Affordable Backup Storage Solution

[philosofool]

In an ideal world, my family would use a 2-3 TB NAS for backups. In the real world, our budget is paying the absolute minimum for what we need.

I'm looking for a simple external drive solution for backing up about 100GB of audio and video files.

It looks like the best solution will be to move an older 200GB HDD into an external enclosure and put our files on that. The external enclosure, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182156 , will cost $20 with shipping. This clunky solution will involve move the drive around from computer to computer and also getting a drive out of my current computer (which has 2 HDD and a SSD).

Does anyone know of a cheaper solution, or a better one that's under $40?

 

[Elixer]

USB 2 ? That is gonna be slow... it will work though.
Do you have enough room in your case for something like a mobile rack ?
Those can be cheaper, and you can hot swap with those (assuming SATA).

 

[ViviTheMage]

If it has to be easily removable, go with USB + single drive.

If you have money, go for larger drive.

If you want more security ... go with something like backblaze, I think they charge 4-5$ per month for unlimited space?

 

[talion83]

I understand that cost is an issue, but I would recommend looking for something that has 2 bays and can be setup with a mirrored RAID. Newegg has a Netgear on sale:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822122098

I know a lot of people who had backed up to external drives just to eventually have it fail and need something off of it. With a dual drive solution you at least have a lesser chance of that happening - plus as a NAS you can setup individual backups on each persons PC without having to worry about manually bringing it around to them.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Bad idea. Especially using an older drive that's already more likely to die.

Try the thing this guy bought:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2251595

and two drives in mirrored RAID. (Nothing fancy - just whatever you can get new for <$50 each.)

You'll have an at-least-a-little-bit-redundant networked backup solution for under $200, and it has a few other handy features like print server and bittorrent client.

At least think about it. It's good juju.