Here's what I've got for you, fellas:
I started a thread in the general forum (http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=27&threadid=2324033), and got some very good suggestions. It's a quick read and has all of the backstory involved with my conundrum.
The Cliff's Notes are: I work for a very small company, we could be on the verge of something big, and all of a sudden our data is very valuable. We don't have tons of money (read: just scraping by), and since I'm the engineer here with the most IT experience, I've been volunteered to orchestrate a backup system that would survive nuclear holocaust.
My current best notion for a roughly $1200 system would be a RAID 5 array with three 1-TB drives plus a boot drive, and one or two eSATA drives to take data off-site. I figured on using SyncToy or another good program to automate daily (nightly) backups. We have about 150GB worth of data (DV video, PCB layouts, Solidworks models, etc.) that I'd like to keep safe, and that number will go up as we shoot more video (it's about 13GB per DV tape).
I just got done reading taltamir's thread, and noticed that while RAID can protect you from disc failure, controller failure is also an issue which I hadn't even come close to thinking of. It appears that the smarter option would be to get a RAID controller card so that in the event of failure, I can replace that without having to gut the entire system to replace the motherboard, and beyond that, I'll need to dig up a system that stores the RAID config on the hard drives, and not on the card itself.
Another option that I was considering is using Windows Home Server. I've read that it's easy to deal with, and does a pretty good job. It would negate RAID failure issues, but not the hard drive failures.
I was considering trying to get a gigabit LAN going to help move large amounts of data, but I doubt that it would really help my situation. (It's ok for backups to move slowly, I plan on automating everything to back up at night)
Also, I've recently been the victim of an Antec Smartpower 2.0 failure that toasted one of my hard drives (I was able to transplant a circuit board from ebay and rescue my data, thankfully), and it would seem totally plausible that the same type of failure could take down multiple drives at once, which would wipe out a smaller RAID array. Would an uninterruptible power supply be able to help out the PSU by buffering the over/undervoltages?
I figure a system that is capable of backing up 3 or 4 days worth of daily backups and one monthly backup would give good insurance against a virus threat, lightning, and PC failures. Keeping it up off of the floor should protect against flooding, and the off-site eSATA drives would save us from fire damage and theft. I'm really not sure how to address bit rot and act-of-God cosmic rays in a system this cheap, maybe you guys have some tricks up your sleeve.
What do you guys think? Thanks for humoring me. Hopefully this thread will help someone in the future who is trying to devise a backup system for his/her small business.
Cheers! :beer:
I started a thread in the general forum (http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=27&threadid=2324033), and got some very good suggestions. It's a quick read and has all of the backstory involved with my conundrum.
The Cliff's Notes are: I work for a very small company, we could be on the verge of something big, and all of a sudden our data is very valuable. We don't have tons of money (read: just scraping by), and since I'm the engineer here with the most IT experience, I've been volunteered to orchestrate a backup system that would survive nuclear holocaust.
My current best notion for a roughly $1200 system would be a RAID 5 array with three 1-TB drives plus a boot drive, and one or two eSATA drives to take data off-site. I figured on using SyncToy or another good program to automate daily (nightly) backups. We have about 150GB worth of data (DV video, PCB layouts, Solidworks models, etc.) that I'd like to keep safe, and that number will go up as we shoot more video (it's about 13GB per DV tape).
I just got done reading taltamir's thread, and noticed that while RAID can protect you from disc failure, controller failure is also an issue which I hadn't even come close to thinking of. It appears that the smarter option would be to get a RAID controller card so that in the event of failure, I can replace that without having to gut the entire system to replace the motherboard, and beyond that, I'll need to dig up a system that stores the RAID config on the hard drives, and not on the card itself.
Another option that I was considering is using Windows Home Server. I've read that it's easy to deal with, and does a pretty good job. It would negate RAID failure issues, but not the hard drive failures.
I was considering trying to get a gigabit LAN going to help move large amounts of data, but I doubt that it would really help my situation. (It's ok for backups to move slowly, I plan on automating everything to back up at night)
Also, I've recently been the victim of an Antec Smartpower 2.0 failure that toasted one of my hard drives (I was able to transplant a circuit board from ebay and rescue my data, thankfully), and it would seem totally plausible that the same type of failure could take down multiple drives at once, which would wipe out a smaller RAID array. Would an uninterruptible power supply be able to help out the PSU by buffering the over/undervoltages?
I figure a system that is capable of backing up 3 or 4 days worth of daily backups and one monthly backup would give good insurance against a virus threat, lightning, and PC failures. Keeping it up off of the floor should protect against flooding, and the off-site eSATA drives would save us from fire damage and theft. I'm really not sure how to address bit rot and act-of-God cosmic rays in a system this cheap, maybe you guys have some tricks up your sleeve.
What do you guys think? Thanks for humoring me. Hopefully this thread will help someone in the future who is trying to devise a backup system for his/her small business.
Cheers! :beer: