Hard Drive RIP... Oh Poop!

[zephod]

Ok, our primary backup just decided to go into the light and now says there's nothing on it and it needs to be formated. Most of my photos, and all of my client work, is backed up to CD but all of my wife's templates were on this drive. Yes, I know and Yes we've already had this discussion. So recovery is going to set us back about $1200.00 and I'd like this to be burned once lesson learned so here's the question.

What's a good choice for backing up our network and important data? I'd like to spend around 400 or less but the primary concern is security and reliability.

[mattalleng]

Well I don't have too much of a storage issue myself so I don't have much PERSONAL experience in this area but there are secure data hosting companies out there, you see adds for them on TV every once in a while but IDK, I don't like that I am trusting someone else HD's to not fail...

Me personally? I would overkill it. I have multiple HD's in a tower and I just enabled a share folder so I can drop my files from my laptop into more than one HD in my tower. O drop the same exact thing on each, that way if one fails there is an exact replica on the second you know?

[JosephJay]

You could buy an external hardrive for way less than $400 but I dont have a single idea how to get your wife's templates back though. I only have one external backup for my entire computer. Some external harddrives can hold from anywhere to 300GB to 1TB of data to back up your computer. I dont know if I can be much more help to you.

[Rentham]

Something like a Drobo is well outside your price range so your best bet is an online storage vendor.

[SwissJon]

Ok, for $400 your options are fairly limited. I'd suggest you go for something like a Netgear ReadyNAS in anything other than JBOD or Raid 0 arrangement, and then use the continuous backup software that came with the NAS server. This is compatable with both Mac and PC and is accessible over the internet.

I don't have one of these, but looking into this for you has made me very curious. I think I probably will have one soon

[gturner]

I have had 2 horror stories this month with hdd backups.

1. My best mate leaving the office for holidays (lives in an african country, travelling to Cape Town). He placed his Mac, main drive and backup in the same bag, went back inside to collect something else from the office and his window was smashed and the bag stolen. 10 years of digital images gone. He lives a life in the bush running safaris, boat charters and has travelled the world. Everything is gone, years of life experiences including all his kids pics.

2. My sister in law travelled with her main and back up to sit in the holiday house and clean up the last 6 years of images. They had a robbery 2 nights before christmas and they lost everything.


The lesson - BACK UP YOUR BEST IMAGES OFF SITE!

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by gturner

I have had 2 horror stories this month with hdd backups.

1. My best mate leaving the office for holidays (lives in an african country, travelling to Cape Town). He placed his Mac, main drive and backup in the same bag, went back inside to collect something else from the office and his window was smashed and the bag stolen. 10 years of digital images gone. He lives a life in the bush running safaris, boat charters and has travelled the world. Everything is gone, years of life experiences including all his kids pics.

2. My sister in law travelled with her main and back up to sit in the holiday house and clean up the last 6 years of images. They had a robbery 2 nights before christmas and they lost everything.


The lesson - BACK UP YOUR BEST IMAGES OFF SITE!

The real lesson is.. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.. Putting your Mac, Main drive and backup drive in one bag it plain silly. I feel for your friend, but really, it's his own fault.. If he'd left his backup in a different bag, the robbery would have been less of a disaster.. The whole point of Backup drives is that they are NEVER in the same place as the main drive. That's really just asking for trouble.. Store your main drive with your computer, by all means, but then have a backup kept in your bedroom or somewhere. Preferably somewhere fireproof and floodproof, or at least somewhere that's not going to get hit by fire, flood or robbery at the same time as the main drive.

And the moment your main drive OR your backup drive gets damaged, Get another drive. Back up the remaining drive, THEN decide what you're going to do. This is a real shame, but it's really not difficult to retain adequate backups and keep them from being stolen at the same time as the originals.. It just takes a little bit of common sense.

We don't expect disasters, but if you're going to go to the effort of getting a backup, treat it as a backup, not just another hard disk.. It shouldn't be for general use, it should be for backups only.

[gturner]

fair comment Jon, but in these 2 cases, they were both basically moving house for a month.

[homank76]

I have all my important things backed up on three seperate drives. For the $400 you got listed you could easily buy three 1TB hard drives. I keep one at work, one on a shared drive and the other one just like the drive I have at work. I take the one from work home once a week and back it up.

In this digital age, I can't take any chances.

I got one of these over Thanksgiving:

Newegg.com - HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2C 2GB (1 x 2GB) 1 x 250GB LFF SATA 658553-001
There was a deal with that and Windows Home Server 2011 for $250 shipped.

Added two 2TB ($100 each from Amazon), for a total cost of $450. Made the drives reduntant so that if one fails, the data is still safe on the other.

It works as a backup system, media server (I stream movies to my 2 TVs), and general network drives. Much faster than a USB hard-drive. It's also accessible by any Windows PC, my wife's Macbook, and my Android Tablet. You can even run a website off it, if you wanted.