wondered if that could potentially screw me over trying to get my genuine things back, with a company recovering the drive. I haven't really got much of an excuse really total failing on my part not backing up my stuff and being a bit cheeky getting things I'd lost back again. Any advice would be appreciated
If you don't need a file server running 24/7 then a decent RAID based NAS device would be reasonably cheap, yet have redundancy. I use a Thecus N3200 Pro as a mirror device for my main server. It's reliable, uses little power, and can be scheduled to turn on and off whenever you like. The only drawback is that in RAID5 (How I'm running it) the write speeds aren't great, so backing up a lot of data may be slow, but this can be done overnight. However... I also use Acronis True Image Home to create my back ups, and if you use incremental back ups only the first back up is a full back up. From then on it only backs up whats new. I do however, have it set to create a new archive every 10th incremental.... just to avoid having a massive string of incremental files. I wouldn't rely on a single disk for back ups though.... ever. The least I would accept is having a back up on one disk, and then mirroring this to another disk. Also... you may want to also have a back up you can hide, or store offsite to prevent data loss through theft or fire. [edit] Sorry, but can't help you with data recovery. Not to sound smug.. but I've always had a very robust back up system. I laugh at disk failure, and tweak the nose of corrupted data Seriously... invest in a decent back up system with redundancy, and then have a back up of the back up on a second redundant system. It sounds extravagant but after you've had a few quotes to recover data from your hard drives... you may not think so. One thing I DO know, is that the cost of professional data recovery is a lot.
Na its alright, I know what you mean, I'd prepared everything else, thats REALLY important (well the smaller in size stuff) across Cloud storage and smaller backups. I just never really got around to pulling my finger out to sorting out backing up the 5GB+ size stuff I'd acquired. So I accept it was a bit silly of myself to be this lazy. I certainly know it'll cost me to get the data back. Not looking forward to those quotes. One of lifes lessons eh. I'd looked at Acronis so I think I'll deff be getting that. Will just be a case of working out which storage method to use without blowing all my cash
A simple 4 bay NAS with average-decent performance will suffice. Acronis TI 2012 will support scheduled back-up to the NAS. In the event that something messes up, you can boot off the rescue media and recover over the network.
I have a 2 TB drive for bulk storage, and another just like it as the backup. Once per month, I use a program called FreeCommander and it's Synchronize feature to analyse the differences between the files on the main drive and the files on the backup one - it makes it really easy to delete stuff off the backup drive that has been removed from the main one, and copy over the new stuff, all in one step. I connect the drive when I need it via eSATA - the rest of the time, it's an offsite backup - I take it to work and lock it in my desk. It's TrueCrypt encrypted too just in case. It's only ever in the same location as my PC when I'm using it to update the backup.
You may like to look at the current PC Pro magazine, they have a good review of NAS devices. Not on their website yet though.
