| Author |
Message |
Bruce L. Bergman
Guest
|
 Posted:
Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:21 am Post subject:
Storage for the home user. |
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This newsgroup is aimed at the corporate arena - but us little people
with SOHO and Residential needs also have a need to store
ever-increasing quantities of data, too.
Will off the shelf NAS systems like the Buffalo TeraStation work for
backing up Windows boxen? Are there backup programs that are priced
for home use that can handle this duty transparently?
We have flavors of machines here from WinXP, WinME, Win 98, Win95,
WFWG 3.11 all the way back to MS-DOS 6.22, and piles of 5" and 3"
floppies. I want to round up all the files and messages that have
been generated over the decades in one place. Most of it can be
burned off to DVD-R for archiving, which will free up the NAS box for
backup duties for 3 or 4 PC's in daily use.
Then I have to find a box that can do RAID 5 with a hot spare - and
at first glance it doesn't look like the TeraStation is that box, no
room for an internal spare drive. It also does not support any
external tape or DVD drives for backup.
I'll learn Linux and build myself a NAS box if that's what it takes,
and I might be able to build a Security Camera DVR in the same box
that uses the same drive array.
Once upon a time, I had tape backups for the family's "business"
machines - started with a Colorado tape drive, and the cost of the
drives and media was very reasonable. I just looked at new MO and
SDLT Jukeboxes, also new DAT and Ultrium tape drives, but there were
far too many zeroes in the price tags.
This is progress? ;-P Prices are supposed to move DOWN as
technology and density improves...
9GB native capacity for a MO cartridge is downright small when my
desktop has a 160GB hard drive, the laptop is 60GB. And at $75 per
cartridge, that starts adding up fast. SDLT is a little better,
but...
Anyone know where I can get a 9-track open reel drive and a pile of
BlackWatch tape cheap? ;-) For those prices, I can find and mount a
tape or a DVD-R when I need an old file.
I have to do something - CD and DVD backups are a pain in the ass if
you have to sit there and swap in fresh media all afternoon, so they
never get done. And then there's the inevitable hard drive crash.
--<< Bruce >>--
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net. |
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Bill Todd
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Oct 19, 2005 12:16 am Post subject:
Re: Storage for the home user. |
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Bruce L. Bergman wrote:
| Quote: | This newsgroup is aimed at the corporate arena
|
I wouldn't have said that - though I confess that I haven't read its
charter.
....
| Quote: | I'll learn Linux and build myself a NAS box if that's what it takes
|
That would almost certainly be the least expensive way to go.
,
| Quote: | and I might be able to build a Security Camera DVR in the same box
that uses the same drive array.
|
Most likely.
....
| Quote: | This is progress? ;-P Prices are supposed to move DOWN as
technology and density improves...
|
And they did. Tape got a lot less expensive, and disk even more so.
It's not their fault that users decided to gobble up that inexpensive
disk at rates that made backing it up to tape more expensive than it had
been (hey, are you as conscientious about eliminating unneeded data as
you were 10 - 20 years ago?).
....
| Quote: | I have to do something - CD and DVD backups are a pain in the ass if
you have to sit there and swap in fresh media all afternoon, so they
never get done. And then there's the inevitable hard drive crash.
|
Least expensive way I know of is to back up to ATA or SATA disks. If
they don't need to go off-site, they can just be the RAIDed disks on
your NAS server (in which case you might consider using RAID-6 to
protect against even the possibility that two drives will fail
concurrently); otherwise, get a couple of inexpensive removable drive
racks (and perhaps a couple of extra drive trays to keep from having to
swap drives in the trays) - I've seen them for as little as $7 apiece,
but you might want something a bit sturdier for constant business use.
If you alternate between two sets of removable disks you'll always have
at least four copies of all but your most recent data: the current
version on the NAS clients, the most recent on-line backup on your NAS
server (x2, since it's RAIDed), and the two alternating copies on the
removable disks (that's 5 copies total, but if there's not enough room
on the removable disks to create a new backup image without deleting the
old one first this drops down to 4 while you're performing the
removable-disk backup). Among other things, this protects against a
site disaster at your business: even if the more recent removable disk
copy turns out to be unusable in such a situation (which while a very
low-probability event should not be ignored completely) you'll still
have the previous one to use.
If you're not concerned about site disasters, the RAID-6 NAS approach
effectively gives you 4 data copies: the current data on the NAS
clients and the effective 3 copies of it on the NAS server.
Note, incidentally, that in either of the above scenarios you're still
relying on the integrity of the NAS server: if it's not storing your
data reliably (e.g., due to undetected bus errors) *all* copies save
your clients' current ones may be garbage (this is of course possible on
the clients as well, but such client failures tend to get noticed during
the normal course of operations while those on a backup server might not
be). Short of using backup software that forces a comparison of the
on-disk backed-up data with the original during the backup I'm not sure
how you'd protect against this beyond occasional manual verification
checks (e.g., using file checksums). Incidentally, backup server
reliability is one reason *not* to load it up with additional unrelated
software (such as the security DVR that you mentioned).
Lots of options, right down to the roughly $0.30 per raw GB that using
the least expensive ATA drives plus an old PC you've got lying around to
run Linux provides. Good luck!
- bill |
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Dennis Willson
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Nov 02, 2005 1:22 am Post subject:
Re: Storage for the home user. |
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Well, ok, do what I did for home/small office. Build a Linux RAID NAS. Be sure to put the OS and SWAP file and a DIFFERENT drive/set
of drives than the drives used to store the data. This gives your data maximum isolation. While OS corruptions and crashes don't
happen often on Linux, they do happen.
I attached a tape library (jukebox) to the server via a SCSI card and backup from the local RAID to the tape. Other than tests, I
have never had to restore from the tape. Using RAID 5 on the RAID array with at least one hot spare plus the copy on the orginal
machine is pretty secure if your not doing off site disater recovery. Tape is actually the least reliable media, it's just easy to
remove and ship off site. For the Windows boxes, I setup SAMBA on the Linux box and do network copies of the data to the RAID array.
For my other Linux boxes I use NFS shares and copy via a daily cron job to the RAID array. I happen to have got the jukebox cheap
from a company going out of business. Easy to find here in Silicon Valley.
Hope this helps a little.
Dennis
Bruce L. Bergman wrote:
| Quote: | This newsgroup is aimed at the corporate arena - but us little people
with SOHO and Residential needs also have a need to store
ever-increasing quantities of data, too.
Will off the shelf NAS systems like the Buffalo TeraStation work for
backing up Windows boxen? Are there backup programs that are priced
for home use that can handle this duty transparently?
We have flavors of machines here from WinXP, WinME, Win 98, Win95,
WFWG 3.11 all the way back to MS-DOS 6.22, and piles of 5" and 3"
floppies. I want to round up all the files and messages that have
been generated over the decades in one place. Most of it can be
burned off to DVD-R for archiving, which will free up the NAS box for
backup duties for 3 or 4 PC's in daily use.
Then I have to find a box that can do RAID 5 with a hot spare - and
at first glance it doesn't look like the TeraStation is that box, no
room for an internal spare drive. It also does not support any
external tape or DVD drives for backup.
I'll learn Linux and build myself a NAS box if that's what it takes,
and I might be able to build a Security Camera DVR in the same box
that uses the same drive array.
Once upon a time, I had tape backups for the family's "business"
machines - started with a Colorado tape drive, and the cost of the
drives and media was very reasonable. I just looked at new MO and
SDLT Jukeboxes, also new DAT and Ultrium tape drives, but there were
far too many zeroes in the price tags.
This is progress? ;-P Prices are supposed to move DOWN as
technology and density improves...
9GB native capacity for a MO cartridge is downright small when my
desktop has a 160GB hard drive, the laptop is 60GB. And at $75 per
cartridge, that starts adding up fast. SDLT is a little better,
but...
Anyone know where I can get a 9-track open reel drive and a pile of
BlackWatch tape cheap? ;-) For those prices, I can find and mount a
tape or a DVD-R when I need an old file.
I have to do something - CD and DVD backups are a pain in the ass if
you have to sit there and swap in fresh media all afternoon, so they
never get done. And then there's the inevitable hard drive crash.
--<< Bruce >>-- |
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