Tidy backup solution, is this a good plan ? Input please :)

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

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Hi all, iv just got a drobo, so far, alls good, but im planning on doing the following, is it a good idea and will it be RELIABLE as a backup solution?:

1 drobo with 4x 500gb drives (what I have/can find)

Apple time machine 500gb (drive removed and placed in drobo, western digital green 1.5tb added)


So my plan is, the drobo should give me 1.4tb usable space, the time machine formatted is 1397gb, so pretty much the same (take ages fill it all), I have 3 questions:

1) Obviously if a drive fails in the drobo ill replace it, if the drobo fails however will it work if I buy another drobo and add the drives, will all my data be there ?

2) Ill time machine back up the drobo, so ill have drobos drive failure protection and also another copy of everything on the time machine, if drobo catastrophically failed, can I restore ANY time machine backup to any drive?, also can i restore any folders etc time machine will hold, like if I just wanted to recover my picture files off the time machine onto my mac?.

3) If for some reason Drobo failed, and time machine failed, I know drobo has a proprietary file system and cant be accessed without another drobo, but what about time machine ? for example say its electronics failed and the hardrive was fine, could i remove the harddrive, place it in a caddy and access its contents on my mac without it being in another time machine ?

The drobo btw is my 'main hard drive' it will get used day in day out (holds all my pics, itunes, vids etc), as I have a macbook pro with a SSD drive in it, main use is lightroom etc.

Thanks
 
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Combat squirrel said:
1) Obviously if a drive fails in the drobo ill replace it, if the drobo fails however will it work if I buy another drobo and add the drives, will all my data be there ?

Thanks
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Yes but you have to transfer all drives from the old Drobo to the new (Drobo refers to this as a drive pack). If you don't do them all it will erase the disks!
 
Combat squirrel said:
2) Ill time machine back up the drobo, so ill have drobos drive failure protection and also another copy of everything on the time machine, if drobo catastrophically failed, can I restore ANY time machine backup to any drive?, also can i restore any folders etc time machine will hold, like if I just wanted to recover my picture files off the time machine onto my mac?.
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I have the same setup as you but dont have time machine backing up my drobo (plus I use dropbox and mozy too). I'm wondering if you can have time machine backing up your drobo at all? I know my time machine (attached USB HDD) doesn't back up my drobo, only the internal HDD. Whats the config setting to make time machine backup external drives?
 
wush said:
Seeing as you're thinking of all scenarios, where's your data after a fire / flood / burglary?
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This is exactly why I keep all essentials on my iDisk.

I can re-rip movies, and CDs but wedding photos and personal documents.. uh oh!
 
To be honest I think you're going too far, the Drobo is fairly resilient as a storage solution. If you want a second copy that's good practice but having that second copy sat next to the first copy probably negates the usefulness of it to an extent (though it will protect you against accidental deletions and such quickly and easily).

Personally I have a 2TB drive in an external enclosure, rsynced the content of my storage locally, then took it to work and attached it to my unix workstation, rsync's overnight on a schedule. As long as daily changes don't exceed 2GB or so too often it works pretty well (and they don't as I backup my media differently so it's just documents and photos).

Personally I'd have a rethink about whether having the extra backup is worth it when it's so close to your existing storage. It's not worthless, but it isn't brilliant either.
 
Thanks for the input, the time machine is physically at the opposite corner of the house to the drobo so if there is a fire either end, hopefully one would survive, yes im 99% sure you can back up drobo on time machine, just go into time machien options and it will have (usually) any external drives excluded from the backup, just tell it not to exclude externals.

As for super safety iv signed up to mozy now and everything is uploading to there.

Quick question about mozy while im here, can mozy see what you have uploaded? for example can they hold you responsible for the content you upload? EG: have my dvd rips on the drobo, if I upload dvd rips will they say 'thats against regs to have 'copies' of dvd's' even though there rips etc ?

OR is it totally private and they dont 'look' to see what you have ?
 
Combat squirrel said:
Thanks for the input, the time machine is physically at the opposite corner of the house to the drobo so if there is a fire either end, hopefully one would survive, yes im 99% sure you can back up drobo on time machine, just go into time machien options and it will have (usually) any external drives excluded from the backup, just tell it not to exclude externals.

As for super safety iv signed up to mozy now and everything is uploading to there.

Quick question about mozy while im here, can mozy see what you have uploaded? for example can they hold you responsible for the content you upload? EG: have my dvd rips on the drobo, if I upload dvd rips will they say 'thats against regs to have 'copies' of dvd's' even though there rips etc ?

OR is it totally private and they dont 'look' to see what you have ?
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I think if they wanted to they could. I dont believe mozy offer the ability to have your own private encryption key, but I could be wrong.
 
Yeah iv used my own encryption key, I got the option when I set it up, does that still make any difference ? They did state that if I wanted my data back and I lost my key, there is NOTHING they can do about it, I have to have my key to recover any data, however when I go to my account log in I have a list of my uploded files there :confused:


Mozy because it seemed a good deal for the price, only ~£2-3 a month for unlimited data, I dont want any fancy features, just somewhere to hold my files should I loose everything, whats carbonite offer over mozy ?

EDIT: as seen here:

http://bestonlinestorage.com/carbonite-vs-mozy-home-a-review-and-comparison/

There more or less identical except mozy has a few more little bits and bobs that it offers extra and slightly better price ? It seems its so close to call it doesnt really matter?
 
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Combat squirrel said:
Thanks for the input, the time machine is physically at the opposite corner of the house to the drobo so if there is a fire either end, hopefully one would survive, yes im 99% sure you can back up drobo on time machine, just go into time machien options and it will have (usually) any external drives excluded from the backup, just tell it not to exclude externals.

As for super safety iv signed up to mozy now and everything is uploading to there.

Quick question about mozy while im here, can mozy see what you have uploaded? for example can they hold you responsible for the content you upload? EG: have my dvd rips on the drobo, if I upload dvd rips will they say 'thats against regs to have 'copies' of dvd's' even though there rips etc ?

OR is it totally private and they dont 'look' to see what you have ?
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Fair enough, sounds like a solid solution then.

Regarding backup I can't say for Mozy but I've worked for a company which did online backup and we constantly had customers asking for help as they'd lost their encryption keys, and there was nothing we could do. And we definitely couldn't see their uploaded data at all. So you're probably pretty safe. Certainly in the US they're likely protected under safe harbour provisions too...
 
bigredshark said:
Fair enough, sounds like a solid solution then.

Regarding backup I can't say for Mozy but I've worked for a company which did online backup and we constantly had customers asking for help as they'd lost their encryption keys, and there was nothing we could do. And we definitely couldn't see their uploaded data at all. So you're probably pretty safe. Certainly in the US they're likely protected under safe harbour provisions too...
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Cool, ok then, one last question, whats safe harbour provisions ? lol
 
Combat squirrel said:
Cool, ok then, one last question, whats safe harbour provisions ? lol
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It's a part of the DMCA legislation in the US which exempts ISPs, hosting companies etc from any liability for illegal content which their customers make available over their networks (providing they do a few things like observe take down notifications). Only relevant to US based solutions
 
I see, assume mozy is us based then ?, also is there anywhere in the UK where it would be possible to borrow some highspeed internet connection to upload my stuff?, im not majorly bothered it will take a couple of months now, but if there was somewhere for a small fee it could be worth it, im pondering about asking at work but I highly doubt they would allow it, the mozy website itself etc is blocked by the firewalls.
 
I presume given the not particularly impressive speed that they are US based, I've not looked into it in any detail though. I couldn't really say where you might find a fast connection to be honest, universities used to be the best bet but they're increasingly locked down. Depends what connection you can get access to at work really...
 
YOu won't benefit from a massive upload to Mozy anyways - the max you'll get is around 5Gb/day. My guess is it's throttled their end.

it does work though - I've about 700Gb on there now, and it's been mostly reliable. The only problems I've had are rage with the client updates they did for Snow Leopard causing me problems.

Also, watch out if you try and Mozy your Safari bookmarks: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/12/15_Mozy_on_OSX_Causing_Beachball.html

Personally I think off-site backup for *important* stuff is a big, big plus. Word docs, DVDs etc. you can re-create/re-purchase from insurance... but photos & videos of your friends/family/loved ones.... Irreplaceable.

http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/7/15_Online_Backups_-_Mozy.html
 
bigredshark said:
I presume given the not particularly impressive speed that they are US based, I've not looked into it in any detail though. I couldn't really say where you might find a fast connection to be honest, universities used to be the best bet but they're increasingly locked down. Depends what connection you can get access to at work really...
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I am line limited, im currently going at ~400k/bits sec, I believe the max upload on a standard 8mb line is 448 k/bits sec ? (i think there the correct units ?)

MacRS4 said:
YOu won't benefit from a massive upload to Mozy anyways - the max you'll get is around 5Gb/day. My guess is it's throttled their end.

it does work though - I've about 700Gb on there now, and it's been mostly reliable. The only problems I've had are rage with the client updates they did for Snow Leopard causing me problems.

Also, watch out if you try and Mozy your Safari bookmarks: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/12/15_Mozy_on_OSX_Causing_Beachball.html

Personally I think off-site backup for *important* stuff is a big, big plus. Word docs, DVDs etc. you can re-create/re-purchase from insurance... but photos & videos of your friends/family/loved ones.... Irreplaceable.

http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/7/15_Online_Backups_-_Mozy.html
Click to expand...

Good links there RS4 and thanks for the heads up, I dont back up safari bookmarks however as I used firefox, but is good to know! :) Thanks


Anyone ever done a file restore from mozy ? does it litterally just dump the files on your harddisk to any folder you choose ? Can you also choose any files you like ? Or does it just drop the entire thing on your hard disk ? :S
 
Combat squirrel said:
I am line limited, im currently going at ~400k/bits sec, I believe the max upload on a standard 8mb line is 448 k/bits sec ? (i think there the correct units ?)
Click to expand...

Max premium offers 832kbps but that'll cost a bit more and not all ISPs offer it. As mentioned, they seem to throttle their end, which is a shame as I plugged my laptop into a gig port in a datacenter with the intention of backing it up to mozy. Did virtually nothing given the line speed available. Cancelled it soon after, I know it's not the point of it but if the initial backup is going to take 3 weeks there's sod all point.
 
I've restored from it quite a few times - it works well. Essentially you request the restore from the web, it goes off and packages into a DMG file and you get an email saying it's ready to download. Click the link, and down it comes.

It downloads a lot faster than uploading - but you'd expect that wouldn't you.
 
is going to take 3 weeks there's sod all point

I don't think that's true really... Obviously it depends on how much you've got to backup and on what machine. My laptop has about 30Gb up on Mozy - that took a while and it was a little intrusive. Now it just backs up the changes and I don't notice it.

My MacMini - which is my home server running various VMWare guests, media, file share etc - has around 700Gb up on Mozy. I just set that up and left it. In total that must have taken some 4-5 months to fully upload running 24 x 7 :o

It really does depend on what you want to backup. I think their Pro version allows higher upload speeds.

With people having large media libraries now you're pushing sizing that would have stressed corporates only a few years ago....
 
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