Data Backups at home

NYSpeed Automotive NYSpeed Off Topic
1

What are you nerds doing to for backing up data at home?

As far as I know, there are a few options:

1 - External Hard Drive/Flash Drive
2 - DVDs
3 - RAID Storage array
4 - Manually sync files to another PC on the network
5 - Cloud service like Dropbox

I really want to start thinking about a plan for this even though I want to avoid buying any hardware (stupid wedding saving). Anyway, I don’t really feel as though I need to save all of my large video files. I would want my music, documents, photos, ebooks backed up though. Let’s say, anywhere from 100-200GB.

What’s the best solution?

2

I have some cheap no name NAS with mirrored 1TB drives. I didn’t want to do RAID5 or anything weird just incase the RAID controller died and I would have to recover data off the drives.

I will probably upgrade to something else soon…

Newegg has a bunch just look for a price point.

3

I also have a 1TB NAS drive. I didn’t mirror it, I just keep important or larger files on it so I can access them from anywhere. Works great as a media drive as well. All I do is hook my laptop to which ever TV I feel like watching a movie on, and I can access the files through the network.

4

1TB USB HD that i got for $79 on slickdeals. Downloaded Ghost off torrents and set it to take a full PC image every Monday night at 4AM.
EDIT:
I know you’re not trying to spend any money on hardware, but this would really solve your problem and then some.
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?sduid=280279&t=2345305 They also have a 2TB for $81.

5

So it’s mirrored, but not a RAID 1?

I wonder if I can do something similar on spare machine with some old hard drives. Old hard drives probably aren’t a good idea for backups though.

6

Typically once a HDD is used it’s “no longer useful”. I’m hoping to also to a RAID NAS setup for my music. I really don’t want to Download obtain 600+ gigs of music again.

7

600 gigs of music? If you push play on that and come back in a year is it done yet?

8

LOL I can let you know when I get home how long it goes.

The only thing on this drive is folders and music…I’d gladly create “offsite” backups to anyone with a large enough HDD.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/Thorguitarist/0b6bc32e.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/Thorguitarist/0b6bc32e.jpg377×505 34.7 KB

9

No its in a RAID 1…

What I meant is some of the bigger home NAS devices can do RAID 5 but if the box shits the bed you can just pull an HD out and get the data off as easily as a mirrored setup.

Just take an old machines buy a cheap raid car $20 and 2 1TB HDs or however much space you need…If you want to build the whole thing end to end buy a intel atom machine.

10

Gotcha, I just wasn’t sure what you meant by that. I confuse easily.

I have a box I could put the drives in and mount. Can’t I just be cheap and do a software RAID partition in linux? I’ve never worked with this crap so I don’t know the details of how the software handles it.

11

I have an external HDD that I do backups to, then i store it in a closet. I also use Gilware remote backup.

12

You could do software RAID but PCI RAID cars are super cheap…hell most after market mother boards do RAID now.

I am against backups in “the cloud” don’t like anyone else storing data makes them a big target even if its encrypted with their own proprietary technique or other bs.

13

100-200 gb I’d go the online backup route, assuming you have a decent upstream connection.

14

I have a 1GB upstream…I just don’t know that I want to take the risk of trusting another company with my data, plus the music is all pirated.

15

You have 1Gb upstream at home? wat

16

my bad…that would be AWESOME, 1Mb…oh yeah, bit not byte…I’m all sorts of messed today

17

I thought you had some new hotness I didn’t know about lol

All those remote back up software packages work off differentials anyways so if your data isn’t constantly making huge changes 1Mb wouldn’t be an issue.

18

i’m too cheap for new hotness lol

19

lol i think he meant mb

edit nvmd

i need to set up a network so i can save all of my important files off of my desktop, move them to my laptop, burn some dvdr’s, and then wipe the desktop clean. ubuntu is cool, but i miss itunes :frowning:

20

yeah, first time upload would suck but letting it run overnight a few times would be fine…Maybe I can just create some password protected archives for the pirated crap. Then just store those out there.

hmmmm, then syncing won’t work cause the zips would be completely different…hmmmmm

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:53 PM ----------

you’re already on a network…silly