Looking for an external dual HD enclosure with raid 1

[Stoneburner]

I came to the realization that backing up stuff to DVD is just a painful process in the modern day. Far as I can tell, having an external raid 1 array would be a good method for backing up largely media files.

1. What is a good setup? I've looked through newegg's selection herhere but I don't know these brands and I don't trust newegg reviews.

2. Is there any other method somebody would recommend?

3. Should i forget raid 1, just get a regular external hard drive?

thanks in advance.

 

[finite automaton]

Probably might as well just build a little file server.

 

[vck6v3]

How about taking a look into Network Attached Storage (NAS). I just bought a D-Link DNS-323 and it will do dual harddrives and RAID 0,1 and JBOD.

NAS's are very convenient if you share data between many devices (computers, ps3, xbox360) however the transfer rates are not very fast. Mine does ~14MB/s over gigabit ethernet versus standard USB2.0 can do about 30MB/s. Maybe I need to tune it a little more for speed.

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: vck6v3
How about taking a look into Network Attached Storage (NAS). I just bought a D-Link DNS-323 and it will do dual harddrives and RAID 0,1 and JBOD.

NAS's are very convenient if you share data between many devices (computers, ps3, xbox360) however the transfer rates are not very fast. Mine does ~14MB/s over gigabit ethernet versus standard USB2.0 can do about 30MB/s. Maybe I need to tune it a little more for speed.

How is the heat dissipation and reliablity on the dns-323?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Stoneburner
3. Should i forget raid 1, just get a regular external hard drive?

Forget RAID 1 for a backup drive. If you have the money for two hard drives, get a second external backup drive and alternate them. Having two separate drives, with at least one of them disconnected from the world, is a far safer and gives you more restore points than a mirrored pair of drives.

When you run backups, include a verification step (likely available in most backup programs). And periodically test the backups to be sure you can actually restore the data.

P.S.
I'm assuming that the word "backup" means that your files remain on a PC and you are making a second (or third or fourth) copy. Sometimes folks say "backup" when it's their ONLY copy of the file. That's not a backup.

You might also consider building a Windows Home Server. If you have an old 1 GHz PC with 500 MB of memory, you can build one for the $100 software. Throw in one or more drives and it'll automatically make daily image backups of up to ten PCs on your network.

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: Stoneburner
3. Should i forget raid 1, just get a regular external hard drive?

Forget RAID 1 for a backup drive. If you have the money for two hard drives, get a second external backup drive and alternate them. Having two separate drives, with at least one of them disconnected from the world, is a far safer and gives you more restore points than a mirrored pair of drives.

When you run backups, include a verification step (likely available in most backup programs). And periodically test the backups to be sure you can actually restore the data.

P.S.
I'm assuming that the word "backup" means that your files remain on a PC and you are making a second (or third or fourth) copy. Sometimes folks say "backup" when it's their ONLY copy of the file. That's not a backup.

You might also consider building a Windows Home Server. If you have an old 1 GHz PC with 500 MB of memory, you can build one for the $100 software. Throw in one or more drives and it'll automatically make daily image backups of up to ten PCs on your netwrok.

I wanted to separate the fileserver from the backups. I want a copy of all my files on my regular PC, a copy of media files for the file server, and then a backup of same on hard drives that are NOT regularly accessed.

 

[TridenT]

Drobo? I hear Drobo is good, if you really care.

 

[Stoneburner]

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to avoid Drobo ... i was looking on amazon and i saw a few "drobo destroyed all my drives at once" type stories.