Home Storage and Backups

ncowles · 24th July 2008

Hi,

I'm starting to collect huge amounts of pictures of our kids/family/friends and the manual copying of them to a USB disk for backup is starting to become monotonous. Soon we'll be getting a High Definition HDD camcorder which will seriously increase my required capacity.

Has anyone got any tips/reviews on what storage device/system to use at home as a central repository (that the wife and kids can access easily) and then some automated system to copy new files up to a server in our hosting environment overnight so it's backed up offsite?

JamieBeeston · 24th July 2008

If You're on Macs then just use Time Machine with a Time Capsule / Attatched USB Hdd / Second HDD

If you're not, just buy a mini RAID device, few TB of network accessible (line speed) RAID Storage.

JamesSykes · 24th July 2008

A server (or device/nas) with windows shares they can browse? Cant see it being much easier than that.

dch · 24th July 2008

Hi Neil,

This maybe slightly overkill if you only want storage device, but I am using an HP Media Smart Server, it is very good - it stores all our music, photo's, video, pc backups etc and also does off site backup of itself to Amazon S3 using Jungle Backup plugin. You could probably write your own plugin to backup to your own server.

I do like it, it's easy to setup and use, and the price is not that bad really when you start to look at getting a similar type setup to build yourself.

Cheers,
Sean

markcastle · 24th July 2008

Over a certain size it starts to get unrealistic to back it up online imho, especially when you start doing hdd cam movies... my solution is a 42U rack the the garage with NAS storage, but I guess thats probably overkill too :-(

JamieBeeston · 24th July 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by markcastle

Over a certain size it starts to get unrealistic to back it up online imho, especially when you start doing hdd cam movies... my solution is a 42U rack the the garage with NAS storage, but I guess thats probably overkill too :-(

hahah you geek .. does that means you're running copper out to the garage too?

markcastle · 24th July 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieBeeston

hahah you geek .. does that means you're running copper out to the garage too?

Cat6 to every room...

The missus was actually quite receptive to a cab in the garage when she realised it would mean less kit strewn about the house like before. I don't think she realised it was a 42U one tho :P

burble · 24th July 2008

I've got a drive on my local server available via samba; I put my work and photos on there, and have a daily cron job do an rsync to an off-site server. I also do an rsync once an hour to a second hard drive in the local server.

I've been doing this for years, so the local backup drive makes sense, otherwise if one failed I'd have to spend days restoring X00GB over my ADSL connection - as mark says, rather impractical.

I figure if they both fail simultaneously then either I've been extremely unlucky, or the machine's been burnt/flooded/stolen and I'll have bigger worries than recovering my holiday photos.

PT-Rob · 24th July 2008

We have a cool little Belkin NAS - suits us fine

JSamuel · 24th July 2008

Shitty PC case, 2x 5.25" bays converted to 3.5" with fans and 2 internal 3.5" bays.. RAID card and Gbit NIC... FreeNAS

Jon-NC · 24th July 2008

I use an external hard drive and mozy for all docs and photos etc.

ncowles · 25th July 2008

I like the idea of a cabinet with several servers/switches, but as our garage was converted to a kids play room I'll have to fit one in the loft - get lots of flashing blue lights going in the dark

.

I guess I then do a daily rsync to one of my servers in docklands.

Anyone seen any 1/4 or 1/2 half cabinets that come flat packed as the loft access hole won't fit a ready built cabinet?

BurtyB · 25th July 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by ncowles

Anyone seen any 1/4 or 1/2 half cabinets that come flat packed as the loft access hole won't fit a ready built cabinet?

I've used a couple of the cheap ones from Maplin before - they come flat but it depends on what your really looking for I guess as it doesn't have front/back etc.

ChrisB.

JamesSykes · 25th July 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by ncowles

Anyone seen any 1/4 or 1/2 half cabinets that come flat packed as the loft access hole won't fit a ready built cabinet?

Plenty, you can get loads of flat pack racks. I'm sure any company that sells racks would have em.

burble · 25th July 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by ncowles

I like the idea of a cabinet with several servers/switches, but as our garage was converted to a kids play room I'll have to fit one in the loft - get lots of flashing blue lights going in the dark

When I looked into putting servers in the loft I was worried about the extreme temperatures in the winter and summer; might be worth bearing that in mind.