Brainstorm: server and backup
:: Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 @ 10:37:56 pm
:: Tags: Computers
My file server at home has 2TB (accessible) in a RAID 5 configuration (which has already saved me once). At this moment I only have 370GB free, and have already started thinking about how to grow it properly.
To back up my server, I currently use a 1.6TB Infrant ReadyNAS box, a 300GB external drive, and a 500GB external drive. That gives me enough room to back up all of my files with a bit of room for versioning.
So here’s how I envision growing:
- 2.3TB (2TB accessible) RAID 5: Personal files and photos
- 2.0TB ReadyNAS, RAID 0: Backup of personal files and photos (have to buy this)
- 1.6TB (1.2TB accessible) ReadyNAS, RAID 5: Media, music, and video
- 500GB + 300GB external drives: Selective backups of #3
Complicated. I need a live backup of #3, but I don’t want to buy two boxes at once. Argh.
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Hi Eric,
just a few days ago I was in the same evaluation. I was happy to find that NAS Drives became a lot more affordable nowadays. I choose an Maxtor 500 GB solution and as this turned out to be nice and reliable I might go for their 1 TB cubes. However I must state that I will still need FireWire attached hard drives for my HD Video and 12mpx RAW photos. The speed of NAS can only be considered as backup solution. That’s what I decided. Maybe it helps a little bit. Good thoughts however!
A related suggestion: Do you ever store any offsite backups? Even annually would be a good idea, given the amount of energy that is invested in your work. (God forbid, if your home ever catches fire, etc. I think you mentioned you live in an apartment? So even your neighbors could cause disaster.)
We just did a group buy via Wetpixel and COBA and got a discount on a bulk order, so it was good (for an Infrant NAS box).
I’m on a gigabit network and get throughput of 26-27MB/s. It’s fast enough for me to edit 100 megabyte images directly from the server, although I’m not saving every few seconds like some people do.
I save RAW files offsite every once in awhile, but fire isn’t an issue here because my building is live/work and has sprinklers in every unit! And all of my machines are elevated a few inches off of the floor in case of flood. :)