Will this work as a backup solution?

[maureen99]

I am trying to implement a backup/recovery plan for our small organization, which will backup about 100gb per night 5 nights a week.

I would like to do the following:

Attach a NAS drive like this one: to our ethernet switch
Unit has 4 500gb drives
configure them in 2 sets of 2 drives; mirrored RAID 1
Each one will hold appox. 1 week of our backups
So we backup for 2 weeks
take the first set of two drives out for safe storage
back up again for 2 weeks on remaining set
after 2 weeks, swap sets


Will this work? can RAID 1 or 0+1 be configured this way?


If not, Please offer any suggestions that may.

All help greatly appreciated!

Maureen

 

[RebateMonger]

You'd find it much easier and cheaper to just buy or build two (or more) 1 TB external drives (USB or eSATA). Keep one drive plugged in all week. Attach it to a PC or server and share it as needed. Keep the others offsite. Run daily automated backups and swap drives once a week.

You can also use high-end internal removable SATA drive trays in that "server".

This is what I use for the majority of my small business clients.

 

[maureen99]

Ah....that is a good idea!

Why do I always go for the most complicated thing first? (rhetorical of course)

Thanks for the input!

Maureen

 

[RebateMonger]

Be sure to periodically (I do it monthly) test the backups to be sure that they are actually readable and double-check that you are backing up EVERYTHING that you need.

Regarding easy backups / recovery, you might take a look at Microsoft's Windows Home Server. It's a great solution for Windows-based offices. You get automatic, full system backups of every computer in the office. It manages the backups so that you can restore an entire PC or just a few files back to multiple past dates, from several months ago up to last night's backup.

The only "problem" with Windows Home Server is that it doesn't give you offsite backups, so you'd STILL want to make backups on some sort of removable drives and get them offiste. But it sure makes PC and file recovery a breeze when a PC hard drive fails or a PC gets contaminated or corrupted.