[TriLUG] Cheap Backup

[David McDowell]

last I saw, LaCie has a 1 TB external ... could be larger by now, I
didn't look before writing... gotta ask yourself... is it worth
backing them up or worth losing them... then worry about the cost...
:)


On 5/24/05, Joel Ebel <jbebel at ncsu.edu> wrote:
> Since he stated he has over 500 GB of mp3's, backing them all up to a
> single external USB drive would become difficult and expensive.  In
> fact, the only 500 GB drive I can find id the LaCie BigDisk external
> drive.  It's quite expensive ($374)  Since he already has 500 GB of
> mp3's, this may or may not even fit, and doesn't leave any room for
> expansion.  And he will still need to purchase enough drives to store
> 500 GB on his server, which will require multiple disks since I don't
> see any internal 500 GB drives available. (What do they use inside the
> LaCie BigDisk??)  So he'll either need to buy 2 250 GB drive and the
> LaCie BigDisk and have no room for expansion, costing about $600 or
> purchase 4 200 GB drives and a PCI IDE adapter for about $375 total and
> have an extra 100 GB to expand into.
> 
> External USB drives are a convenient method of backups, but in this
> case, I think a good RAID 5 is much more cost effective and appropriate
> for the size of data.  Normally I would say that RAID is not a
> replacement for good backups, but in this case, the reasons needed for a
> backup instead of a RAID are lessened.  Accidental file deletion is
> probably unlikely in an mp3 archive, and the expense of protecting
> against that just isn't worth it.  Protecting against hardware failure
> should be the primary concern.  If in the future, a separate backup
> becomes a possibility both financially and physically (disks get big
> enough to hold your mp3's) then a backup scenario could be implemented
> as well.  But if you're on a budget, the cheapest way to prevent against
> hardware failure will be a single RAID 5 array.
> 
> Joel
> 
> jbrigman at nc.rr.com wrote:
> >>The cheap backup I use is another disk in a usb/firewire
> >>external case (from other postings they're at Intrex,
> >>I got mine at DealSonic). I plug it in once a week and
> >>sync everything. Sure disks are unreliable, but they're
> >>cheap and at a hour or two a week, it's going to get too
> >>small before it dies. When you want a new disk, just
> >>pop the case open and replace the disk.
> >
> >
> > I have to second Joe's comment about using an external USB 2.0 or
> > better disk drive for backups. Works like a champ, is fast, and if you
> > do it right, you've got an image of your source system you can boot
> > from. Whatever O/S you use is almost irrelevant, the convenience is
> > well worth it. Much less work to do if you ever have to restore.
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