Best method for External HDD backup

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Bry

Bry

Bry

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I have around 2TB Of data spread across 5 internal discs which I need to backup and this grows by around 2-3GB of week. Files are mainly media files such as Photos and Videos however, there are also other files like word documents, excel files and zips.

What would be the best method of backing this up?

Single external discs - this would take up a fair bit of physical space and would have the inherent problem of drives filling up.

Separate Server PC in a Raid - Not really wanted due to size and power consumption.

External Raid box - Products like Synology and Qnap 4bay raid boxes. However, I am worried about what happens if the actual raid box dies. Yes it will be a backup box so the data is not lost. But, if i remember correctly I would need to buy exactly the same model in order to recover the raided data as I could not simply buy another product, put in the hard drives and click recover.

This to me seems a major fault of external raid solutions.

Anyone have any thoughts on a reliable and easy solution for external data backup like this?
 
What i'd do..

buy 3x samsung F1's and 3x icybox 390's

use robocopy to backup to them



it'll only copy new & updated files after the first run, (so the weekly backup will take 1-3 mins)


this is what i do, i keep one for tv episodes, one for tv animations (simpsons etc), and another for movies & mp3's (and a backup of my steam files)
 
i'd just buy 3-4 1TB samsung f1 drives and have them in raid5 inside your desktop, if 1 drive dies you dont lose anything, just rma it for replacement.
 
if your raid5 controller dies, you could be in trouble though!

he wants them as backup drives, it's unlikely (although totally possible) that both the main drive & the backup will die at the same time)
 
if board dies you can get a replacement board with same controller eg intel ich9r. a lot cheaper than buying external drives. Sell your current drives and buy some new ones.
 
hi,
its not really that I don't want any of them, just the fact I can find fault with each method.

I'm against internal raid being used as backup, I really think it is best for overall data integrity to have my backup external.

I think cost wise external separate hdd are probably the best in their own caddies. However, I am still edging more towards a external raid box like the Synology C407 or Qnap 409.

Yet I am weary as I can not find any example of anyone having to rebuild the array after one of these products dies (maybe that's a good thing? they don't fail often)
 
I don't see the need to have an external RAID solution or anything like that, individual external disks will be more than sufficient. The whole 2Tb isn't going to change every week, you've probably got plenty of content there which, once backed up, won't get touched. Therefore you can end up with 1 or 2 large disks sat on a shelf with stuff on them and one "live" backup that has the stuff which is transient and the new updates on it.

If you don't like the cost of 3 enclosures just get one like the Icy Dock MB-559 and some spare rails (£5 a time), that's what I do.
 
ah well the reason i would like a proper enclosure is because i dont really want the hassle of keeping swapping the units in and out of either the enclosure or the connections

Unfortunately there doesnt seem to be a 3-4 disc external caddy
 
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