External hard drive storage vs DVD vs online

First thing up, have a look and see how many companies backup their data to DVDs ( I hope the answer is none).

Most companies would be using either NAS or SAN ( Both of these solutions normally use a combination of RAID 0,1,5). Behind the NAS/SAN there is normally some form of secondary "Tape/DAT" held offsite.

The SAN solution is not for a home user, very expensive, but the NAS solution has now become affordable.

Depending on how serious you want to be, I would advise a Raid 5 (3 Disks of 1Tb) external NAS box. ( You might want to consider 3 * 2 or 4Tb). A NAS box can be connected to your home network.

A RAID 5 configuration would give give you access to a total of 2 TB of disk space. You always lose 1/3 of your space but it does then give you redundancy. Think about cutting your data up into 3 equal thirds.

Disk 1 holds the thirds numbered 1,2
Disk 2 holds the thirds numbered 2,3
Disk 3 holds the thirds numbered 1,3 ( edited after Typo - Thanks Funkyfones)

Theoretically if one of your disks becomes damaged, you simply replace the bad disk with a new one and then tell the system to reconstruct the new disk bringing you back to the inital state. This can be done in realtime by the way, so no time lost due to reconstruction..

A fourth disk can also be added and the system instructed to automatically replace any failing disk.

There are multiple RAID controllers and multiple solutions available, choosing the right one is never an easy task ( and it usually avoid lots of cost).

Most of the newer NAS boxes also allow for an external USB drive to be attached, backups of the main disks ( for offsite storage) can then be made to the external drive.

RAID is a solid solution when understood and used correctly. It does initially involve a fair bit of reading and mistakes in configurations can be costly. I would advise that you find an IT Savvy friend who knows how to implement RAID correctly and have him help set things up.

Here is a link to a well known maker ( there are lots more manufacturers)
http://www.buffalotech​.com …linkstation-quad-ls-qlr5/

NAS = Network Attached Storage
SAN = Storage Area Network.
RAID = Redundant Array of Independant Disks.


Something else you have to factor in though is data growth. How much data per month/year are you adding, then consider how quickly your 2tb disks will become too limited.

You would want to do your importing/PP work on local disks and then transfer to the NAS. The major problem of the NAS is that your are bottlenecked by the network ( 100Mb/S) which is not too great for multiple/large file handling.


Et Voila for my 2cts.

Cheers Roy

Dont you mean

Disk 1 holds the thirds numbered 1,2
Disk 2 holds the thirds numbered 2,3
Disk 3 holds the thirds numbered 1,3

that way there are 2 copies of the same info and removing any 1 hdd leaves a copy still available to us?

funkyfones wrote in post #11609827
Dont you mean

Disk 1 holds the thirds numbered 1,2
Disk 2 holds the thirds numbered 2,3
Disk 3 holds the thirds numbered 1,3

that way there are 2 copies of the same info and removing any 1 hdd leaves a copy still available to us?

Mea Culpa , original post now edited.

Cheers Roy

I use onsite (home) and offsite (work) storage as well as backblaze for most of my pics (backblaze lets you sync external harddrives as well)

hollis_f wrote in post #11609581
And how long would it take to download those 635 GB? A backup that takes three months to restore is pretty useless.

Frank - I don't know if you've messed with NAS, but Netgear makes some nice stuff that you can set up for remote sync if you buy two units.

Since you control all the hardware the initial (long) sync can be done locally for speed and then incremental updates can be done over the internet.

It also means that if either box takes a dump you still have an almost immediate backup waiting.

I've just started with my first ReadyNAS, but I'm seriously looking into this as an alternative to Mozy and the like.

hollis_f wrote in post #11597229
Why? How is having three copies of my data on hard drives, stored in three different locations) less safe than having two copies on hard drives and one copy on floppy disks?

I do believe that this suggested specifically because some types of hard media (zip, floppies, someday cd/dvd, hd dvd, etc) will eventually be antiquated and possibly more difficult to retrieve in the future. I think it also keeps a more accurate and varied backup going. It never hurts to have too many backups.

Granted I didn't make up the "rules" for this methodology, it just seems to be popular and in my opinion a pretty good template for your backup workflow.

For the most part, I do all my backups across multiple external drives. This is easily the most efficient solution - both time wise and cost wise when dealing with large amounts of data.

I tend to keep a lot of word and excel templates and documents stored on DVD, but most of my music, photos and video is living on external drives.

tommykjensen wrote in post #11609464
Well that is not my experience. I have unlimited Mozy also and my initial backup has taken really loooooong time (it just finished last nigth in fact). Total 635 GByte.

Friday I upgraded my internet connection from 2 Mbit upload to 5 Mbit upload and I could definately see a difference in upload speed to Mozy.

Now I truely belive that there is NOTHING that is unlimited and that goes for Mozy too. If they throttle upload speed then that is fine with me. The service is in my opinion still cheap and good.

As for OP question. I did start out with backup on DVD but with 600+ GB that is a lot of DVD's so I dropped that. I have my photos on multiple harddisk. I copy my photos from the primary internal HD to a secondary internal HD. And to a third hd on a different pc. And a fourth copy on a NAS. So I have 5 copies of all my photos now that my Mozy backup has finished.

The problem I found with Mozy is that if you have a maximum monthly download limit through your ISP (like my 250GB limit with Comcast), then you might have some surprises if you have a lot backed up on Mozy. I had over 300 Gb uploaded. Mozy checks to see if the files are still there, and after 30 days will delete them from their server. So for me to get all the data I would have to download over 300 GB in less than one month, which would violate my agreement with Comcast.

The other option is to have Mozy send the data on DVD. They charge $0.50 per GB, plus handling fee plus expedited overnight delivery. At that price I'm better off just buying additional hard drives.

J Michael wrote in post #11597721
If I gave you a stack of 5.25 inch floppy discs, would you be able to get the data from them?.. ?

old question. was solved by the creation of a USB interface or external drive for anything out there, such as JAZZ, ZIP, 5.25, 3 1/2, ORB, SYQUEST, tapes, etc.

The question is how many years after you are gone will your kids or grandkids keep your old CDs or DVDs of your trips to NYC, Paris, Vegas, Miami, school re-unions, your grandparents, their siblings, your BFF, your favorite gold fish, your cat, your car, etc.
All of that will be trashed without even a bother of transfering to new media.
BTW, how many still have photos of high school or college friends you havent seen in 25 years?