Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Way To Backup Large Amounts Of Personal Data? (foxdeploy.com) 366
An anonymous Slashdot reader has "approximately two terabytes of photos, currently sitting on two 4-terabyte 'Intel Rapid Storage' RAID 1 disks." But now they're considering three alternatives after moving to a new PC:
a) Keep these exactly as they are... The current configuration is OK, but it's a pain if a RAID re-sync is needed as it takes a long time to check four terabytes.
b) Move to "Storage Spaces". I've not used Storage Spaces before, but reports seem to show it's good... It's a Good Thing that the disks are 100% identical and removable and readable separately. Downside? Unknown territory.
c) Break the RAID, and set up the second disk as a file-copied backup... [This] would lose a (small) amount of resilience, but wouldn't suffer from the RAID-sync issues, ideally a Mac-like "TimeMachine" backup would handle file histories.
Any recommendations?
This is also a good time to share your experiences with Storage Spaces, so leave your answers in the comments. What's the best way to backup large amounts of personal data?
b) Move to "Storage Spaces". I've not used Storage Spaces before, but reports seem to show it's good... It's a Good Thing that the disks are 100% identical and removable and readable separately. Downside? Unknown territory.
c) Break the RAID, and set up the second disk as a file-copied backup... [This] would lose a (small) amount of resilience, but wouldn't suffer from the RAID-sync issues, ideally a Mac-like "TimeMachine" backup would handle file histories.
Any recommendations?
This is also a good time to share your experiences with Storage Spaces, so leave your answers in the comments. What's the best way to backup large amounts of personal data?
Commit it to memory! (Score:5, Interesting)
Memorize it! Just don't take any head injuries or you won't remember anything.
More seriously, back up to hard drives is the only viable option. Then make sure you have more than one backup drive and store one at some other site. Relative maybe?
Cloud options with that kind of storage would take forever to upload. And I've heard of people having stuff randomly go missing on their cloud service, not the entire contents, but a file here and there. I'm not so sure that's a good option.
For storing on-site you can get a fire rated media safe, but they can be quite a bit more expensive than a regular safe.
Re:Commit it to memory! (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, I forgot the 3-2-1 backup principle. 3 copies of data, on at least 2 different types of media, and 1 copy off-site.
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I'll 4th that as well. FreeNAS + RAIDZ FTW !
Also, make you sure you:
* run memtest on your RAM
* run the manufactures' provided sector diagnostic utility over the hard drive BEFORE inserting into production.
WTF? (Score:3)
He is backing up photos, why are you assuming a 2TB working set every day?
A weekly full -->2TB with daily incrementals --> maybe 20MBs doesn't equal 10s of TB per week.
I agree on springing for the extra cost of ECC memory (motherboard + ECC RAM) on a FreeNAS box but let's be realistic here on the volume of backup necessary.
Come the fuck on (Score:5, Insightful)
2 Terabytes is nothing.
Here's how you do this:
10 You buy an external hard disk that is 4 Terabytes or larger, and USB 3.0.
20 Copy the fucking files to that thing.
You're done. Now you have two copies: one on whatever bad idea you have as your main drive, and the other on a physically separate drive.
Not good enough? GOTO 10
Re:Come the fuck on (Score:4, Insightful)
That problem has already been solved (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot checksumming and verification after transfer.....You have something on the other drive after the transfer, you wont know what until you verify it.
By the tits of Baal, rsync or xcopy /v or robocopy in combination with fciv.
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2 Terabytes is nothing.
Indeed. You can buy a 1TB USB thumb drive on Amazon. So all this data will fit on two of them. If all your data will fit in your pocket, with room left for both your cellphone and wallet, then it is not "large amounts of data".
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Are you serious? What a sloppy response. Relies on a manual process (therefore prone to human error, forgetting, inconsistent method of copying, etc). Doesn't scale if the RAID array grows larger than the biggest USB3 disk you can buy.
Re:Come the fuck on (Score:5, Informative)
Bad idea, because it requires on-going effort. Most people will forget, or get lazy.
For most people encrypted online backup is the best option. I use Spideroak (I took up the unlimited space special offer, about £100/year), but there are others. It's automatic, happens constantly in background. I've got over 4TB on Spideroak, only took a few months to upload. Obviously you need a reasonable upload speed and no/high data caps.
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Bad idea, because it requires on-going effort
Only if you set it up poorly. I'm not an expert programmer. Actually I'm a pretty damn terrible programmer who programs only with a minimum of 3 Google windows open explaining what the hell I'm supposed to type in, yet it took me about 2 hours (you guys could probably do it in 5 min) to setup my Linux machine so that whenever I plug my HDD in it automatically runs a backup script and emails the results to me.
This is also a feature of many home NAS systems include the really cheap and terrible ones. Plug in
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And when your house goes up in a fire, all of your external drives go with it.
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Despite your vulgarity, there are another options: I always keep one of my three backup drives in the trunk of my car (the second is standby, the first is connected, and I rotate them regularly). The car is almost always with me, and the first thing I'd do in case of fire is to get the car out of the garage.
If that's not adequate, you can rent a cheap safety deposit box at your local bank. I did that for years, especially when the data included a lot of client data on them (I'm now retired).
Re: Come the fuck on (Score:2)
Uh, 'scuse me there, Sparky... I didn't set the title for this thread. Please see the complaint department operated by Mr. Anonymous Cowherd above.
Re: Come the fuck on (Score:2)
And I'm well aware of the other options, thanks.
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Then why would you presume someone else wouldn't be and use them? We are, after all, speaking of people wanting to have backups of their data for later.
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Re:Come the fuck on (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed! The minor changes I would make (and do for my own few TB of files).
Have a script the runs the backup. I use rsync on linux.
Make two copies, one that mirrors, one that just adds files.
Use two backup disks, always have one at a remote location (your work) so you don't lose data in a house fire.
If it is a single command (my is "backup") then its easy to remember to do every week.
I actually have 3 backups. One at home. Two at different work sites that I cycle through. I do my backups from a linux machine that doesn't provide write access to my main windows machines. That makes me a little more resistant to hacks (since they would have to hack two different OSs.
Re:Come the fuck on (Score:5, Insightful)
What he said. And for ongoing backup, keep the disk at a buddy's house and rsync your files to them periodically. And reciprocate. Keep their backup disk at your place and let them rsync to you. Done. You're safe and you've made the world a better place.
Although I imagine that our "anonymous Slashdot reader" who asked this question wouldn't know rsync if it bit them on the ass, being the marketing person for Storage Spaces and all. Come on, the only purpose of such a fucking obvious question is to get some front-page name recognition for the product. Nice timing, too, slipping it onto the feed Sunday night, ready for everyone's Monday morning Slashdot-and-coffee ritual. Kudos.
Re:Come the fuck on (Score:5, Informative)
As others have said, 4TB isn't that much. The key is to have a 3-2-1 plan for the data -- 3+ copies, 2 on different media, one offsite:
First, I'd recommend purchasing a NAS appliance. Synology and QNAP offerings are inexpensive and even though one can build their own system with FreeNAS or something else, a small NAS appliance takes up relatively little in wattage, which is nice for the electric bill. I also like the fact that you have the ability to encrypt data, and segment it into shares. Some NAS models even allow for snapshots. They are not too expensive -- an ARM based dual-drive NAS is about $150 + drives.
For four terabytes, I would recommend a Synology DS216+ ii (the reason for the long name is that the DS216+ had components which were discontinued, so the mark 2 edition is current. This NAS model is x86 based and can use btrfs to detect bit rot on the RAID volumes) Then, drop in two WD Reds (6 or 8 TB), and you have RAID 1.
Second, buy an external USB drive to plug to the NAS. RAID and snapshots are nice, but this provides a true backup mechanism.
Third, get an offsite backup mechanism. QNAP and Synology have software that can back up to a number of providers, and back stuff up encrypted. There are many offsite backup providers out there.
Fourth, consider a manual offsite mechanism, even if it is another external hard drive that you plug in, dump the contents of the NAS to, remove, and put offsite somewhere. This way, if you lose your NAS and Net connection, you still have some means to access your data.
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--Best answer I've seen so far, except for the ZFS responses.
--My question is, how has Synology gotten btrfs to be "stable" when it's still considered to be "experimental" on a regular Linux distro? I've seen reports of people losing all their data on btrfs and still consider it to be at *least* 3-5 years behind ZFS.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/ind... [archlinux.org]
https://lwn.net/Articles/67681... [lwn.net]
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From what I have read, btrfs is stable if used in a RAID 1 configuration. However, it seems that RAID 5... is a completely different story altogether. I'm sure it has gotten better, but as of now, I've not read anything about catastrophic data loss on anything but striped arrays.
Given that it appears to be stable, btrfs does have a few advantages, mainly being able to handle bit rot, as well as snapshots (which are definitely not backups, but they are another tool to help prevent data loss.)
If btrfs is a
RAID is not backup (Score:5, Insightful)
Say with with me: "RAID is not backup!"
Re:RAID is not backup (Score:5, Insightful)
Say with with me: "RAID is not backup!"
Indeed. There is also a difference between backup and archive.
RAID = This is running live, and I need a duplicate that is instantly available so I can keep running in case one drive fails. The trick is that if there is an operation that destroys data (e.g. ransomware infection that encrypts your stuff) then you lose all disks. This is why RAID is not backup.
Backup = Just in case the machine dies, or I accidentally delete a bunch of stuff, or a virus hits, I can restore from the backup. This generally follows the 3-2-1 rule: At least three copies, at least two media, at least one off site. Businesses often use D2D2T systems for this.
Archive = I will probably never look at this again, but I absolutely need to keep a copy around for historic or business reasons. Think about services like Iron Mountain or Amazon Glacier. Tape archives that are quite cheap and almost certainly never reviewed again. This is along the lines of "show me the obituaries from a newspaper published 7 May 1957", or similar.
For the original story, it seems like he is looking for an archival solution rather than a backup solution.
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Tape is cheap. Tape drives on the other hand...
Re:RAID is not backup (Score:4, Informative)
Of course RAID isn't a backup technology. It's a way of providing fault tolerance across large filesystems. It does this by alerting administrators to failed drives, and allowing them to be swapped in & out while the filesystem stays online. At that task, it works reasonably well, although it does need to be supported by a robust alerting & "hands+feet" strategy. That's why it's still in widespread use in enterprise environments. They have the $$ and manpower to make it work.
Conversely, maintaining a good backup of your data (vs keeping it online) is a different beast. For that you have a whole bunch of other technologies like incremental copy, snapshotting, and clever combinations of the two, that store the resulting backups on everything from another RAID array, to tape systems, USB3 portable drives, remote filesystems, cloud solutions, etc etc.
What the OP seems to be asking is "what backup strategy should I consider to back up 2TB of personal data using SOHO technologies?" Personally, I wouldn't even consider doing it locally, as it's prone to human error and keeps all the data in the same location (thus failing to protect against the two most likely causes of data loss in a home environment: you forgot to run the backup, or your house got flooded/burnt/ransacked). I'd consider a cloud-based solution (rsync.net or something similar) as it solves both those issues, albeit at a higher ongoing (capex) cost rather than just a straight capital cost for a USB3 portable drive. It's hard to say an ongoing cost would be acceptable in this case, as the OP didn't mention whether $$ was a factor.
Re:RAID is not backup (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with cloud-based solutions is that the cost for backing up several terabytes of data is typically several orders of magnitude higher than building your own RAID array, and the performance of Internet-based backup absolutely sucks beyond measure unless you're the sort of person whose data needs are measured in tens of megabytes.
The ideal solution, if you can pull it off, would be to build a small concrete bunker in your yard, run power out to it, put a UPS and power conditioner in there to protect against bad power, put a RAID array in there, wire it with Ethernet to your house underground, put a watertight door on the thing, add a power cutoff that shuts down power if water does get inside (e.g. a GFI breaker and an unused extension cord whose output end is lower than your equipment), and hope for the best.
But more realistically, I would tend to suggest an IOSafe fireproof RAID array loaded up with five 6 TB drives (or maybe even 8 TB drives). Put it in a closet somewhere, and hope for the best. If you want to increase your protection a bit, you could also get two RAID expansion cabinets, store them at work, and periodically bring one home, clone your main RAID array to it, and bring it back
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If most of the 2 TB is photos, you've got two cheap cloud storage options as a second back
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RAID is not a backup, unless it has a snapshot feature.
Even then, it's not a backup in the true sense. A controller failure that sporadically writes to disk or multiple disk failures (both which I've seen occur) can crash any RAID system. The only true backup is a copy that is separate from the system running it.
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A snapshot feature is not a backup either. It can serve as a basis of one though. A backup must be an _independent_ copy.
Why is RAID 1 not a backup? (Score:2)
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Because fire, theft or even a careless delete statement would take it down.
Normally people want to protect their data from more than just hardware failure
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Say with with me
Ah, a redundancy pun in a RAID discussion. Very clever.
Gotta say it (Score:2)
RAID shouldn't be considered a backup.
It's old school and sub-optimal, but I still handle our personal backups the simple way - a big backup disk at home, and another big backup disk I keep in a locked drawer at my office and bring home every few months. Our computers are Macs, so we use Time Machine to do the backups. Our media "server" is backed up to those same disks, but with an rsync script.
I keep thinking I should probably start paying for an encrypted cloud-based backup solution... I haven't done any
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RAID is neither "old school" or "sub-optimal". It does serve a different purpose than backup: Raid is for reducing downtime, no other purpose. (RAID0 is not really RAID, as the "R" does not apply.)
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RAID is neither "old school" or "sub-optimal".
That was a different paragraph where I explained about how I currently back things up... and which definitely has a "sneaker net" aspect to it.
RAID is not backup... (Score:3)
Backblaze is what I use, if your backup isn't off-site, then it isn't really backup...
You can also burn to DVDs or BR or use external hard drives and move them offsite, but that takes time and effort...
Two drives with copies of the same files sitting side by side is not backup.
Re:RAID is not backup... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll second BackBlaze - but with the caveat of expecting your initial upload to take a long time depending on your Internet speeds. I have a 15/1 connection so the ~1TB that I wanted to back up took me about 8 months. (I couldn't use my full 1Mbps upstream bandwidth for backup traffic.) Now that this is done, however, it's pretty much automatic. New data gets written and the backup occurs. They even have an app you can use so you can access your data no matter where you are.
If you need to restore from backup, BackBlaze will ship you a thumb drive or external hard drive for a fee. The fee is refunded if you send the drive back (thus ensuring that people don't abuse this service) and it beats having to download TBs of data.
Besides BackBlaze, I back up everything on to two external hard drives. This way, if one drive blows, the other drive keeps the data safe. As another person posted, follow the 3-2-1 rule. 3 copies of the data (for me, 2 external HDs and 1 on BackBlaze), 2 different mediums (e.g. external HDD and cloud), and 1 copy offsite (e.g. BackBlaze or another cloud provider).
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I absolutely love iDrive. I have used it for years.
I TB $52/year. Everything backed up. Unlimited computers/devices. I have 9 computers and 3 phones all backed up automatically.
Even though I use source control, I occasionally mess something up. iDrive keeps 10 versions of my source files. Saved my ass several times over the years.
I'm wondering what happens when we do pass 1 TB as the the site shows only a 10TB plan for $374/year. I would like a 2TB plan(You might be able to call sales and negotiate)
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I absolutely love iDrive. I have used it for years.
The features look nice, the size just isn't enough...
I have 26TB backed up with BackBlaze, that level of storage would be expensive with most other services...
I also use CrashPlan for critical files, but they throttle after awhile making backing up that much data impossible. They claim they don't, but they are lying about that.
Carbonate also throttles, but at least they are honest about it. BackBlaze doesn't and will run 10 threads to backup faster.
Re:RAID is not backup... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have over 10TB on Backblaze for $5/mo. Works great and recovery is easy.
I would add though that if you want more control and more flexibility I've started using Backblaze's B2 API and SyncBack, Cloud Berry or whatever software backup solution you prefer. That costs about $5/month per TB but has the advantage of control over hash checks and retention.
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The best solution is to have multiple copies on external local drives.
If the drives are physically in the same place as the computer, it isn't a backup.
Fire, theft, etc.
RAID IS NOT BACKUP (Score:5, Insightful)
2) STORAGE SPACES IS NOT BACKUP unless you have another read only set, and please, it is JBOD with some added features.
3) You are exchanging RAID sync issues with backup sync issues.
I would setup hardware RAID, but that is not related to what you need... Backup to two other disks. Upgrade disk size and technology as needed. A 4TB disk is like $140
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If you're using some proprietary automatically-expanding RAID, "XRAID", or some crazy RAID 3 or RAID 7 or RAID 5+2 or whatever horseshit then yeah.
If you're using RAID 1, 5, 6, or 10, you'll be able to recover data on many different controllers.
Print them all.... (Score:2)
Print them all and put them in labelled shoeboxes.
Is 100% availability a requirement? (Score:2)
If you can live the possiblity that you can't access your data (porn stash?) for a day or two, then you don't need RAID.
Break up the RAID and use the freed-up hard drives for a backup. Buy some extra drives and rotate the backup drives so that there is always at least full one copy off-site, preferably encrypted.
ZFS & LTO. (Score:2)
ZFS for on disk storage. I've had a theseus RAIDZ2 pool for almost 6 years now that's moved multiple computers, OSs and drives and hasn't lost (that I can find) any of my Pictures.
Tape for archival. LTO-4 drives are fairly in expensive (compared to losing everything).
Cloud Based Backup (Score:3)
Better to get it offsite. One fire/flood/etc. and your data is toast. Not too mention that RAID IS NOT BACKUP (RINB).
I'm a "serious amateur" photographer (about 1TB of photos currently) and I've been using CrashPlan for the last two years and I'm happy with it. They allow you to create a local encryption key that even they don't know so it seems pretty secure. The first upload can take a while (depending on your internet service) but everything is quick after that point.
In addition to that I also use TimeMachine on my Mac so I have a local backup of everything.
Not an advert - but Backblaze (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.backblaze.com/clou... [backblaze.com]
$5/month unlimited data size (writes).
You can sync files back over or they will actually ship you a HD with your data; if you return the drive you get a refund of the drive cost but you're also free to keep it.
The cost for individual file reads is reasonable too.
No muss no fuss
Re:Not an advert - but Backblaze (Score:5, Informative)
Linux, BSD, Unix and other *nix systems:
These operating systems are not supported and Backblaze can not be installed on them
RAID is NOT backup! (Score:5, Informative)
RAID is fine to reduce downtime, but completely unsuitable as a replacement for backup.
The RAID does not have the following things which you critically need from backup (the following list is not complete):
- resilience against operator error (accidentally delete/overwrite files, e.g.)
- geographic redundancy, usually not even safe against the box killing the disks, lightening, fire, theft, etc.
- too few copies: Usually 3 (!) independent backup copies used in rotation are considered the minimum. RAID1 gives you one and it is not independent.
My recommendation is to get at least 3 external USB disks, and establish a backup with them, because currently you have none.
Steps:
- Select a backup interval. This represents the maximum time-interval for which you think losing new data is acceptable
- At the end of each interval, do the following:
1. Fetch oldest backup disk from off-site location
2. Put backup copy on it, making it the newest backup. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
3. Move disk to off-site location
For somewhat reduced reliability keep the oldest copy at home and do the following:
1. Make backup, overwriting oldest copy. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
2. Move new backup to off-site location and fetch oldest from off-site location.
An "off-site location" can be anything from a garden-shack to a storage locker at work to an arrangement with a neighbor or a friend you see regularly.
If you think this it too much effort, then your data must not be worth much. This is pretty much the agreed minimum experienced sysadmins want. Of course, there are always those that never lost any important data and they almost universally think this is way too much effort. Many of them learn in time when whatever they do results in that loss.
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Bullshit. There is very little possibility for data to get corrupted unnoticed on an external USB disk. In fact, one of the very few is in-memory and then the data is just as corrupted on RAID.
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That is not RAID. That is (mis-)using RIAD as a sort-of snapshot backup scheme. This idea can work in principle but has several problems:
1. raid-sync is often painfully slow and can take days for large disks
2. you always need to sync full disks
2. you need to know how to make the extracted disk a 1-disk RAID array for recovery (may be anything from trivial to very difficult)
3. you do not get verify and most data-loss in backups is because people did not verify
4. you need to handle naked disks safely
5. you c
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"What's wrong with using RAID to..."
It's not wrong, it's *irrelevant*. RAID adds nothing to the backup process.
What I do (Score:2)
I have a Western Digital external HDD and every so often (whenever I have some free time but trying to do it as frequently as possible) I connect it up to my PC and run a program (SyncBackFree) that does a copy of my 3 main drives. When I am not using it to back up, the external disk lives in my desk drawer.
If I had the money I would buy a second external HDD and keep one offsite swapping the 2 periodically just to deal with issues like a house fire that could destroy both my main PC and my external HDD but
NAS (Score:2)
For an onsite option I bought an NAS that has room for two drives which I mirrored. (I would have liked a larger one that I could have gone with RAID-5 or RAID-6 but money prevented that.) I have my computers use Time Machine to back up to the NAS. I also use my NAS for BitTorrent Sync and other services (mail, DNS, proxy).
Ideally you would want an offsite option too in case something happened to your house.
Use a service (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
What is the format of the original pictures? (Score:3)
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Unless you have (very expensive or very small) SLC SD cards, that is pretty worthless. With a bit of bad luck, data may get corrupted within a year.
DVDs (Score:2)
How about backing up to DVDs?. They hold lots of data. Had an article here the other day about optical drives...
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A Terabyte of disk equals approximately 250 4.7 GB DVD drives. The material is unlikely to pack efficiently, so the roughly 20% of spare space on the DVD's would be unwise to try to optimize much further. That's a very awkward backup system to maintain.
Tape backup - (Score:3)
Go onto ebay and buy an 2nd hand LTO3 or LTO4 tape drive for $150 - $300. Plug it in, write your files to the tape. For 2tb you would need 3 LTO3 tapes (assuming compression 800gb each). Take said tapes and drive them to another house.
Decide what timeframe of loss is acceptable. ie 4 weeks, 4 months, 12 months. That is you maximum backup cycle time. Every X period of time take a new set of tapes to your offsite backup location. Buy tapes equal to at least 3 full cycles, that way on your third backup trip you take the oldest set home and re-use them.
This is the process I use every 3 months and I have an HP Ultrium 960 sitting on top of my NAS. I also use your normal google drive type backup, but it is my second stage, rather than first stage backup. I'm not quite at the same size as you, 1.1tb, so it's 2 tapes not 3. I bought a box of 50 new lto3 tapes for $100.
Raid is not backup. (Score:2)
I'm ultimately repeating what has been said over and over again here, but perhaps this will add a tiny bit more emphasis:
RAID IS NOT BACKUP.
Get BackBlaze for off-site backups. Or CrashPlan. Whatever. Just get something that is off-site that isn't going to lose your data when your RAID dies because of a controller failure, or a fire, or a flood, or an earthquake, or because a virus or hacker nuked your disks.
USB to sata dongle plus 2TB SSD (Score:2)
I'm assuming the person thinks the data is important enough to spend a bit of $$$ to make sure it doesn't go .
I'd get one of those USB 3.0 to SATA dongles, connect a 2TB SSD to it and copy the data onto the SSD. Then I'd do a quick checksum to make sure the source and destination copies were the same. Then I'd put that SSD on a shelf somewhere other than where I keep the computer where the data is stored.
Today, that SSD+dongle would likely run you about $700. It's about $500 if you break the backup into
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--Umm, you do realize that SSDs are:
a) WAY expensive for backing things up to, and
b) An un-powered SSD drive will eventually degrade and LOSE ITS DATA in a fairly short amount of time (for Backup purposes)? This gets worse with Triple-level-and-up (TLC) Cell structures, BTW. They basically need an electric refresh to keep the cell structure from flipping to another position.
--Depending on the temperature/humidity it's stored in, SSD degradation could be detected in as low as several months or - if you're
My recommend: Two drives and software purchase. (Score:2)
In addition: I recommend that you download install and run "Hard Drive Sentinel" [hdsentinel.com];
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I love Synology hardware -- don't trust their updates. One of their recent updates wiped my "root" account on the device(s). They can muck with admin, but should never touch root, but I digress...
RAID-6 is the way to go IMHO. Synology's built-in backup mechanisms didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling -- it all goes into a database. When shit hits the fan I want quick quick quick access to my (or your) files.
I chose the two Synology approach. Each with 8 drives, RAID-6 (dual hard drive failure). One onsite. On
BTSync to friend/family/neighbor if only (Score:2)
Second verse, same as the first (Score:3)
For the 45th time in this thread, RAID is not backup. And all of you who are saying yes it is will change your minds the first time your array blows up and you have no other backup. Let's say you're running RAID 1 or 5. A drive dies. You stick in a new drive. You now better be praying and sacrificing animals in the hopes that you don't have another drive die before the array is rebuilt, which could take 12 hours or more if you're using 2TB or larger drives. If you value your files, then you have something in addition to your RAID array.
If you seriously value your files, you also have a fully automatic offsite backup, and one that retains older versions. I use CrashPlan. $5.99 a month for unlimited backup of one machine. As of the time I'm typing this, I have approximately 860,000 files amounting to 2.6TB backed up (semi-pro photographer). Yes, that first backup took about 3 months, but you gotta start sometime.
Option C (Score:2)
Easy, option C. RAID is not a backup.
Ask Slashdot? Ask Hillary Instead! (Score:2)
N/T
Air Gap a Copy to Prevent Ransom-ware attacks (Score:2)
My backup strategy is simple:
1. 8TB RAID 1 NAS for everyday use
2. Periodic backups of the NAS using rsync to a backup disk I keep offsite
3. Encrypted backups to Google Drive (slow, but FREE)
The problem with NAS is that if you ever get hit by a disaster or ransomware attack, you lose it all. You need a backup of your NAS data offsite and offline.
I am currently running the Western Digital Mirror Gen 2 which let's you plug in a USB 3.0 device, then use SSH to access the device, then use rsync to update your b
onedrive (Score:2)
2tb isn't that big. It's apparently still in the range of normal family use. If you spend $100/yr to get MS Office for your family, you also get 5tb of onedrive space.
(irritation: Limited to 1tb per account, so you'd need to share it...)
FreeNAS or any similar project (Score:2)
FreeNAS would do what you want it to do. You can then back up to another disk or set of disks or somewhere online. As far as online goes, I'd choose a good VPS provider with sufficient disk space or rsync.net for sending ZFS streams. You could also go with a 'cheap' backup provider like BackBlaze or CrashPlan, both have their ups and downs but for that amount of space, a file-based backup (which is what rsync is) is typically insufficient especially if you're planning on growing.
File-based backups on some o
only here: the three step program (Score:2)
Preparation:
1.) have a physical local central server - that has encryption capabilities (A)
2.) have a physical local backup server that only exports just the bare discs as iscsi devices (B)
3.) have a root server sitting on the internet with ssh-tunneled iscsi exported discs which are filled by the central server. (C)
- keep your encryption keys private and existent
Programs:
rsync
Execution
Step1) sync A -> B / completly (fast)
Step2) sync A -> C / completly (slow-er)
Step3) keep A -> B in sync automatic
Storage Spaces (Score:2)
Plenty people have pointed out the flaws with this approach, around 3/2/1 and "raid is not a backup". I have hard drives in multiple locations with incremental backups - mirrors are vulnerable to ransomware / cryptoware. Critical information is also in CrashPlan, which is versioned.
The question also asks about experience with storage spaces. Around a year ago I purchased two HGST 4TB drives, formatted them ReFS with all integrity checking / fixing options turned on, and put them into a storage spaces mirror
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All modern Windows defrag tools are varying amounts of slow as they're using the Defrag API built over the top of NTFS.
Try MyDefrag (previously known as JkDefrag). It comes with a bunch of profiles for placement/ordering of folders and files on a running disk, plus you can write your own using its scripting language.
Do it right. (Score:2)
If your domicile burns to the group, you're fucked. You need something that'll keep your data consistent, and keep it safe from theft/fire/destruction.
I'm going to ignore any cost considerations... whatever.
Build two identical boxes. The first box is going to sit in your place of residence, the second is going to sit elsewhere (like your parents h
Keep your RAID, build a server (Score:2)
Keep your RAID-1. It will protect against single disk failure and improve read performance.
Build a server. Just a little one. An old desktop PC will suffice.
Put in a cheap SSD (64GB will do), and a 3 or 4 TB HDD.
Install your OS of choice to the SSD (Debian, BSD, anything low maintenance).
Write or procure a script on the server to rsync the contents of your desktop PC to the large HDD, with the --backup switch, rotating monthly. This way you get overwritten or deleted content put in another folder (usual
Backups (Score:2)
Can We Drop the "Online" Vapor? (Score:3, Informative)
C'mon, online backup? Really? The poster said "terabytes." Cable companies in this area say "hundreds of kilobits per second" as an upload speed. That'd be 10's of kilobytes per second. How long? Get optimistic at, say, 800 kbps -> 80 - 100 kBps and you have a really long time. Lessee, 2 X 10^12 bytes / 1 X 10^5 kB/s = 2 X 10^7 seconds = 20 million seconds to upload 2 terabytes. 20 X 10^6 seconds / 3.6 X 10^3 seconds / hour = about 5.5 X 10^3 hours, or 5,500 hours. 5,500 hours / 24 hours / day = 229 days. I aborted Carbonite some years ago when I had only a couple hundred gigabytes,it was _NOT_ uploading every single file on my disk, and looked like it was going to exceed 3 weeks to do it.
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Undetermined amount of time until a large corporation gets bored of offering a service:
Cloud storage
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The odds backblaze or crashplan or carbonite spontaneously decide to shutdown without notice the same day my house burns down is pretty low, after all.
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how long does it take claim your insurance, replace your hardware, then retrieve your backup. Realistically there could be weeks or months involved.
Unless I were actually caught in the fire and in intensive care for weeks months, I'd have a laptop within hours.
And if I WERE caught in the fire, and in a coma for months, and crashplan went out of business at the same time...
a) risk management is about managing risk. you can't eliminate it.
b) losing my photos would not be the biggest issue in my life.
c) if I did deem the photos so valuable that this was a risk i wasn't prepared for, I could have 2 cloud providers for just a bit more $$... or 3....
c) risk
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It seems that someone would have created such an animal.
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Crashplan has this. I'm not a shill. I'm a customer though.
I checked it out, it might be a solution. Thanks. From reading their info, I can't tell if the remote backup is stored as encrypted data.
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You're not even shilling, because they don't charge you for backups not stored on their network.
(Also a Crashplan customer at home and work. They're awesome.)
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And on the minus-side, it is not a backup at all.
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It's video that pushes it up. I have lots of video of my kids growing up and I don't want to lose that.
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Virtually all "fireproof" safes are rated for paper not catching fire. A hard disk will lose all its data far below that temperature.
I highly recommend moving the disk in the safe to somewhere offsite.
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