RAID1 Enclosure

I am looking for a RAID1 (mirrored) enclosure I can use as a backup box. I am a graphic designer and photographer, and my current desktop and laptops both use RAID0 for speed (which is freaking me out). I have everything backed up on an external LaCie drive, but I don't trust it as far as I could throw it.

If I lose these files I've basically lost everything (I backup really important things on DVD however, that ends up being very costly even at a buck a piece).

So basically I am looking for an external RAID1 case that runs off of eSata or USB 3.0, just to be sure that in an emergency worst-case scenario there's a good chance I still have it all.

The case should support two 7200 RPM drives, up to 2 TB of data at least.

I hope to get something stylish, preferably a black polished metal with LED lighting, as it will be a desk piece in my office and not shoved away in some server room.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Or as to how I should back up in general?

I would like to keep it under $100 (without the drives) but would be willing to increase if needed.

 

Put a copy of it on a cloud service, then another on a hard drive.

 

Oh, I guess since it's RAID1 I'll only be looking for 1TB of data (2x1TB). Don't want to spend all that much yet.

What's this cloud service? Is it expensive?

 

Why not just get 2(or more) enclosure and backup multiple times ? It is cheaper and faster than cloud.

 

Cloud storage like Amazon S3 allows you to store your critical data in their reliable servers which can be accessible anywhere. Its great for backup and archiving. If you have a slow internet connection and transferring large files, it might not be an ideal solution for you.

For $100 you can get an enclosure like this and a pair of 2TB WD black.

Just keep in mind putting them in RAID1, if you overwrite/delete a backup or a virus somehow destroys data on disk1, the disk2 mirror will also be lost. Having both drives in the same enclosure also increases the loss of your 'backed up' data from a power surge or controller failure.

 

This might be a little over what you were looking, but its nice, has USB3 and eSata, has space for 4 drives, and comes with a lot of raid configs.

Mediasonic USB 3.0 & eSATA 3.5-Inch 4-Bay Raid Enclosure 0/1/3/5/10 HFR2-SU3S2

 

cloud service is cheap if you want hassle-free peace of mind data storage. Easy for small really important files(<5GB)

99.999999999% Durability..... you won't even get that on your own hardware... hassle-free storage, you only need a dependable internet connection

amazon offers 5GB of storage for free... they do charge for bandwidth and get/put requests(i.e. upload/download). They don't really have a front end or any applications, so it might take some time to get used how to upload stuff

AWS Free Usage Tier

anything above that, around 15 cents per gigabyte per month
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

so 500GB of data storage will cost $75 a month not including bandwidth/request charges

Other Vendors
(these vendors usually use a bigname brand like Amazon S3 hosting, and offer a front-end application for easier file access, and charge a little higher than Amazon's 15 cents per gigabyte)

Dropbox - 2GB free, 50-100GB for $10-$20/month
dropbox uses Amazon's S3 system, offers a front-end wrapper/application for easier file searching...

JungleDisk - paid stuff.. cheapest is like $2/month, and 15cents per gigabyet month after that... it also uses amazon S3 or Rackspace hosting, but it gives you a nice front-end application to sync, which beats paying almost the same $ for Amazon's S3
I use this for my college documents/important docs(have desktop and laptop, this makes it a lot easier to sync stuff between the two machines, and when I go home for vacation aka now)

 

Thanks but I'll stick to physical disks for storing info... This is for professional photography so 5GB is like a days worth of shooting... I need to back up a few years worth. Monthly fees aren't going to work. For $75 a month for only 500gb I could buy an awful lot of backup disks in a year.

That MediaSonic enclosure looks pretty good, and I found a 2-bay version of it on their website for cheaper.

I do agree though that file corruption can be caused by viruses as well, so I will keep a backup of everything on a hard drive just in case that will only be connected to make back-ups, along with a copy stored off-site.

I might be able to get my old 2.66 Core2Duo PC running at my folks house or something and transfer files to it over the internet. That way if this house is ever torched by an angry ex-girlfriend or an unruly client I will have quick and easy access recovering them.

Now if only I knew how to set that up. Time to hit Google.

 

cloud storage is good but your size doesn't fit at all IMO.

I use the cloud (Microsoft SkyDrive, 5G free) to backup my stuff which are mostly text so the are small.

Just buy 3 seperate enclosure and make 3 copy of the backup then move them weekly to a friends house(rotate) if you are paranoid about your main premise, that is a standard practice in the old days when dark fiber was not available.

 

Vantec Nexstar MX NST-400MX-SR. $100 shipped from Amazon.
Amazon.com: Vantec NexStar MX NST-400MX-SR Dual 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA with JBOD/RAID 0/1 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black): Electronics

• Supports RAID-1 (as well as RAID-0 and JBOD).
• Runs off of USB 2.0 or eSATA
• Supports 2x 3.5" SATA drives up to 2.0TB each
• Exactly in your price range ($100, shipped)

I bought one of these about 1.5 years ago to protect my critical files (documents, family photos and videos) and have not had a problem ever since. The drive just sits in the corner behind my computer, never giving me any problems. Runs at native speed over eSATA.

However, you need to be aware that RAID-1 is *NOT* a replacement for a backup. RAID-1 only protects you against data loss from physical drive failure. If you were to accidentally delete or overwrite a folder full of your important graphics and photos, all RAID-1 does is replicate that accident across both drives. Even with RAID-1, you need separate backups.

 

Can you use with two independent drives not configured as RAID 1? This would be a good plan to backup on both drives but not connect them via RAID in case you accidentally delete something on one. If it works it would save some space with one external device instead of two. Plus, if it is connected via eSATA it will have plenty of speed.

And one important thing > Does the Vantec Nexstar have any form of power management or does it spin the drives non stop?

 

WD has a dual enclosure as well, and the drives are user-replaceable I believe.

That being said you might want to invest in some kind of home server though that has RAID capabilities. I tend to not trust these proprietary boxes....

 

Yes, you can use them as two independent drives. JBOD mode = Just a Bunch of Disks.

And yes, the Vantec will spin down drives when not in use.

 

Where i work we rely on different backups and redundancies in case of any type of data loss, eg:

-RAID5 on server incase of single disk failure
-Shadow Copies every hour
-Hotswappable 2TB backup drives (daily data drive replication)
-Sony AIT Tape Drive (Incremental)
-A weekly full backup on an old decommissioned server

At the end of the day we have to put the tapes and drives in a fireproof vault. Doing all that can be a hassle but it has saved me in many occasions.

thats the exact thing i said earlier lol

 

wait..

why do you need raid?

Why dont you just back up to a regular external hard drive, once a day.

They often come with buttons.

Why does your external also need a copy of itself? You are backing up your backup?

why dont you just get two externals then, and then back up your back up once a day.

Why on earth do you need a raid 1 external? What is this madness?

 

That was what I have suggested.

3 2.5" USB powered external A, B and C.
backup to A and B daily
drop B @ friend's house in a week
backup to A and C daily
rotate A(or C) with B weekly and the cycle continue

that way, there is always a copy that would only be 1 week old no matter what happens to the main premise.

It is simple and efficient (just attach to two different USB ports and they can be done simultaneously) and the transport is simple too as it is just a small 2.5" enclosure.

at 640GB, that would be like 4 months archive (assuming 5G per day).

 

Ok thats fine... if you do really want to back up, your back up.

Before we get there I need to understand why you dont just have one back up.

Thats fine that thats the solution to the problem but is the problem that needs raid back up?

Is this data in a combat zone?

The mtbf of a hard drive used once a day to back up is going to get you to the year 3000.....

 

This is also my personal rig I don't consider my internal drives to be a valid copy at all since they're running RAID0 and have a much better chance of waking up dead any day. If one of two drives die, the whole thing is gone.

Now, the reason I wanted RAID1 external as well is because I don't honestly trust my current external backup drive. I've gone through multiple Seagate and WD external drives that just keep crapping out.

I know it's unlikely for both my internal and external drive to crap out at the same time, but it's happened before and cost me everything, even though the external drive was used once a day.

A nice enclosure that will support RAID1 and eSata will cost the same as two external eSata drive enclosures, so it's really a matter of preference.

Going with 3 drives is a good idea, but I will hopefully be setting up a computer off-site to back up as well.

This is for an actual studio dealing with thousands of dollars worth of client information, I don't want to make assumptions that the worst case scenario will never occur.

Edit: But yes I think I'll be going for 2-3 external drives now, instead of one RAID1.

 

The reason I suggested the 'old corporate' way of rotating backup is that unless you pay big bucks for dark fiber, your data size doesn't sound practical for networked off-site backup.

What kind of speed you can get from your local ISP ? 100Mb/s ?

 

The place I'd be storing it would be 30Mb/s only. That would probably be very slow.

Maybe I'll just bury a drive in the back yard.

 

If your dealing with thousands of dollars worth of data, you might wanna keep two sets of backups daily, and keep one of them in a very safe place or even offsite.

Thats a misconception. MTBF isnt how long a single drive is going to last, no drive is gonna last 1.2mill hours. It used to calculate the reliability/probability of failure for a large set or array of drives.

Manufacturers test 15,000 drives for 1000 hours each and lets say they find 12 failures (15,000 drives x 1000 hours / 12 failures = 1.25mill hours MTBF)

 

The two benefits of RAID over just pure backups are:

1) Less downtime and recovery time in the event of a drive failure. If you're in RAID-1, your data is still usable and retrievable even if a drive fails.

2) Your data is current up to the point-of-failure of a single drive in your RAID array. You don't need to worry about losing a day's / week's worth of data in the event of a drive failure.


Of course, I and many other people on this thread have re-iterated that RAID is not a replacement for backups. But I just wanted to point out that there are some advantages to RAID + backup, over pure backup.

 

I don't know about him, but for me it's the one the reasons it was invented, improved performance: speed! I'm referring to RAID 0 that is.

Now then, is there one for 2.5 discs?

 

The method I have basically decided on is:
1) RAID 1 array for "working" drives.
2) Two back-up drives (A & B) with drive A backed up daily and drive B off-site, then switch at the end of the week.

The RAID 1 array will provide up-to-the-minute backup if a drive fails, whereas the two external drives will provide protection against malware. Eventually I may upgrade to an A-B-C system but I don't think that's really needed at this point since.

No storage will actually occur on my internal drives, which will hopefully be replaced soon by two 120GB SSD's when the price drops a bit more for OS and applications.

I'll probably plan on keeping entire client shoots for a year and then only the final important pieces after that.

 

Only a year?

 

RAID 0 is rarely used other than at home setup.

That said most of today's SSD actually is effectively RAID 0 internally, in order to achieve the speed.

 

That is the nature of digital source. Even he promise to keep it for 10 years, will those be readable by then ? It is not just about the media itself but the device to read them. How many people's machine can still read Iomega or zip drive today, assuming the media is still good ?

For really long term archive, 'print' it.

 

That and the fact that clients rarely come back asking for more images after a year has passed. Re-prints, maybe, but I always keep the print files.

So they basically sign that their entire project will be kept for a year, final prints will be kept indefinitely, and we are not responsible for any loss of data that may occur.

 

Out of curiosity, how do you preserve prints ? I haven't touch this field for a few years and just wondering what happened in this front.

 

Well, I meant their printing files. An average photo shoot yields anywhere between 50-200 shots and from that they might select 1-20 photos to send to print. I keep the 'good' ones forever, and scrap the rest.

As for preserving actual prints, a print on good quality paper is generally damaged by two things - light and humidity. There's a lot of protective coatings you can order for the prints too. I've never really dealt with a job where the client specified they needed something that would last a long time, though, things like brochures don't generally have much of a life span.

 

ah, so you still keep the good digital source in a sense. Then how do you handle my mentioned case of obsolete media ? again out of curiosity.

 

I haven't been around too long, but I don't recall a case of a media format or storage device going extinct without some form of converter. I've only recently graduated from college and am starting a studio, so I don't really know how things will pan out in the future, but I am hoping JPEG or PNG will the standard for a fair amount of time.

I guess if SATA drives ever went the way of the dodo bird I'd have to transfer them to a new storage device.

 

You'd need to have a crystal ball to be able to know that. For the rest of us, you archive on the best format you can afford then hopefully up-convert when things change. That's all any one can do.

 

I don't need to have a crystal ball to be able to know that as that is already a problem for say Liberary of Congress. I don't mean the solution but the problem itself.

I raised the issue because I have already experienced that before. I used to be quite interested in photography and had my own film scanner to scan all my negatives into digital form. Many of them were stored in the 'long term' storage media in this Magneto-optical drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, I can no longer access them even though I stored them as TIFF/JPG which is still readable by modern day software. The drive itself however is very hard to find and I believe in 10 years time would be completely out of production.

Luckily(and some what ironically), my negative is still in pretty good shape and I can still find local shops to do the scanning for me.

 

It's strange that they wouldn't have made a motherboard or something that supports magneto-optical drive input (on whatever connector that may have been) and whatever it was preceded by.

I know that all of my information that was stored on floppy disks as a kid was easily transported to CD's since pretty much every motherboard that supported SATA also had IDE (some even still do, although it's rare).

When SATA starts to fade into the past, I hope there will be a few generations of motherboards that still support it.