Business Class External Hard Drive

[Gabornski]

Our tape backup here at work is exceeding it's capacity to do a unattended backup. We use the veritas backup exec and was looking at replacing it with an external hard drive instead. Quality is more important the getting the best price. I was looking to get at least 500GB. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Roguestar]

Any SATA Western Digital or Seagate 500GB drive, in an external enclosure. You could get a business class model if you like, the warranties might be longer.

 

[RebateMonger]

I use removable SATA hard drives on virtually all my new Windows Server installs. If a drive bay in a server is available, then I'd use SATA drives in removable trays. http://granitedigital.com trays and receivers have worked well for us at numerous clients. You'll likely have to add a hot-swap-capable SATA controller card, since most built-in SATA controllers don't hot-swap properly.

If needed, you can even add a separate XP box with a removable SATA drive receptacle.

I avoid using pre-built external drives if I can. They tend to have a high failure rate because most don't have fans and the drives get very hot during many-hours-long backups.

No matter how small the office, I recommend a MINIMUM of three hard drives to start. One is left in the Server (a week at a time is typical). The other two are kept offsite and one is brought in to swap. That ensures that at least one backup drive is offsite at all times. An additional drive is useful for making periodic ARCHIVAL backups, which can be handy if old data is accidentally deleted and isn't included on your current set of backup drives.

I ALWAYS test the integrity of the backups by running the built-in verify function during the backup, as well as doing a test restore of a file on a monthly basis.

 

[jdkick]

Using two JetStor (http://www.jetstor.com) RAID units configured w/ 8TB at work for backup purposes and they've been great. They make some smaller USB/FireWire/eSATA units as well.

 

[Gabornski]

Anyone familiar with Calvary. I see they have 1TB units with two 500GB in a mirrored array. Units also has a fan to help keep cool.

Thanks

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Gabornski
Anyone familiar with Calvary. I see they have 1TB units with two 500GB in a mirrored array. Units also has a fan to help keep cool.

That wouldn't be a "mirrored" array. Two 500GB drives in a mirrored array give a total of 500GB of mirrored storage. It's likely RAID0 (striping).

If you need a 1TB backup drive, a single 1TB drive in a cooled housing would be the most reliable.