Need a data backup solution

[kyzen]

I've always made it a habit to backup really important documents/files on a flash drive - tax info, financial records, receipts, etc. Then, a few months ago, my computer bluescreened while installing Vista SP1, and wouldn't recover. I unfortunately needed to finish a project that weekend, and didn't have any way to grab data off my hard drive, so I gritted my teeth and reformatted. In the process of doing so I lost a years worth of pictures from 4 vacations and several weekend trips, about 300 MP3's I didn't have backed up elsewhere, various game saves, and various bookmarks.

So, I'm looking to create a more long-term storage solution in the next few weeks here.

What I need to back up:

[*]4 laptops, 2 desktops - 1 laptop and both desktops run Vista
[*]The My Documents folder from all 6 machines
[*]Music - presently about 40 gigs
[*]Pictures - presently around 11 gigs
[*]Various documents and code

Ideally I'd love to be able to schedule backups to occur automatically. If that's not feasible though, I can deal with manually backing stuff up.

I'm not sure what's best - a network attached drive (Circuit City has a 2 bay NAS on sale this week for $130, I could raid the drives for redundancy), a USB drive I just carry around and manually back crap up on, or dedicating one of my extra desktops to be a backup server.

I actually kind of like the idea of the desktop server, but I'm not sure if that'll work - the desktop most suited for the task (the case/mobo has enough room for more drives) presently has a 250GB drive in it. I'd like to stick a paid of 1TB drives in there, and raid them - is that possible? Can I RAID 2 drives, while leaving 1 unraided on its own?

Cliffs:
[*]Need backup solution - suggestions?
[*]Is it possible to have 3 SATA drives in a computer, RAID 2 of them, and leave the third alone? Mobo is a Gigabyte 965P-DS3L

 

[RebateMonger]

Assuming your PCs are XP or Vista, Microsoft's Windows Home Server is the simplest approach. It's fully automated, will warn you of backup problems, and let's you restore to multiple points in time. You can build your own if you have a spare PC, or buy an HP pre-built box.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Assuming your PCs are XP or Vista, Microsoft's Windows Home Server is the simplest approach. It's fully automated, will warn you of backup problems, and let's you restore to multiple points in time. You can build your own if you have a spare PC, or buy an HP pre-built box.

I completely agree. I'm loving my WHS box. And I had to do a restore recently, and it went flawlessly. If you build a machine for it, just make sure you have drivers for Server 2003 (*cough* Asus P5E-VM HDMI *cough*).

 

[kyzen]

Where do you get a copy of the OS? Typically I get my OS's via my MSDN subscription, but apparently WHS isn't on there

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: kyzen
Where do you get a copy of the OS? Typically I get my OS's via my MSDN subscription, but apparently WHS isn't on there

You'll have to buy it. $150 from Newegg.com. No MS subscription programs offer it.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: kyzen
Where do you get a copy of the OS? Typically I get my OS's via my MSDN subscription, but apparently WHS isn't on there

You can also order a trial version, and it's good for 4 months. link
And now is an especially good time for it now that PP1 has been released.

 

[QuixoticOne]

This NAS didn't seem too bad for $300:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2140980&enterthread=y

That said, if you have the patience / time / competence to administer it, a NAS / backup server / file server
running a real operating system would certainly be better in many respects. It is just risky in that by making
a mistake in administration you could kill the data (not that you couldn't do that with a NAS or external
USB/eSATA disc, but those are at least less COMPLEX in a sense to administer). The other risk of using
an old PC as a server is that the PC has more electronics / complexity, so there's more stuff to break over time.
I don't think the latter point is crucial since the hard discs aren't so likely to run for more than 3-4 years before
they're either badly obsolete or dead themselves in which case the PC doesn't have to last for longer than that
before some kind of modest maintenance is needed.

Perosnally I'd look at:
http://www.freenas.org/

and if you want a more deluxe / secure server:
http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/.../zfs/docs/zfs_last.pdf

set up from OpenSolaris build 94 DVD or wait for
build 100 in a couple of months if you want to use the next major release
instead. Set up a 1TB-2TB or whatever ZFS zpool, share it over SMB
(compatible with Windows network file system) and you're all set. It'd take
about 45 minutes to install, about 3 minutes set up and share the RAIDZ,
and you're done except for dusting the box occasionally and making sure the UPS works,
and checking the status of the drives now and then to see if there is one failing.

In any case, for a RAID-5 you MUST set up three (or more) physical drives of
comparable capacity in one group. I'd strongly suggest 3x750GB or 3x1TB depending
on your budget. You'll get the amount of storage equal to however many
identical drives you use MINUS one, so THREE drives turn into a usable space
capacity of TWO drives. Or FOUR becomes THREE in space capacity, etc.
If any ONE of those drives fails it is not catastrophic, you just replace it ASAP and
do a few simple commands to tell it to replace the dead one with the new one and
wait a few hours for it to resynchronize and you're all set.

Optionally you can tell the RAID to include MORE than one drives worth of redundancy
so any TWO drives can fail simultaneously without data loss, but that is atypical of
something you'd want to do as a home user if drive cost and capacity is a severe limit.
Obviously you lost TWO drives worth of capacity if you were to do that, so FOUR drives
would give the free space of TWO.

I wouldn't even consider messing with a Windows based RAID or a RAID that's running
on your main workstation; it should really be a different physical server device.

There's plenty of good backup software out there, it's hard to say what would work
best for you. The acronis trueimage software seems popular. Image based backups
are less risky because they backup EVERYTHING, though they take up a lot of room
and incremental backups can be more challenging if you're moving a lot of data around
and in and out frequently.

File by file backups are OK for data like pictures but are not usually sufficient to save
you lots of pain in reinstalling the OS if there's a problem with the OS partition/drive.

I'd guess that within about 2-3 years there will be much better backup software
and much better storage appliances like NAS units designed for home use that may
be sufficient for your needs and with 2-4TB capacity. So it may be whatever you
implement here can be considered temporary for 2-5 years at which point there will probably
be much more attractive options to replace it.

Personally I just set up one Solaris ZFS based RAIDZ of a 2 TB capacity disk group and
I'll be migrating my old 1TB RAID-5 over to solaris too shortly.

Get Gigabit ethernet + gigabit switch if you can feasibly do so to make this all more
practically fast for doing major backup/restore operations. For incremental operations
you can probably do it over wireless LAN on your laptops if that's a lot easier on a day to
day basis.

If you want a cheaper simpler backup storage solution, just put a 1TB SATA disc in
an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and backup over USB 2.0 high speed to that disc
with the backup software of your choice independently from each PC taking turns
with it. Use a second unit if you want for redundancy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...oreType=0&Pagesize=100
The Silicon Labs Sil3124 or Sil3132 or older Sil3114 type multi-port SATA
controllers can be had that control up to 4-5 SATA drives and are often in the $25 price range, e.g. the RC-209 from ROSEWILL as above. Many of them works under LINUX
and are cost effective ways to add more modern SATA HDDs to an older PC.
I've used an RC-209 and LINUX for my older 1TB 5-drive RAID-5. I suspect
similar cards are compatible with OpenSolaris but I haven't checked which are so as to
give you a firm list; if your motherboard can directly control 3-4 SATA drives you
probably don't need an external controller card.

 

[Madwand1]

Keep it simple to start. Simpler = easier to set up & more reliable & more immediately available.

Even if you set up a file server, you'd still have a backup problem, as it'd be very tempting to put original information on that file server. "RAID alone is not a backup", so even with redundancy at the drive level, you should have external backup for even a full-blown RAID-enabled file server.

The Vantec external HD docking station comes with an SATA adapter, and lets you swap drives externally, and access them via either USB or eSATA. There are many other similar options.

Acronis True Image and others can give you lots of backup software options.

Besides, before you go mucking around with your machine and set it up with RAID etc., you should have a backup for its data.