Posted: 10/10/2010 10:55:30 AM EDT
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I'm curious if anyone has had any luck with the external RAID enclosures for 2.5" drives?
I currently am using a Maxtor Black Armor and a WD usb-powered drives for backups of pictures. The important files stay on the black armor and are copied to a DVD-R once a month as a backup. It's a PITA to "mirror" the photographs that I have as it's very time consuming. Any thoughts on the following units? (I would really prefer a USB-powered but if that's not an option I'll deal with it (USB-powered would make it easier since I'm using laptops) http://www.amazon.com/eSATA-Aluminum-Drive-Enclosure-Backup/dp/B001Q5G6Z6 http://us.startech.com/product/S252U2ERR-25in-Removable-eSATA-USB-Dual-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-with-RAID Thanks 
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if all you need is a cheap way to move files between two locations, try Microsoft's synctoy. I use it at work and it works very well. You can set it between multiple types of syncs and you can put it on a schedule so it will run overnight every day or just the days you want and.... its free.
Synchtoy |
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Don't use raid as your backup.
Look at these guys backblaze. Cheap, no storage space limits, and you don't have to worry about it. |
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Is this your backup? having a "backup" live and plugged in sounds not optimal. Get 2 mega big usb external drives and swap them daily or weekly or however often you would cry without your data.
eta: and if you EVEN THINK about using some online backup, figure out how long it would take to restore before you go uploading the moon to the cloud. |
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Quoted:
if all you need is a cheap way to move files between two locations, try Microsoft's synctoy. I use it at work and it works very well. You can set it between multiple types of syncs and you can put it on a schedule so it will run overnight every day or just the days you want and.... its free. Synchtoy I gave up on sync toy. On XP and smaller files it works good. For large amounts of data, it just craps out. I have about ~25 GB of documents, pics, etc, and about 75GB+ of mp3's. Sync toy would take forever, and eventually just hang up. Hence my two suggestions. |
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if all you need is a cheap way to move files between two locations, try Microsoft's synctoy. I use it at work and it works very well. You can set it between multiple types of syncs and you can put it on a schedule so it will run overnight every day or just the days you want and.... its free. Synchtoy I gave up on sync toy. On XP and smaller files it works good. For large amounts of data, it just craps out. I have about ~25 GB of documents, pics, etc, and about 75GB+ of mp3's. Sync toy would take forever, and eventually just hang up. Hence my two suggestions. xcopy? robocopy? both great comand line tools. |
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if all you need is a cheap way to move files between two locations, try Microsoft's synctoy. I use it at work and it works very well. You can set it between multiple types of syncs and you can put it on a schedule so it will run overnight every day or just the days you want and.... its free. Synchtoy I gave up on sync toy. On XP and smaller files it works good. For large amounts of data, it just craps out. I have about ~25 GB of documents, pics, etc, and about 75GB+ of mp3's. Sync toy would take forever, and eventually just hang up. Hence my two suggestions. We use it at work for about 100 gig of data. We are going from serve to server though, i am not sure if that makes a big difference. we also have it run at night every night to cut down on the large file transfers. |
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I use a Drobo that uses standard/fast/cheaper disks.
Why use the more expensive and slower 2.5" disks? I have an internal RAID 5, and external SAN RAID 5 (USB), and an external NAS RAID 5 (Ethernet) and Time Machine and Windows backup. Lots and lots of disks protecting me. |
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Quoted: Why do you want to use 2.5 inch drives? Was wondering the same thing, they make the same thing the OP posted but that use 3.5" drives, sure you need to power it externally but its a lot cheaper per gigabyte. I currently use a home server running Ubuntu with a raid 5 array, and burn my newest pictures to a DVD-R once a year and store those at my mom's house when I go home for christmas every year. |
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Quoted: Try something like Smart Sync or always sync, and an external USB drive. Photos remain on your computer, and once ever "x" days, hours, etc. they are automatically copied to the external drive. Beyond Compare is a great tool. We use it for synching, merging, or moving big shares. It was great for getting all my MP3s into a coherent collection. |
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I highly recommend the Buffalo Terastation Buffalo Site
I have a 4 terabyte version running in RAID 5 mode. There is also a 2 terabyte version. Smaller units are also available, just check out the site. I use this array for both my personal and business backups, etc. An FTP server is built in which is really nice for sending files to and from my office. It also has built in DLNA™ CERTIFIED Media Server For multimedia streaming to any DLNA compatible media player. This is really nice if you have lots of music, photos and video files. I have over 20K mp3's, 300 movies, and thousands of photos that are all available over my network. This is really nice. I have a Samsung LED HDTV connected to my network and it can access all those media files on the server. |
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Is this your backup? having a "backup" live and plugged in sounds not optimal. Get 2 mega big usb external drives and swap them daily or weekly or however often you would cry without your data. eta: and if you EVEN THINK about using some online backup, figure out how long it would take to restore before you go uploading the moon to the cloud. Two drives rotating are better then one set of mirrored drives. If a copy or virus fucks up you files, it's all gone. With a 2nd generation you have something to go back to. Eh. I don't trust online storage yet. If you think they can offer it for $5 a month and not mine your data for whatever marketing research purposes you're kidding yourself. And, for the tinfoil wearing types, if the feds or .gov want to look at your data you can bet your ass they'll hand it right over to them. |
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Why do you want to use 2.5 inch drives? I'd ask that too but though maybe the OP doesn't want the extra power supply required. The docks are nice, I prefer them to the whole externally enclosed drive. Just add cheaper internal drives. 
Teh egg |
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2.5" drives for the space saving.
I have two laptops. I keep SOME photos on them, but not all of them. 1 external hard drive (black armor) is used for personal files that need to be secure. I also keep a copy of the photos in a "picture" directory as a mirrored backup. That drive is fine. 1 additional external (WD) drive for photos, old, new, misc , archived...whatever. The WD has already failed me once and the black armor was my "backup" I thought it would be easier to simply keep an external raid 1 enclosure (2.5" drives for the size), for the photos. ie: plug it in, add the new pictures and it create a mirror of itself to the other drive. It is a real pain in the ass with both external drives manually copying things. With a true raid setup I could eliminate the need for photos on the black armor drive. I think I'm on the right track here...............  Just looking for an easier and more efficient way to do this. Many of the photos are of family dating back to the 1800's up to present day. There is a lot.
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http://www.synology.com/us/products/ds210j/index.php
i love mine , maynot be what you want but its cheap and does a ton of stuff. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: if all you need is a cheap way to move files between two locations, try Microsoft's synctoy. I use it at work and it works very well. You can set it between multiple types of syncs and you can put it on a schedule so it will run overnight every day or just the days you want and.... its free. Synchtoy I gave up on sync toy. On XP and smaller files it works good. For large amounts of data, it just craps out. I have about ~25 GB of documents, pics, etc, and about 75GB+ of mp3's. Sync toy would take forever, and eventually just hang up. Hence my two suggestions. xcopy? robocopy? both great comand line tools. Robocopy FTW |
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http://www.synology.com/us/products/ds210j/index.php i love mine , maynot be what you want but its cheap and does a ton of stuff. I have considered the Black Armor NAS 220? (The one that has a RAID setup), but it's a little large to keep in the safe. |
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Quoted: I'm a little dense, but I don't see what you need raid for in that situation. Do you mean you want to substitute raid instead of backup to dvd? Backup to DVD?  Where have you been? Hard drives are the most logical and economical backup media there is now.You are not going to backup 1.5TB of data to a series of DVDs, let alone have every single disk in working order when it's time to restore. Edit: Raid is not a data backup solution, it is only a hardware backup solution that allows you to keep working if a hard drive fails. If there is data corruption or you are a dummy and delete a file by mistake you're SOL with RAID. I use one of these with one of these + Window 7's backup utility to backup of all of my data and create a system image nightly. |
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Quoted: http://www.synology.com/us/products/ds210j/index.php i love mine , maynot be what you want but its cheap and does a ton of stuff. I'm probably going to be getting one of those, mainly because the OS is getting such high marks. |
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RAID as previously stated, Is to keep working in the event of a hard drive crash.
RAID is not a backup solution by itself. I would recommend that you use 3 USB external HD's in rotation (2 on-site 1 off) Use ROBOCOPY with /mir option. this will make a exact copy of the data. after the initial copy, only added and deleted files will be changed. so the copy process goes quickly. |
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My synology is in raid 1 , with 2x 2 tb drives in it . I keep a spare 2 tb hd that is the same model around in case one fails so I can rebuild it. I also back it up once or twice a month with a 2tb USB ext hd that plugs into the usb port and the synolgy has a 1 button push backup to that usb hd , when its done i take the usb hd to work so its offsite.
The synolgy os is great! mine has never gone down , easy to upgrade and streaming works fine to the HDTV with a WD Live box (which has netflix built in too) i can access my home files via FTP or web and it has a webcam addon for it so it serves as a dvr for webcam security . It does more too , i just havent used all the functions yet. Had it for about 18 months now , zero probs with it. my only regret is not getting the 4 bay model... 
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2.5" drives for the space saving. I have two laptops. I keep SOME photos on them, but not all of them. 1 external hard drive (black armor) is used for personal files that need to be secure. I also keep a copy of the photos in a "picture" directory as a mirrored backup. That drive is fine. 1 additional external (WD) drive for photos, old, new, misc , archived...whatever. The WD has already failed me once and the black armor was my "backup" I thought it would be easier to simply keep an external raid 1 enclosure (2.5" drives for the size), for the photos. ie: plug it in, add the new pictures and it create a mirror of itself to the other drive. It is a real pain in the ass with both external drives manually copying things. With a true raid setup I could eliminate the need for photos on the black armor drive. I think I'm on the right track here............... Just looking for an easier and more efficient way to do this. Many of the photos are of family dating back to the 1800's up to present day. There is a lot.
And RAID will not fully protect you. Virus? Gone from both. Or a power spike to the enclosure(s) kills both. RAID is good, but it's not a backup solution. 
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I'm a little dense, but I don't see what you need raid for in that situation. Do you mean you want to substitute raid instead of backup to dvd? Backup to DVD? Where have you been? Hard drives are the most logical and economical backup media there is now.
You are not going to backup 1.5TB of data to a series of DVDs, let alone have every single disk in working order when it's time to restore. Edit: Raid is not a data backup solution, it is only a hardware backup solution that allows you to keep working if a hard drive fails. If there is data corruption or you are a dummy and delete a file by mistake you're SOL with RAID. I use one of these with one of these + Window 7's backup utility to backup of all of my data and create a system image nightly. Maybe I misunderstand raid. You're saying if a file is deleted, it will also be deleted on the mirrored drive ? |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I'm a little dense, but I don't see what you need raid for in that situation. Do you mean you want to substitute raid instead of backup to dvd? Backup to DVD? Where have you been? Hard drives are the most logical and economical backup media there is now.You are not going to backup 1.5TB of data to a series of DVDs, let alone have every single disk in working order when it's time to restore. Edit: Raid is not a data backup solution, it is only a hardware backup solution that allows you to keep working if a hard drive fails. If there is data corruption or you are a dummy and delete a file by mistake you're SOL with RAID. I use one of these with one of these + Window 7's backup utility to backup of all of my data and create a system image nightly. Maybe I misunderstand raid. You're saying if a file is deleted, it will also be deleted on the mirrored drive ? That's what Mirroring is. What happens on 1 disk happens on the other. |
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Maybe I misunderstand raid. You're saying if a file is deleted, it will also be deleted on the mirrored drive ? The RAID enclosure (RAID 1) looks like a single hard drive to you and to the operating system. Its sole purpose is to allow operations to continue in the event of a hard drive failure. If you delete a file or a virus deletes/ corrupts a file –– its gone. (file recovery not withstanding) |
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I'm a little dense, but I don't see what you need raid for in that situation. Do you mean you want to substitute raid instead of backup to dvd? Backup to DVD? Where have you been? Hard drives are the most logical and economical backup media there is now.
You are not going to backup 1.5TB of data to a series of DVDs, let alone have every single disk in working order when it's time to restore. Edit: Raid is not a data backup solution, it is only a hardware backup solution that allows you to keep working if a hard drive fails. If there is data corruption or you are a dummy and delete a file by mistake you're SOL with RAID. I use one of these with one of these + Window 7's backup utility to backup of all of my data and create a system image nightly. Maybe I misunderstand raid. You're saying if a file is deleted, it will also be deleted on the mirrored drive ? That's what Mirroring is. What happens on 1 disk happens on the other. the purpose of mirroring is so you have a copy of the should the drive crash due to a hardware failure. |
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I have a NAS/File server that I keep all my files on.
it has two drives in it One that is the "working drive" The other is a Backup drive, It Syncs itself nightly from the Working Drive to the Backup drive and the Really important stuff I save off line again to an external drive So basically: If I accidentally delete something I can go in and grab it of the Mirror. (As long as I do it before the mirroring starts overnight) If the Working drive Fails I just put the backup drive in it's place and put a new drive in place of the backup If the Backup drive fails I just put a net one in it place. If it all blows up I grab the off line backup drive. |
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I have a NAS/File server that I keep all my files on. it has two drives in it One that is the "working drive" The other is a Backup drive, It Syncs itself nightly from the Working Drive to the Backup drive and the Really important stuff I save off line again to an external drive So basically: If I accidentally delete something I can go in and grab it of the Mirror. (As long as I do it before the mirroring starts overnight) If the Working drive Fails I just put the backup drive in it's place and put a new drive in place of the backup If the Backup drive fails I just put a net one in it place. If it all blows up I grab the off line backup drive. That's basically what I'm trying to achieve, but without the NAS, I really don't need it connected to the network at all times. My real main purpose for using only USB drives at this point is to allow them to be stored in the safe and not require an external power supply to operate............. HDD 1 is for important files and a "backup" of the photographs. HDD 2 is for photos only. - The first USB Western Digital failed me, I used the backup from HDD1 to restore everything. 
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I would not take chances with those pictures. At the very least use Skydrive, along with live mesh, just to get the most precious and irrecoverable backed up and safe. Both of those are free, and simple to use, and will give you off-site storage until you get further down the road.
For many reasons, after the pics are safe, look at windows home server, Unraid, or flexraid. |
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I gave up on sync toy. On XP and smaller files it works good. For large amounts of data, it just craps out. I have about ~25 GB of documents, pics, etc, and about 75GB+ of mp3's. Sync toy would take forever, and eventually just hang up. Hence my two suggestions. I use Synctoy to keep about 40 gig of stuff synced between my laptop and desktop. The way I did it was I used a direct LAN cable connection and Teracopy to just copy all the files over first, then used synctoy to set up the sync, so all synctoy ever has to deal with is a few dozen meg worth of updates and deletions and such. |
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the purpose of mirroring is so you have a copy of the should the drive crash due to a hardware failure. Ayup. RAID(1) is mostly for data availability - with the second drive, if a drive dies you still have access to your data, right now. No waiting. As mentioned, lots of stuff can happen that RAID doesn't protect against. If you can live for hours or a day while a restore is happening, and it's not critical that you have up to the-last-second data, you can safely skip RAID and go for 2 drives on a rotating schedule. |
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I have a NAS/File server that I keep all my files on. it has two drives in it One that is the "working drive" The other is a Backup drive, It Syncs itself nightly from the Working Drive to the Backup drive and the Really important stuff I save off line again to an external drive So basically: If I accidentally delete something I can go in and grab it of the Mirror. (As long as I do it before the mirroring starts overnight) If the Working drive Fails I just put the backup drive in it's place and put a new drive in place of the backup If the Backup drive fails I just put a net one in it place. If it all blows up I grab the off line backup drive. That's basically what I'm trying to achieve, but without the NAS, I really don't need it connected to the network at all times. My real main purpose for using only USB drives at this point is to allow them to be stored in the safe and not require an external power supply to operate............. HDD 1 is for important files and a "backup" of the photographs. HDD 2 is for photos only. - The first USB Western Digital failed me, I used the backup from HDD1 to restore everything.
Using a NAS/Server lets you take it up a notch and you can something like CloneZilla to Image your PC, that way if your PC gets trashed you can bring it back to a known state withing minutes. Plus Then you can share those photos etc with other computers and media players in your house. It the end the price is close to the same but the capabilities are far more. |
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How would I go about securing a NAS? Do I have to get a black-armor type of a setup or can I simply purchase something at best buy?
I also read somewhere to get a "hardware firewall" such as AlphaShield if one is using a Network storage drive... I think if I can find a NAS with a USB port that would be great. The USB port would be to connect an external drive to make a backup of the NAS so that it may be stored in a safe place..... |
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In addition to several offline USB drives, I keep photocopies of important documents, baby pictures/ videos, pictures of my stuff for insurance, etc on a large capacity flash drive on my keychain. Just in case the house is on fire and I have minimal time to grab belongings, I'll always be able to snatch the keys of the nightstand. |