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Post by Chief Mouse on Apr 29, 2020 9:44:03 GMT
I am looking at options of increasing my disk space and backing things up. So presumably you have terabytes of data. How do you deal with it? A bunch of hard drives, RAID, NAS?
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Golden Salmon
Wordles & Heardles 
Politician
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Post by Golden Salmon on Apr 29, 2020 10:36:38 GMT
It would depend on how complex and secure you want them to be, of course. RAID and NAS can be very effective and powerful, but they require attention from the user (file version management, solving errors and whatnot). It can get complicated fast the more you work, and it gets expensive too. RAID is, to me, more of a fail-safe and/or performance improvement measure rather than a backup solution. NAS can be great for very intensive work but you'd need to keep an eye on failures. For backups, the latter may be more important but it's up to the user. I tend to adhere to the KISS principle and manage my data with big external drives, which become separate primary and secondary backups, and I generally tend to keep them offline and even off-site (that's the case for secondary backups). Then again, I do not usually work with critical data and I don't have a need for very strict backup policy. My approach at home (Windows desktop computer, 256GB SSD + 4TB HDD): - Software profiles, small work files: SSD to HDD, local manual backup (not critical session) / local real-time backup (critical session). Occasionally, cloud-based for very critical data. - Massive files: same as above, but on docked (don't deal with cables!) USB 3.0 external drives that I activate on demand. The software I use is FreeFileSync. Very powerful and reliable, simple to set up and bug-free. I use it both at home and work. You can have manual, real-time and/or programmed backups, from and to every source you want (local, external, cloud, FTP, etc.), with delta and version management, sync profiles and many other neat smaller features. All for free! Now, my backup needs are roughly 10 TB worth of mostly non-critical data, so I've been reusing my drives for years and it's been very cost-effective. If I considered most of my data/work to be critical, I would definitely go for a RAID/NAS setup (as well as checking cloud solutions, should you have professional grade Internet access) + versioning, but the costs can get crazy - for a home user anyway. I assume you will be a pro user, so I'd definitely consider investing some money in your backup solution. |
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pg
Queen Mab
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Post by pg on Jun 30, 2020 19:59:33 GMT
I feel like I'm on the cusp of a mutli-drive NAS but it's such an expensive jump to make.
Instead, I've got about 20Tb of space randomly spread across about 6 discs,
In terms of backups, I have a mixed strategy.
Documents are auto backed up to some free cloud service. There aren't many, and very little would be critical.
Pictures are backed up to Amazon Photos (for those that have been processed) or to a spare drive (all the RAW files).
Video and music is backed up to a second drive.
The problem is that what I've got is not really backup, it's mostly disk redundancy. What I'd like to do is set up a NAS at some other location (my brother, for example) and mirror across to that, with a reciprocal device for him here. But as the most risky material (the photos having lost a disc of pics in the past) are uploaded to public cloud, there's not much impetus to spend the money.
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Post by Chief Mouse on Jul 4, 2020 7:32:39 GMT
Just got the 12TB IronWolf.
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