Backup woes - what setup to choose?

[glitch]

I'm having a 'mare with getting a backup system to keep my all-important photos and music on and need some sage advice. All I want is a reliable form of storage that will allow me to backup all my data safely, securely, and without any reliance on software.

I'm not 100% sure I can do this with my current setup as I'm led to believe the nVidia RAID relies on software and cannot be rebuilt easily - as per this topic, so I've thought of some alternatives...

Currently I have:

Asus A8N-SLI Premium
1 x 80GB Hitachi Deskstar
2 x 250GB Samsung Spinpoint

I'd wanted to set the two 250GB drives up in RAID 1 and have the 80GB as my system drive. Unfortunately I had a bit of an 'issue' over the weekend which led to the RAID array being lost and the Hitachi being unreadable.

So I'm now facing a decision. Do I carry on with software RAID or go with hardware? And if I go with hardware, do I go with USB or eSATA?

Option 1:

Stick with what I've got.

Option 2:

Keep A8N-SLi Premium
Buy Thecus Yes N2050
Put Samsung drives in Yes box (RAID 1)
Connect via USB2 / eSATA card (only 1.5Gbps but included with N2050)

Option 3:

Buy A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Buy Thecus Yes N2050
Put Samsung drives in Yes box (RAID 1)
Connect via 3Gbps eSATA provided by the new motherboard

Option 4:

Buy Thecus YES N2100
Put Samsung drives in Yes box (RAID 1)
Take advantage of GbE connection

Option 5:

Something else?

 

[accod]

I'd keep the 250 drives as they are using software raid1 and buy another external hdd to use for backups. Hardware raid 1 can still break.

 

[ByteJuggler]

My opinion: RAID != Backup.

RAID in its various forms improves *availability* of your data in some fashion (as in uptime performance, or in the case of RAID0, in terms of transfer performance) but it really isn't concerned as such with the safeguarding of said data against calamity or loss. There are in fact many things that might happen to a RAID setup that might still cause you to lose your data (dead controller with no replacement available, out of control virus that deletes your files, etc. etc.) It therefore is NOT a substitute for a good backup regimen IMNSHO. A backup of course also uses "redundant data" (as in, the copy you make during backup) to ensure data *safety* (just like RAID uses a redudant copy of the data to improve availability.) However just because both use a redudant copy of data in some fashion does not mean they address the same concern(s) with the same level of emphasis. The difference is subtle but very important IMHO and often overlooked.

Thus: If your concern is data *safety* (as it seems to me it is) then looking to RAID is perhaps the wrong solution (or at least, not sufficient by itself IMO.)

 

[glitch]

Some good advice there. I think I'll just archive to seperate external drives and optical media and use the software RAID for temporary storage.

Thanks for your time.