Backup storage - NAS devices

Jay_Z

Hi, I'm seeking any advice/thoughts on the followings products.

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad (Windows Vista) that I am looking to backup, along with the contents of a 300GB drive I am looking to transfer over. I would like a dual drive NAS device so I can use RAID and connect via ethernet (to a router or system directly).

Any thoughts, recommendations, feedback on these? Or any other recommendations for such an effective solution from alternatives that you've used?


- LaCie LaCie 2big Network 2TB 301259U (Includes 2 x 1TB drives)
- D-Link 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure DNS-323 (Adding 2 x 1TB drives)
- Linksys 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure NAS200 (Adding 2 x 1TB drives)
- NETGEAR Storage Central Turbo SC101T (Adding 2 x 1TB drives)


Thanks for your advice!

claudermilk

Why te RAID requirement? Do you understand what RAID is? (hint: it's not specifically backup).

I'd suggest for backups just plain old external drives. If you are wanting a standalone storage device, then the NAS is a possible option--but it will need to be backed up itself.

SloYerRoll

claudermilk wrote:

Why te RAID requirement? Do you understand what RAID is? (hint: it's not specifically backup).

I'd suggest for backups just plain old external drives. If you are wanting a standalone storage device, then the NAS is a possible option--but it will need to be backed up itself.

I think JZ may have been led astray by other threads. The term RAID has seemed to grow synonymous w/ backup. It's becoming more and more widely confused. Kinda like Java and JavaScript..

Properly configured, SyncBack SE (30USD retail) is a fantastic application that will give you all the data backup you need w/o the aggravation of RAID configuration too. No need to re-invent the wheel here

Jay_Z

SloYerRoll wrote:

I think JZ may have been led astray by other threads. The term RAID has seemed to grow synonymous w/ backup. It's becoming more and more widely confused. Kinda like Java and JavaScript..

The reason I was looking at the NAS devices such as these with RAID was that in one contained unit I would have a backup and a backup of that backup on another independent drive - one fails, I have the other identical drive ready to go.

Additionally, I would also look at some other options - some older less touched stuff is burned to DVD and I have my other external drive that I can do a regular backup to keep offsite. I was looking to this solution since everything is stored external, I don't keep anything on my laptop - maybe some work in process, otherwise it's on an external drive and I need a backup of that. These seemed like efficient solutions for that.

claudermilk

That's not how RAID works. It is NOT a backup. It is a safety net to prevent downtime. A proper backup is kept offline and preferable remote from the backed-up machine.

I have a RAID 10 for my main data, however, I also maintain a proper backup of that RAID. If one drive fails, I can replace it and keep going. If two fail, the data is gone--there isn't enough left of the RAID to rebuild; in that case you'd better have an offline REAL backup to restor the data after replacing the bad drives & have the RAID rebuilt.

I strongly recommend against using burnable optical media for achival storage. You will be sorry as they fail far too quickly. Considering longevity, reliability, ease of access, volume size, and price/GB, hard drives win hands-down.

I would suggest a pair of external/removable hard drives as backups used on a rotating basis. If possible, keep one ata separate location from the PC (i.e., if it's a home PC, keep one backup at a relative's house or your office).

wmstumme

About three or four months ago, I bought the Linksys NAS200 and put a 500GB drive in one of the bays-the other is still empty. It works fine--but is slooooow. It's okay as a backup storage, but although it shows up as just another drive on your computer, you will definately know it is not an internal drive by the response lag. However, it was simple to setup and does allow me to access my stored photos from both my laptop and desktop without dragging around all the cords from computer to computer for an external USB drive which is what I was doing before. I don't have the drive set up for any RAID configurations.

One note--this is really more an "interim" backup as I wouldn't trust this device anymore than any other hard drive. I tend to have multiple copies on various devices of each file, as well as my smugmug account. Not a real organized scheme--but I generally know where I can find another copy of each file if some device starts to give me issues.

One other possible solution is to use one of the free Linux solutions to create an NAS using an older PC. I had done so with "NASLITE" I got from the website www.serverelements.com . It worked great using an old Pentium I (w/ about 64 MB of RAM--yes Meg not Gig) and a couple of 120 GB drives--until some of the hardware started giving out. I didn't notice the performance hits with this arrangement as a I have with the Linksys device. I've also been looking at FREE NAS--another free linux setup--which looks pretty capable. May try that one out when I finally get around to replacing my current desktop...

mwgrice

wmstumme wrote:

One other possible solution is to use one of the free Linux solutions to create an NAS using an older PC. I had done so with "NASLITE" I got from the website www.serverelements.com . It worked great using an old Pentium I (w/ about 64 MB of RAM--yes Meg not Gig) and a couple of 120 GB drives--until some of the hardware started giving out. I didn't notice the performance hits with this arrangement as a I have with the Linksys device. I've also been looking at FREE NAS--another free linux setup--which looks pretty capable. May try that one out when I finally get around to replacing my current desktop...

This is pretty similar to what D-Link's DNS-323 is: basically a Linux box with a NIC and two slots for hard drives.

Do I recommend the DNS-323? Yes, with reservations. I think it's worked reasonably well for me, although it's not perfect. In order to upgrade the firmware (i.e., upgrade the version of embedded Linux installed), you have to format the drives. I think a recent problem I've had with it (some crashes) has been related to a firmware issue, but it's going to be a lot of trouble to update it. I'd definitely recommend reading through all (well, many of) the reviews on amazon.com and newegg.com.

On the plus side (and I'm sure I'm in the minority here), it's not that difficult to weasel your way into getting a login onto the embedded Linux server. I'm going to use that to run an rsync job periodically to sync up the two disks.

Which reminds me--put me in the "RAID is not backup" camp. Any file you delete on a set of disks in a RAID array is gone. I don't have a lot of faith in consumer level RAID, either. A lot of the low end server RAID hardware is pretty bad, too.

sealedglass

Just to throw in my $0.02 here: I use the DNS-323 as well to create "hot backups" of my photos from both the Mac (the pro stuff) and Vista (for the snapshots, music, etc), but I push them to the DNS rather than using a shell on the DNS. The power supply on the first one I bought died w/in 2 weeks but Dlink replaced it and the new one has been fine for months. But I definitely don't trust it for long-term storage. I keep archive backups of the DNS-323 files off-site on a fixed, non-RAIDed hard drive, giving me 3 redundant copies (laptop, NAS, off-site drive). Here's what I use:

- Mac: I use rsync via the terminal to sync up my Pictures folder (which has all my photos, Lightroom catalog files, iPhoto catalogs, etc) on a routine basis.

- PC: I run SyncToy, a Microsoft tool available from their ProPhoto site, to accomplish the same thing as 'rsync'. SyncToy has a few settings to allow you to sync one-way from either direction as well as sync bi-directionally if you're updating both your system and your NAS. The tool is really good, but does have some limitations, such as not deleting destination directories that have been removed from the source.

I then use SyncToy one final time to pull the changes from the NAS to an external hard drive connected to the Vista machine. It's a somewhat manual system, but I get to verify that all the files have been archived correctly at each step.

One note to mwgrice's comment below: with newer DNS-323 firmware, you don't need to format the drives (at least currently) for firmware updates. I've updated through two firmware versions since building the NAS and they've preserved the filesystems and files. That may change with each version, but upgrades are non-destructive right now.

mwgrice wrote:

This is pretty similar to what D-Link's DNS-323 is: basically a Linux box with a NIC and two slots for hard drives.

Do I recommend the DNS-323? Yes, with reservations. I think it's worked reasonably well for me, although it's not perfect. In order to upgrade the firmware (i.e., upgrade the version of embedded Linux installed), you have to format the drives. I think a recent problem I've had with it (some crashes) has been related to a firmware issue, but it's going to be a lot of trouble to update it. I'd definitely recommend reading through all (well, many of) the reviews on amazon.com and newegg.com.

On the plus side (and I'm sure I'm in the minority here), it's not that difficult to weasel your way into getting a login onto the embedded Linux server. I'm going to use that to run an rsync job periodically to sync up the two disks.

Which reminds me--put me in the "RAID is not backup" camp. Any file you delete on a set of disks in a RAID array is gone. I don't have a lot of faith in consumer level RAID, either. A lot of the low end server RAID hardware is pretty bad, too.