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Computers and Software => Computers and Software - General => Topic started by: screenxpress on October 28, 2011, 10:52:16 PM
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Over 85 looks at the post I made for Synchroncity the other day. Nobody made a comment so I guess nobody is keeping redundant copy backups. Or maybe y'all are sending stuff out to a "cloud".
I won't do that - (#1) - I'm too cheap and (#2) - don't like losing control of my data
Synchroncity is free (open source), is fast, and does a really nice job. I keep my "stuff" on one drive in the "box" (not the "C" drive) and then duplicated on an externally plugged-in USB drive.
I also have a docking station called "EZ-Dock"
http://www.kingwin.com/products/cate/docking_stations/ezdock_series.asp (http://www.kingwin.com/products/cate/docking_stations/ezdock_series.asp)
that allows me to drop in (hot-swap) raw, uncased drives. I'll be making a 3rd backup (for offsite) this weekend after I pick up another SATA drive (they're so cheap these days).
It's probably my OCD, but I've had drive failures with all the major brands and I'm fearful of losing my crap.
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Well, Wayne, I'll bite. I'm on a Macbook, using Carbonite, and while drive failures haven't been a problem for me, your involvement in IT is far more extensive than anything I'll ever approach, and it's not a matter of being OCD to recognize the value of redundancy in backup. To be honest, except for a couple of unsuccessful attempts at setting up a backup system over the years, the most expensive and futile being over $700 worth of JAZ drive crap in a moment of panic, quite frankly I never backed anything up. Dumb luck, I guess, but after 20 years of relying on a computer to make a living, I figured I'd cheated fate long enough and went with Carbonite, after considering setting up a RAID. I'm now considering setting up a simple backup drive on my desktop since Carbonite doesn't backup the system files, and for the convenience. I've got an unused Firewire external box with an 80GB drive in it, which I'll replace with something a little meatier, and use the backup utility Apple includes in the system software, that will back everything up. Just gotta crack my wallet for $50 or so.
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I'm tying it as I still haven't found a satisfactory off-site solution.
I'm in the midst of prepping an external drive to mirror, does Syncronicity run a mirror 24/7 to your external drive? In other words is it automatic or do you have to initiate the backup each time you want to use it?
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I almost chimed in but I didn't want to rain on the topic.
I personally have a raid 5 server setup and I've gonna build another server off site and I'll be just using rsync to keep them mirrored. Probably the same thing that synchronicity is using for it's backend.
Like you I'm cheap, but I also don't like running a GUI on my servers and I'd rather have COMPLETE control over my data and that includes writing my own script to make sure things go where they should. I can also script in email/text messages to be sent out in case of failure. I currently do this for a few clients now and it's great!
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I'm tying it as I still haven't found a satisfactory off-site solution.
I'm in the midst of prepping an external drive to mirror, does Syncronicity run a mirror 24/7 to your external drive? In other words is it automatic or do you have to initiate the backup each time you want to use it?
Well this is pretty good stuff, but obviously since it's open source, there are more powerful things (on the marketplace). You have to initiate it for the backups, but here's what I did. My biggest concern is my screenxpress folder for all the artwork, etc. It's one of the bigger folders so I made it a PROFILE of it's own. Then I gathered up all my other personal folders and stuff under 4 other PROFILES. Those are ones that I don't change that much.
When I've made significant additions or changes to anything in one of them, I initiate the profile to PREVIEW. Takes only seconds for it to gather and display the changes. Then I can opt to SYNCHRONIZE or wait till later.
It's not a RAID type setup so it's not automatic. In fact, for my setup, I'm not too real sure I would want something running all the time changing this and changing that.
The even nicer thing about this is with the EZ-Dock device, I can just drop a SATA drive into the block, run a Sync, pull the drive out and set it on a shelf. No electrical connectivity to the PC anymore in case a power spike gets past the protector or...even worse the internal power supply sends a spike to the hard drive as it's final 'gotcha'.
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I almost chimed in but I didn't want to rain on the topic.
I personally have a raid 5 server setup and I've gonna build another server off site and I'll be just using rsync to keep them mirrored. Probably the same thing that synchronicity is using for it's backend.
Like you I'm cheap, but I also don't like running a GUI on my servers and I'd rather have COMPLETE control over my data and that includes writing my own script to make sure things go where they should. I can also script in email/text messages to be sent out in case of failure. I currently do this for a few clients now and it's great!
No worries on the 'rain', but this is probably not for you. Sounds to me like you're on the upper level as far as total equipment needs and a RAID system probably works better for your needs as it requires relatively little intervention once it's up and running.
However, for the single PC users, without a network, a RAID system is usually either overkill, not cost effective, or more involved (effort) than they want to mess with.
My son is in the IT support department at El Paso Energy and came across this so we put it on my PC and I was pretty impressed. Before that, being cheap, I was frequently making new (dated) folder copies gobbling up more and more of the secondary drive since I was reluctant to delete the old stuff (OCD)
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My NAS is a mirror RAID 0 I believe, so I've always got a live backup disc, so this software may just be what I need (for off site discs), wishing it was automatic, but I suppose that's not really necessary.
I was looking at a QNAP NAS (TS-239 Pro II turbo @ $500+) that has dual drives and RAID and a auto backup scheduler. Then hooking up a sata dock via esata and just swapping drives now and then, but in the end this set up is not much different only I have to remember to do it.
It's definately going to be faster with this software than the way I was doing it (deleting whole back up drives and recopying the new data). I just got a sata dock (with esata, yea ;D) a couple weeks ago because my USB drives are running out of space, later on I'll just be using the internal sata drives (cheap as you said) for back up.
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Rsync is a beast and can do everything you need. It does take a little understanding/research. It can be scripted to run on a schedule that would keep things "fresh" and it can and probably should be setup to only do an "update" type of backup for only files that have changed. No need to recopy the 30 gigs of crap from last 3 years that is already backed up. Drop box does do a great job of this... but that cost money and you give up some control. For one of my clients we do FULL backups every weekend and incremental each day then on the 1st of the month we do a FULL backup and store it in a "permanent" folder on my server that doesn't get over written. So we have a snap shot of his data on the 1st of each month forever.
I do IT work for my main gig and network/server consulting is one of those facets.
Though that being said... a raid isn't really that hard or expensive to setup. I have four 2tb hard drives in my home server giving me 6 gigs of redundant storage. Again though, that being said... a raid is NO substitute for a BACKUP! Things CAN and WILL go wrong on a raid and you can lose it all. They do have Raid 6 and Raid 10 that can add additional layers of redundancy... at and additional cost of course.
Raid 5 can be done in just software only and be "good enough". In my research I realized that you probably WANT to do raid 5 in software because you can NOT rebuild that raid if the controller goes out and you don't have an identical controller to replace it with. Those controllers are expensive so you would really need to purchase two (one to use and one as a back up)... that of course becomes cost prohibitive. Because if it DOES go down... you really need to move the entire thing over to a "new" raid with an additional back up controller (assuming you can't get another backup controller as these products are of course phased out in time for new ones in the market.)
Raid 1 (a mirror setup) can be done either way for relatively cheap. For my clients I typically setup a raid1 with a hardware card controller. This allows you to mirror the OS as well as the data and a failed hard drive will not even cause the system to blink. It just sends me an email/text letting me know a drive went down and my client never even knows till I show up with the replacement. Even then they are only down for about 30 mins while I swap the drive out and they can start working again even while it rebuilds.
The raid1 can also be done via software, like my Wife's new machine (which I sold to an embroidery guy in town before she even finished building it). It has/had a solid state 60gig drive for the OS (C drive) and two 750 gig 7200RPM drives in a mirror (raid1) array for all the data. This way all the critical data has a layer of redundancy and the OS is setup on a "fast" solid state drive (haven't noticed it to be that fast yet... but I haven't messed with it much as I sold the system). This is the ideal setup for a single workstation setup and can be done for just the cost of a couple of drives (one OS drive and two data drives)... doesn't take MUCH computer knowledge to setup.
Again... raids are no substitute for a proper backup. If your building catches fire, all is lost (or at least very expensive through a data recovery center). BTW, if anyone is in need of such a service we have one local and I can get free estimates... be forewarned though... you are looking at least $800 bucks for recovery and possibly as much as $2k... so if you NEED that service let me know and I'll be happy to accept your drive and bring it over to them and have them look at it. But if not prepared to pay those fees to recover don't waste my time or the recovery guy's time please. :)
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I'm tying it as I still haven't found a satisfactory off-site solution.
I'm in the midst of prepping an external drive to mirror, does Syncronicity run a mirror 24/7 to your external drive? In other words is it automatic or do you have to initiate the backup each time you want to use it?
There is a scheduling feature and you can set up each Profiles to automatically backup Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. I didn't know how you meant 24/7.
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My NAS is a mirror RAID 0 I believe, so I've always got a live backup disc, so this software may just be what I need (for off site discs), wishing it was automatic, but I suppose that's not really necessary.
I was looking at a QNAP NAS (TS-239 Pro II turbo @ $500+) that has dual drives and RAID and a auto backup scheduler. Then hooking up a sata dock via esata and just swapping drives now and then, but in the end this set up is not much different only I have to remember to do it.
It's definately going to be faster with this software than the way I was doing it (deleting whole back up drives and recopying the new data). I just got a sata dock (with esata, yea ;D) a couple weeks ago because my USB drives are running out of space, later on I'll just be using the internal sata drives (cheap as you said) for back up.
Raid 0 is "spanned" raid. That means the data is spread (somewhat randomly) across both drives. This is designed for PERFORMANCE and NOT safety. If ONE of those drives decides to choke and go bad then you lose EVERYTHING on both drives.
Nothing REALLY wrong with a setup like that but to be honest, if it's on a NAS then the bottle neck isn't going to be the hard drives. It will be the network. So your hard drives will likely be sitting around waiting for the network to be ready for the data. If you CAN (lots have config switches/options) you might look at backing up all that data and switching it to the raid 1 config and then moving all that data back on the drives. You MUST backup the data because making that change WILL DESTROY all the data on the NAS.
A raid 0 setup can be great for performance systems (usually better if they are connected to the mobo SATA controller)... if you need FAST access to your data a raid 0 is the answer... BUT this should only be used for WORKING data and not data you want to store as it is VERY volatile and is multiplying your points of failure with each drive you add to the raid. Again, if ONE drive goes ALL the data goes. This is best setup for Audio/Video workstations where the datastreams being served is pretty heavy (especially with all this new HD footage so cheaply available. I really couldn't see much benefit to raid 5 for PS or AI work. Even with large RAW files and Lightroom, I'd think your money is better spent on massive amounts of ram and redundancy for your data. Once a 20mb file is loaded then it's loaded. You aren't pushing that data back and forth on the drives just manipulating it in RAM at that point.
Sorry for nerding out and getting all preachy about different configurations here... figured it was as good as a place as any. :)
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I think all the conversations about backups are good. Gets people thinking of their needs, their options and what might work best for them.
Actually what I'm picking up on is that something like synchroncity might (almost) be more preferable than a Raid for the single PC user where they can just drop a drive in a dock or a usb hookup, run the sync and either put the drive on a shelf or take to Uncle Bob's for safekeeping.
I guess it all comes down to what makes you feel safer if you're afraid of a crash.
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Yeah, Raid is essentially a redundant convenience... an EXTRA layer. Things can and WILL still go wrong even with a well thought out raid solution. You really want a backup. That said... a "single" backup isn't much better, especially if you never disconnect it and bring it off site.
With a natural disaster or robbery you still lose it all if it's sitting on the shelf. You really have to get it OUT of the building. But if you have it at "uncle bobs" and your crap goes down... now you got to go get your backup. With a raid, you would not even have to stop working. You just replace the drive at your EARLIEST convenience and you are back at square one. All the while that backup is tucked away off site in case it's not something simple like a computer malfunction.
I built that system I referenced earlier for under a grand... I SOLD it for 1300 cash to the embroidery guy... it had an AMD 6 core 3.3ghz CPU, 8 gigs of DDR3 ram (the good stuff), 60 gig solid state SATA drive, two WD BLACK 750gig drives in the raid 1, dvdrw, USB 3, a badass case with power supply on the bottom and LARGE fans all around (my home server with the 5 hard drives (one OS and the 4 in the raid 5) is in the same case, I love it), Win7 64bit. Blah blah blah.
So for the single user/workstation setup that is a pretty sweet deal. That is a beast of a system, it has an after market cooler in it so it could be over clocked and probably see 4ghz if one wanted and has TWO free slots for more RAM... another few bucks and you got 16 gigs of ram in a heart beat!
Taking orders now. ;)
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No worries! I like nerding out on computer stuff, especially on a Sat when I don't have customers and employees breathing down my neck!
I'm not really up on the RAID jargon, but I do know that mine is mirrored. Just looked, it's set up RAID 1. It's a cheap Dlink with dual 500GB drives, but it's worked fine for several years, even has an FTP which actually works.
The main hitch like you said is the GB interface. I've looked and looked for a NAS that has GB + a local connection via esata but no luck except the QNAP one I mentioned which really isn't the same thing.
I would be *nice* if you could copy at esata speeds from a locally connected computer while have GB for the network at the same time.
What about a 4 drive NAS, is there such an animal that will allow 2 drives in RAID 0 as you said for SPEED, while the other 2 drives mirror?
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Oh and get this, I've tried Synchronicity now twice, once with the sata dock connected via esata, and also with a USB drive.
Data transfer rates:
USB 2-4 MB/s
Esata 6-7 MB/s
I was expecting better speed, my network is Cat 5e/Cat6 cable and GB switches.
Any ideas?
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Well, what you are referring to is a Raid 0+1 or a Raid 1+0 (or Raid 10).
Difference is that in Raid 0+1 the pairs are striped (raid 0) THEN those pairs are mirrored (the raid 1 part). In the Raid 10 you first mirror the pairs THEN stripe the mirrors (Raid 1 THEN Raid 0).
I haven't looked into it in a while but I'm betting the Raid 0+1 is a TINY bit faster than the Raid 10 BUT the Raid 10 is a good deal safer. You have 6 combinations of the way two drives could fail... out of those six a Raid 10 will survive 4 where as the Raid 0+1 will only survive 2.
Granted, chances of a two drive failure is SLIM (IF you are paying attention)... but it is possible.
Not sure of out of the box commercial setups available like your dlink... but they can of course be built. ;) It would essentially be a medium size computer that would be running linux (like all of these NAS's do in a sense). The added benefit to the "custom" solution is you can add more than just a NAS to your system. And you could add network cards to make it redundant networking connections or even "trunking" would be possible given other factors. Where you could share the network connection and have (in theory) 2gb network connection to the server.
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Oh and get this, I've tried Synchronicity now twice, once with the sata dock connected via esata, and also with a USB drive.
Data transfer rates:
USB 2-4 MB/s
Esata 6-7 MB/s
I was expecting better speed, my network is Cat 5e/Cat6 cable and GB switches.
Any ideas?
As I just hinted at in my last post... "gigabit" is more theoretical than reality. :) Doesn't take much to slow down gigabit a good deal. I haven't even bothered with it in my home or office network yet. I got killer switches already and don't feel like spending the money on a marginal improvement on my network speeds.
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Oh and get this, I've tried Synchronicity now twice, once with the sata dock connected via esata, and also with a USB drive.
Data transfer rates:
USB 2-4 MB/s
Esata 6-7 MB/s
I was expecting better speed, my network is Cat 5e/Cat6 cable and GB switches.
Any ideas?
As I just hinted at in my last post... "gigabit" is more theoretical than reality. :) Doesn't take much to slow down gigabit a good deal. I haven't even bothered with it in my home or office network yet. I got killer switches already and don't feel like spending the money on a marginal improvement on my network speeds.
Yea, kind of what I figured. I like the idea of dual GB cards in computer though, I've seen some specs on newer MACs using that, haven't had the time to look into it, but I think the newer NAS's have dual GB ports and it's easy enough to throw a second NIC in some of my machines.
Someday it may just be better to have a dedicated computer as a file server, just not sure I want to bite off the price tag for that, how much do you think a set up like you're mentioning would cost?
I'm thinking with the right setup I could even "trick" carbonite into letting me back up all my important data too.
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Tech talk tech talk. What a layman to do?
I don't understand the concept behind Cloud or any other back up method outside of your own physical drives. The idea of putting everything you own/about you on a "cloud" backup somewhere in skyvill is odd. Now maybe I'm so laymen with this stuff that your all laughing at me and I said something stupid. No matter. :) so, is it true that you are trying to back up to some place in skyvill a so called cloud or the like...and someone else stores all your information for you...and the benefit is that it's safer, more secure from crashes? What about info theft?
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I'm not using a cloud at the moment, I do not like the idea *totally* either, what I really want is to make the task less of a task, I'd be happiest keeping all of my data in my grubby little hands too, but would like to have it happening on a schedule so I don't have to think about it as much.
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Well, Dan... some are and some aren't and some are a combination. I'm not speaking of any cloud other than the one I create. My clients backup to "my cloud"... it lives at my house. This is their offsite backup. If they don't trust me then they need to stop paying me to manage their networks and computers. :)
Carbonite is pure cloud (I think... I haven't experienced it at all)... yes, someone else holds your data safe for you. It's really cheap to do for them and makes them a TON of money (hence the hanity/limbaugh commercials left and right).
Dropbox is a combination type setup. You have a cloud based storage (like Carbonite)... but you can run drop box on multiple systems and it keeps everything synced between the two. My limited experience with that is my buddy's screen printing shop that I frequent. He runs it and loves it. He has it running on every system in his shop and all of his artwork files are "locally" on every computer. So they all operate "independently" and then they sync everything back up to the cloud which then syncs all the other machines he's tuned into. The benefit for him is that he's looking to get out of his shop more. So he brings his laptop home and works on artwork and then sends and email/text or call to his shop saying "art work is ready for X job" and they can output films and print all from the comfort of his couch.
TECHNICALLY all this sort of thing could be done manually and he could even print films from his couch to his shop... but he's not interested in setting up the whole VPN setup though I would have done it for a marginal cost as he has taken care of me in the screen printing side of things several times.
Hope that helps... let me know if you are still fuzzy and I'll do what I can to clear it right up.
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Someday it may just be better to have a dedicated computer as a file server, just not sure I want to bite off the price tag for that, how much do you think a set up like you're mentioning would cost?
Which setup are you referring to. :) Options are endless.
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Someday it may just be better to have a dedicated computer as a file server, just not sure I want to bite off the price tag for that, how much do you think a set up like you're mentioning would cost?
Which setup are you referring to. :) Options are endless.
The independent medium machine you were talking about, something that does RAID and all that jazz. Scheduled back ups, ftp, RAID, dual GB?, remote access/RDP would be what I need, probably a Windows machine because that's what I know best. Just wondering if that could be as cost effective as a NAS.
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The independent medium machine you were talking about, something that does RAID and all that jazz. Scheduled back ups, ftp, RAID, dual GB?, remote access/RDP would be what I need, probably a Windows machine because that's what I know best. Just wondering if that could be as cost effective as a NAS.
And with ^ THAT word... you shoot yourself in the foot and the answer is no. :)
Windows in and of itself is $100 bucks. Linux is FREE and a lot more robust.
Not only does Windows weigh you down financially it also bogs you down performance wise. No need to have a complete GUI system constantly running that you never really log into. Most of you configurations can be done via web interfaces though config files aren't that difficult. I mainly stick to config files and live in command line.... I love it. But I understand that it intimidates most.
Again... more specifics are needed which Raid 1 or 5 or 1+0? How large of drives do you want (usable, because with raid 5 you lose a drive).
Fail over network cards can be done out of the box no other gear... but TRUNKING needs a (smart) switch that can handle it, so that is another added expense.
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Since the concept of internet based backup was broached, along with the concerns of putting one's personal files "out there", I'm wondering if, like our email and phone traffic, is this stuff scrutinized by our government as well?
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Since the concept of internet based backup was broached, along with the concerns of putting one's personal files "out there", I'm wondering if, like our email and phone traffic, is this stuff scrutinized by our government as well?
Keep the porn and subversive material on a thumb drive . . . problem solved!
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The independent medium machine you were talking about, something that does RAID and all that jazz. Scheduled back ups, ftp, RAID, dual GB?, remote access/RDP would be what I need, probably a Windows machine because that's what I know best. Just wondering if that could be as cost effective as a NAS.
And with ^ THAT word... you shoot yourself in the foot and the answer is no. :)
Windows in and of itself is $100 bucks. Linux is FREE and a lot more robust.
Not only does Windows weigh you down financially it also bogs you down performance wise. No need to have a complete GUI system constantly running that you never really log into. Most of you configurations can be done via web interfaces though config files aren't that difficult. I mainly stick to config files and live in command line.... I love it. But I understand that it intimidates most.
Again... more specifics are needed which Raid 1 or 5 or 1+0? How large of drives do you want (usable, because with raid 5 you lose a drive).
Fail over network cards can be done out of the box no other gear... but TRUNKING needs a (smart) switch that can handle it, so that is another added expense.
Yea I hear you, so let's say Linux, as long as there's a web interface I'm good with that, it's the cmd prompt/dos style of stuff I don't do enough to remember.
Raid 1 I think is enough, 1.5 TB drives, 2. So you're saying a 2 NIC card set up means smart switches are a must or can you get more throughput with a standard switch too? If a smart switch is a must, I'd concede to a single NIC. The only thing else I'd prefer is a small desktop/server style case.
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I know I'm a little late to the party, but I use Carbonite for my backup. I've had trouble with external hard drives and what not and I just find it so much easier to pay Carbonite the $5/month and be done with it. I love it so far. I do have a slight reservation about the cloud, but I believe it's pretty secure.
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I have a 1TB drive in the desktop, a 2TB external drive specifically for media and data (pics, music, etc) and a 3TB external that backs up the first two.
It works.
Looking into a Drobo for the new recording studio.
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I use Super Duper (MAC) to back up to 4 external drives every week, two of which are rotated between an offsite location.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html)
I also back up whatever I'm currently working on daily to whatever is around me... ipod, flash drive, etc.
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I know I'm a little late to the party, but I use Carbonite for my backup. I've had trouble with external hard drives and what not and I just find it so much easier to pay Carbonite the $5/month and be done with it. I love it so far. I do have a slight reservation about the cloud, but I believe it's pretty secure.
Sh!t, I didn't know carbonite would allow external drives, I thought not, but $5/month is well within my budget ;D
I don't think my data is particulary "dangerous enough" to be stolen or otherwise so unscrupulous to arise a government intervention, so yes I'd go with the "cloud", leave it to Apple to think up these colorful and carefully marketed terms.
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Apple didn't come up with the term "Cloud".. apple had little to do with the proverbial "cloud".
Squeegee, let me look into that web interface situation for all the other aspects that I'm not certain about. As I said, I typically use command line for everything with very few exceptions and I know of many other solutions that use web BUT I'm not certain on all of them. I've played with some commercial NAS's before and their interface is crude but functional and I'm not sure what is out there to mimic that but I'm sure there is something.
Evo... remember that external HD is actually MORE likely to fail than your internal it suffers from cheaper power and less cooling. These two elements are what kills drives the most. If you are backing up and or NEED your data external for workflow/dataflow purposes then do what you have to do. But if you are taking it external because you "feel" safer then realize you are (like many others) barking up the wrong tree.
Many people take that approach because they worry that an OS corruption = same as failed HD. But that is far from the truth. The data is usually still perfectly in tact and fairly easily retrievable. Most of the time you just need a Linux Live disc. Any other problem that you encounter can happen to the external as easily as any other.
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Evo... remember that external HD is actually MORE likely to fail than your internal it suffers from cheaper power and less cooling. These two elements are what kills drives the most. If you are backing up and or NEED your data external for workflow/dataflow purposes then do what you have to do. But if you are taking it external because you "feel" safer then realize you are (like many others) barking up the wrong tree.
Many people take that approach because they worry that an OS corruption = same as failed HD. But that is far from the truth. The data is usually still perfectly in tact and fairly easily retrievable. Most of the time you just need a Linux Live disc. Any other problem that you encounter can happen to the external as easily as any other.
Yep. I was an Ubuntu convert for several years, just went back to Windows 7 when I bought a new machine.
I keep the setup I have for backup and organization. All the pics, music, etc on one disk, all the backups on another. I'm planning on getting a 4 or 6 bay Drobo for general storage and backups, then using the external USB drive for incremental backups to store off-site. That way the externals don't get hammered so much.
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I recently picked up a few of these cases to stock.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=11-156-253-TS&ISList=11-156-253-Z01%2c11-156-253-Z02%2c11-156-253-Z03%2c11-156-253-Z04%2c11-156-253-Z05%2c11-156-253-Z06%2c11-156-253-Z07%2c11-156-253-Z08%2c11-156-253-Z09&S7ImageFlag=1&Item=N82E16811156253&Depa=0&WaterMark=1&Description=RAIDMAX%20Simplex%20ATX-618B%20Black%20Steel%20%2f%20Plastic%20MicroATX%20Mid%20Tower%20Computer%20Case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=11-156-253-TS&ISList=11-156-253-Z01%2c11-156-253-Z02%2c11-156-253-Z03%2c11-156-253-Z04%2c11-156-253-Z05%2c11-156-253-Z06%2c11-156-253-Z07%2c11-156-253-Z08%2c11-156-253-Z09&S7ImageFlag=1&Item=N82E16811156253&Depa=0&WaterMark=1&Description=RAIDMAX%20Simplex%20ATX-618B%20Black%20Steel%20%2f%20Plastic%20MicroATX%20Mid%20Tower%20Computer%20Case)
They have a little slide up panel that allows you to "hot swap" two hard drives. Hot swapping is a function of software/hardware and your case doesn't make it happen, it just makes it easier. But still easy enough to shut down and yank the drives for those that don't want to mess with unmounting drives (logically).
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Is that a mid tower?
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Technically yes.
19" x 8" x 17.5"
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Screenexpress, thanks again for the tip on synchronicity, I was reading the manual yesterday and it does have a backup scheduler for automated back ups, if I can map to an offsite FTP my problems would be over. Haven't tried the scheduler yet but will once my second backup finishes.
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squeegee,
I don't think Carbonite allows the external hard drive...