Looking for a backup solution

Hi everyone,

I am looking into making my backup a little more efficient. Trying to keep the cost below $300.

Currently have two 1TB external drives that I backup everything to, problem is that they run on usb2 and it takes awhile to update one, then the second, especially if I delete something on one, then I have to find it on the other one.

I've tried some software that mirrors the drives but its generally been very bad performance and nothing but frustration.

I would like something that I can browse as if it was part of the windows file system. So having to go through some software menu to retrieve files will probably something that will also become very frustrating.

I also want to stay away from anything proprietary like the Drobo's.

Would something like the:
http://www.tigerdirect​.ca …?EdpNo=5749804&​CatId=2670

with two drives in it and hooked to my router be sufficient? A bit lost in all of this without wasting more money.

Thank you

It should be fine. It looks like it can run Raid 1 so should do exactly what you need.

The other option, is just to use a esata enclosure and either a esata card that will run raid, or fine a hardware based raid enclosure that can run the raid 1 setup for you.

Alright, a question then if you don't mind in regards to the Raid. I wasn't sure if it would be best to run them as separate drives and manually copy over each one or if it would be better to run them as a Raid. Everything I've read about Raid says its "not a backup" and if one crashes, sure the NAS device can rebuild the drive that has failed but generally you won't get things back that you put on yesterday or very recently.

I am looking for something that is actual onsite backup, if one crashes I don't want to be hooped by recovering the 'majority' of data but losing the recent.

Does that statement hold any water? or should I be ok using that configuration in a Raid 1

I wouldn't bother with that. A NAS will be faster than USB2, but as it's permanently connected to your LAN a fire or thief will destroy all your data. You still need offsite backups. The USB2 disks are fine for that, just set the backup running overnight.

Get eSata enclosures and move your backup disks into them - ie crack open your USB2 cases. Alternately USB3 disks/enclosures and a USB3 cards for your PC.

Use either Synctoy or Robocopy to copy your drives. You can tell it to mirror your main drive including removing files from the main that you want removed from the backup, but that's dangerous - if a file gets deleted from the main then the backup you're stuffed. I have Robocopy mirror new and updated files, but I don't let it delete files. I manually do that occasionally, based on folders that seem too large - I use treesize free to find them.

Working disks should be internal SATA for performance. NAS is definitely too slow for things like lightroom. I work from an SSD for cache, and big spinning disks for images.

Vladimer wrote in post #12307566
Alright, a question then if you don't mind in regards to the Raid. I wasn't sure if it would be best to run them as separate drives and manually copy over each one or if it would be better to run them as a Raid. Everything I've read about Raid says its "not a backup" and if one crashes, sure the NAS device can rebuild the drive that has failed but generally you won't get things back that you put on yesterday or very recently.

I am looking for something that is actual onsite backup, if one crashes I don't want to be hooped by recovering the 'majority' of data but losing the recent.

Does that statement hold any water? or should I be ok using that configuration in a Raid 1

Raid is NOT a backup, but copying everything from one drive to another really isn't a true backup either. Both copies will be destroyed or stolen at the same time.

tim wrote in post #12308387
I wouldn't bother with that. A NAS will be faster than USB2, but as it's permanently connected to your LAN a fire or thief will destroy all your data. You still need offsite backups. The USB2 disks are fine for that, just set the backup running overnight.

Get eSata enclosures and move your backup disks into them - ie crack open your USB2 cases. Alternately USB3 disks/enclosures and a USB3 cards for your PC.

Use either Synctoy or Robocopy to copy your drives. You can tell it to mirror your main drive including removing files from the main that you want removed from the backup, but that's dangerous - if a file gets deleted from the main then the backup you're stuffed. I have Robocopy mirror new and updated files, but I don't let it delete files. I manually do that occasionally, based on folders that seem too large - I use treesize free to find them.

Working disks should be internal SATA for performance. NAS is definitely too slow for things like lightroom. I work from an SSD for cache, and big spinning disks for images.

NAS is not a working drive, it's a backup drive. If he wants a working drive or backup that's why I suggested a esata enclosure as well.

A NAS can just be a nice centralized location for a home network, you can dump the data on there and access it from various other places if you need as well. An offsite backup is still needed (if you care about your data that is), but it's always a good idea to have a easily accessible backup on site as well in case your main harddrive crashes or whatnot, then you have a quick way to recover that data.

Well I'm currently just trying to solve my onsite backup problem as I do have another external HDD that I keep at work as an off site backup. That I don't mind backing up that one manually as I don't do it daily or every time I backup the stuff on the computer.

Its the juggling of two drives and waiting for the large transfers between the two that is becoming a bit of a pain for me.

With NAS not being a working drive as you say, that is not exactly what I am looking for then as I would like to be able to access it more so like a working drive, even with a slower speed I don't want it to be more trouble just trying to get the data off the disks.

With that said, if my understanding is correct. You guys are recommending I keep the 2 drives I have currently in the external USB enclosures (on site). Get new SATA/USB3 enclosures and use them that way?

If that is the case I might just get a couple SATA cables and mount the drives internally in the computer. Use one of them as a backup and have the other one copy/mirror with the software you mentioned.

Would that make sense and be smarter move?

I use a free program called Karens replicator that allows me to schedule backups to any external drive. It will mirror folders and update modified files.

I would second the opinion that having any automated backup solution mirror file deletions is a bad idea. Your just asking for trouble if a folder gets deleted accidentially or by a virus etc...

I set all of my backups to run at 1am and rotate drives to an offsite location after major additions. High quality JPEGs of my best shots are uploaded to smugmug so that is an additional partial backup and I habe an online backup plan with versioning as an absolute last resort. Its slow compared to USB/eSata but its there.

Speaking of versioning does anyone know of backup software that will support versioning when copying to an external HD that works well?

I know the default segate software used to but it was very buggy on vista/win7 64bit systems and the options were a bit limited.

Vladimer wrote in post #12309802
Well I'm currently just trying to solve my onsite backup problem as I do have another external HDD that I keep at work as an off site backup. That I don't mind backing up that one manually as I don't do it daily or every time I backup the stuff on the computer.

Its the juggling of two drives and waiting for the large transfers between the two that is becoming a bit of a pain for me.

With NAS not being a working drive as you say, that is not exactly what I am looking for then as I would like to be able to access it more so like a working drive, even with a slower speed I don't want it to be more trouble just trying to get the data off the disks.

With that said, if my understanding is correct. You guys are recommending I keep the 2 drives I have currently in the external USB enclosures (on site). Get new SATA/USB3 enclosures and use them that way?

If that is the case I might just get a couple SATA cables and mount the drives internally in the computer. Use one of them as a backup and have the other one copy/mirror with the software you mentioned.

Would that make sense and be smarter move?

Honestly I wouldn't go busting the drives out of the current enclosures.

Either get two new drives and set them up in Raid 1 internally, or get a esata enclosure and run RAID 1 in that. (You may need an esata card as well).

Keep the USB drives as dump drives that you can just move old data to so you still have an onsite backup.

my system uses 3 sata drives for photo's

drive 1 has all my data on it
drive 2 is in a caddy: http://icute.com.tw/en​glish/iSwap201.html & I use Karen's replicator to replicate drive 1 every night (without replicating deletions)
drive 3 sits in a box at my work.

every time I think I need an offsite copy of everything, I take out drive 2 & swap with drive 3. (depends on importance of data, so could be days, weeks etc.)

so far, so good...

What I'm doing right now is using Time Machine to backup to a WD Studio II set to RAID 1 for mirroring. I then send this offsite to a CrashPlan Central server.

The problem with your external drives is that they are too slow to edit off of, and limited in that you can't do you mirroring you want.

What I would do at this point is get a WD Studio II which comes with 2x 2TB Greenpower drives, or use your choice of drives in an Icy Dock enclosure. You get your mirroring, and you can use your current drives for manual offsite backup, moving them every week or so.

So, for you that have your back up set to go every night, you then never turn your PC off?

USB itself can be trouble. I would try to use a more trustworthy link such as firewire or go with a network solution (then the tcp protocol will protect your data in transit).

I highly recommend going with a backup solution that has some form of snapshots instead of a plain one-shot backup.

If you ever have memory corruption on your primary computer (and that happens quite often), then you can silently scramble data on the local harddrive, even files you didn't even look at lately. You will typically only discover this after you have long overwritten the old good backup with a fresh copy of the corrupted data. Same applies to a million other ways to fatfinger your original source. A backup computer with snapshots will help.

BOUNCINGNRG wrote in post #13013117
So, for you that have your back up set to go every night, you then never turn your PC off?

I wouldn't say never, but it's very rare.
I've just this week replaced my set of 750Gb drives with a set of 2Tb ones.

I use SyncBack (free) to manage my backups, very flexible. I run about a dozen backup profiles for different things to different drives.

this subject has been beaten to death already.. While Raid, yes is not really backing up your data, it sure keeps the chances of loosing your data low. If you dont have a backup plan like offsite, tape, DVD, and or online storage then its all about replication. As mentioned above.. Because the chance of all your copys getting lost/ destroyed is GREATLY reduced. However, its not a fail safe..

If you were to transport your data use USB, otherwise keep working copies on your local hard drive and replicate those pictures via network. As Tim mentioned above with the tools like ROBOCOPY available you can have windows automatically run the command every night to copy the data to other drives or computers.