Tekforums

Hi guys.

Since Im in need of a few new drives and gingerly awaiting click of death on a couple of drives, Im looking for something robust, but cost effective in terms of space vs redundancy to dump my data on. Ive spent a good deal of time this weekend reading up on various solutions and pondering the best route to take for storing a lot of data with some redundancy for peace of mind should the worst happen.

To put this in perspective I currently have 2x 750Gb Samsung Spinpoint drives, 1 is the boot partition (this drive is developing bad sectors and suchlike and desperately wants an RMA). I also have an external Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750Gb, this was connected via eSATA that is having problems and I can only get to read sporadically at present. Like the first Samsung drive, its due an RMA.

So realistically I have 1.5Gb of data I need to rescue quite soon.

Options and considerations Ive come up with so far are:

1) External NAS device with RAID (e.g. QNAP TS-410)
Pros: External and therefore easy to maintain or expand seperate from the main rig. Security. Minimal downtime. Often use proven/reliable base hardware. Multiple RAID levels (e.g. 10/1+0, 5/6 for peace of mind)
Cons: Expensive. Capacity wall can be quickly reached, meaning another additional device/solution is needed.

2) Homebrew NAS server
Pros: Cheap (relative to an external NAS device). Potentially more expandable as requirements grow assuming a good RAID controller.
Cons: Needs much more time in setup and configuration. More time needed maintaining the OS on the boot drive. Likely much bigger form factor and power drain.

3) Combination of onboard RAID in my current rig and external HDDs for backup
Pros: Cheapest option to implement. Everything housed in one machine so less space/power needed.
Cons: Reliability could be a factor. Drain on the system. The array will need to be rebuilt if I upgrade mainboards in the future I assume (unless at that stage I turn the old hardware into homebrew NAS)?

Whatever option I take, im probably going to purchase a 2Tb drive this month to rescue my data while I work out the best long term solution.

Also, in terms of the hardware available at the moment, is it worth waiting for SATA3 compatible RAID cards/NAS devices for a bit more future proofing?

All thoughts, opinions and ideas welcome!

already said this to nige on msn, but Ill chip it in here too

my vote goes for a raid card and internal drives

couple of cheap drives in raid 0 for os/programs/etc..
couple of tb drives in raid 1 for storage

or just 4 tb drives in raid 0+1 to do the lot...

as a side not tho... have you tried taking the external drive out of its case and making it internal ?

No I havnt tried that, it should still be under warranty. I only need to get it working once to copy the data off onto the 2Gb, then I can send it off to Seagate to replace. Maybe theyll be kind and send me something better!

If youre just after backing up then a large external USB drive might do the trick cheaper. You shouldnt have backup connected all the time unless its backing up constantly. If so you should have a second backup thats disconnected regularly to reduce wear.

Only issue is speed.

I would have suggested optical media but that amount of data would take ages.

My preference would always be for a NAS raid solution. Slow power consumption, separate from your main rig so added security. Can also access it form all computers not just the one its in, as well as stream any media or photos if you have any need for that.

Down side is its probably the most expensive and non-expandable as youve already said but a 4gb version, 3gb data and 1gb for redundancy you should have a decent amount of headroom.

Im currently running a 300Gb Maxtor Shareddrive i bought from someone on here (sorry, cant remember) with two 1tb drives attached to it via USB, works well but an integrated solution would be better.

Well Ive just ordered myself a Seagate Barracuda ST32000542AS 2TB.

Looking at the options a bit more today, theres a new Synology NAS, the DiskStation DS1010+, its a 5 bay unit with nothing special in it really, but you can buy an expansion module the DX510 that adds another 5 bays to the unit, so when Ive filled 5 I could expand to 10 bays quite easily under the same NAS.

I think Im definitely moving away from the idea of building my own NAS when I can buy something reliable and slick off the shelf, really I think that or Alans ideas are best. Id need to start saving lots of money though If I dont use Alans idea.

Having recently gone through a similar loop for all my data, media and HTPC requirements Ill offer you this:

Is "fail over" really that necessary to you ? Or could you actually cope with maybe a day or two of downtime in a worst case scenario ?

I asked myself the same question and I decided that I could survive with having to rebuild if I really had to. As a result the solution I came up with for my backup needs was:

1) Replaced power hungry Dell PowerEdge server and Pentium D HTPC with an Acer Revo !
2) Hooked up an IcyBox Dual SATA USB enclosure (2 * 1TB HDD) and a Western Digital Elements 500GB USB HDD to the Revo.
3) All movies and TV onto the HDDs in the Icy Box
4) All Music, Pictures and Documents to the WD Elements
5) EVERYTHING thats important to me is backed up to Carbonite; "Cloud backup" service.

Now the "cunning" bit:
My "important" work machine runs Acronis and automagically generates an image of the boot partition which is stored onto the WD HDD connected to the Revo. Other "bits and pieces" from my work machine are also backed up onto the same WD HDD. Remember this is then uploaded to Carbonite.

I then make use of all of the "unused" space on other devices that I own (a laptop and a netbook).
Using SyncBack I keep an up-to-date copy of my entire music and picture collections on my netbook and laptop.
I also have a complete copy of all of my "work stuff" synchornised between the WD HDD and my laptop.

Here are my failure scenarios:
"ergh" case - The HDD in my Revo dies:
   Replace HDD, restore boot partition from Acronis which is located on a local USB HDD.

"annoying" case - My IcyBox dies taking the 2 SATA disks with it:
   All of my movies and TV are lost; until I restore them from Carbonites service.

"omg" case - Someone steals my entire living room:
   Restore everything except Movies and TV from other devices. Movies and TV are downloaded from Carbonite.

"seriously?" case - An EMP wipes out all electronics in my house:
   Buy new hardware and restore everything from Carbonite.


Hopefully Ill never need the carbonite service but the whole offsite storage thing just seems better than purely relying on local RAID and USB disks; plus its not all that expensive.

No doubt theres a scenario that Ive missed but hey, when it happens...Ill cry :p

Wow, that carbonite looks like a brilliant service, thats amazingly good value.

How are you finding it?

EDIT: The mentioned file sizes are around 10Gb, does it work ok with 2Tb+ ?

Its spot on, with a couple of caveats:

1) Its a "Backup" service and not an "Archiving" service. Its designed to keep a 30 day delayed mirror of your actual files backed up. That is to say that if you delete file x from your pc, 30 days later file x will be removed from carbonite.
This also means that their software will not let you backup from a USB device; as you could simpily unplug the USB device but to their software this would look like the file being deleted...

...but how then are you doing exactly that ? (I hear you say ;))
Ive actually mounted the USB disks to NTFS folders rather than drive letters. Each of the USB mount points are located within a folder that is on a "static" HDD.
Their software has no problems with this ;)

So basically for the money it does seem really good. Just as long as you work around the fact that its a live backup.

The restore is pretty good too (had to try it out); pretty nippy downloads and you pick particular files/folders, not just the whole thing.

Quote from: sexytwEDIT: The mentioned file sizes are around 10Gb, does it work ok with 2Tb+ ?

None of my individual files are bigger than about 10GB. It does have 1 annoyance, you have to manually add any file over 2GB to the backup list. So as you can image, that took a while with my movie back catalogue :s

One other thing I have just remembered and I am not sure if this is expected or not, it certainly wasnt what I expected:
During testing the service, I had everything I wanted to backup in my C:\Users\John\ directory.
I added the directory to the Carbonite software.
I then manually added a couple of 4GB files, just to check ;)

Over the course of the next 24 hours everything was uploaded fine.

I then decided to move my entire profile from C:\Users\John to D:\John

Now I was expecting the carbonite software to do 1 of 2 things:
1) Warn me that C:\Users\John was no longer a valid path, suggest I download the backup and then continue monitoring.
2) Notice, realise, let me, update the carbonite software to show the new path and continue monitoring.

It did neither !
Instead it offered me the chance to restore from the web, to which I said no (as all the files were still here). At that point it deleted the remote backup and that was that.
I had to setup a new profile to cover D:\John and then wait for all of the files to upload again, even though they hadnt changed :/

This was its single biggest short coming and as a result I have now taken measures to ensure that everything I back up comes from a standard path of: C:\DATA_TO_BACKUP\
My thinking is that if I ever move files between folders or even entire disks, as long as the structure remains unchanged I will not have to upload everything again.

Hope that sort of makes sense :S

p.s.
Let me know if youre thinking of taking it up...
You can save $$$ by going through QuidCo and also if you stick me down as a referrer Ill get some extra months for free :)

Online backups work great but they eat lots of bandwidth - Ive used them before... tbh you might as well plug a usb drive in and run a daily backup job. Unless you really want an offsite solution

Id do what alan said, although you could go for a SS drive for the OS and apps and then just use onboard RAID to mirror 2 2gb drives.

I agree, even with it sounding so good as an offsite backup, I simply dont have the bandwidth capacity for it, my line is terrible and I can barely sustain 2Mbps. Im not sure I really like the idea forking out a fee either, a few years of paying them is the equivalent of paying for a NAS, plus I figure any truly vital work data for instance I could FTP to my own webspace. I dont like the idea that if for some reason my internet drops or they close the service Im suddenly without access to my backups.

What I really want is something I can manage myself and doesnt involve any 3rd parties, whatever the solution its going to involve some sort of RAID array, whether its a NAS or running off my own computer. Im trying to think fairly long term here, hence the idea of a expandable NAS being very appealing - when I need more space I can just drop a new disk in or upgrade a disk. The new Synology systems with an extra 5-bays available further down the line is especially appealing for this. 10 drives in a RAID 1+0/5/6? Sounds very appealing to me. Of course this is where it comes back to cost and while I do like the idea of having a controller in my rig I dont like the fact that I cant just unplug it all and hide it in the loft if I go away for example. The other big problem I keep forgetting about is that a lot of the bigger/better RAID controllers dont have up to date drivers for Windows 7 yet. The cost of the controllers themselves doesnt make a seperate NAS system seem as expensive either when some of these cards run into the hundreds of pounds.

But as I say, whatever option seems best will be a long term investment, hopefully.

Wow, that Synology DiskStation DS1010+ is £700 (http://www.google.co.uk/products?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB340GB340) with no disks, thats some crazy investment, i guess if you use 2tb disks it should be fine for a long time but wow.

Despite it not being quite as perfect, not expandable etc something like Buffalo 4TB LinkStation Quad Network Hard Drive (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&sku=590046&Q=&is=REG&A=details), at £400ish with 4Tb, even if you buy a second one when youre out of space its going to be cheaper.

EDIT: Also, nimrod, thanks for the info, im not sure its for me right now but if i decide otherwise ill be sure to put your name down.

one thing to remember is.... by the time you run out of space, the available hard drives will be much bigger... and much cheaper per Gb....

so theres no pointing going for a solution thatll last 10 years... when it will be out of date in 2 anyway...

Hmm, good point Alan. Maybe a controller card is the way to go then since 6Gb/s SAS PCIe 2.0 cards are available now, although having just checked it seems thats £400 on its own too! :drama:

What sexytw said is true too, The Synology thing is twice the cost of a QNAP TS-410, which is 4 bay. I could get two of those for the same money! Admittedly its only just come out but thats still a lot of money of an empty set of bays.

The more I read the more its looking like daydreaming and prohibitely expensive to actually set something worthwhile up in this way.

Perhaps the most sensible solution is just to RAID 1 my data drives until Im rich enough for one of these bigger boys. The only thing I really dont like about considering onboard is that when I upgrade it could mean backing up all the data and reconfiguring the array on a new onboard controller - I have no idea if you can transplant RAID 1 arrays, although Ive read things that suggest you can since mirrored drives are intended to be readable individually too as failsafe if the raid dies - but again Im not certain on this. Again, it may not even be possible at all if I opted for a RAID 5/10 at some point too.

I guess I could get a cheapie PCI controller, then I can shift the whole lot in one go to another machine and only need worry about drivers I guess.

HP ML115 or ML110 - about £180-£200.

Add 2x drives and an OS and you got a nice file server with mirrored drives for ~ £300.

Now thats a really nice alternative! :ptu:

I could use the onboard RAID or sling in a controller card later, I bet theres a fair bit of room inside for drives too.

Hows about two of these -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Buffalo-Live-Linkstation-500GB-NAS-Network-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ320498854945QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item4a9f386c21

Upgrade the HDDs in it, sell the old ones and set one to back up to the other.  Not quite raid, but should be safe enough.

Quote from: PeteHP ML115 or ML110 - about £180-£200.

Add 2x drives and an OS and you got a nice file server with mirrored drives for ~ £300.

If you do that, for gods sake get a G5.  I had an ML115 G1 and nothing would work on it.

Quote from: soopahflyHows about two of these -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Buffalo-Live-Linkstation-500GB-NAS-Network-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ320498854945QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item4a9f386c21

Upgrade the HDDs in it, sell the old ones and set one to back up to the other.  Not quite raid, but should be safe enough.

Those are silly cheap, I was just looking at the thread in the bargain forums, two of them would be very useful, hmmm... :yarr:

Quote from: Clockd 0Ne

Quote from: soopahflyHows about two of these -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Buffalo-Live-Linkstation-500GB-NAS-Network-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ320498854945QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item4a9f386c21

Upgrade the HDDs in it, sell the old ones and set one to back up to the other.  Not quite raid, but should be safe enough.

Those are silly cheap, I was just looking at the thread in the bargain forums, two of them would be very useful, hmmm... :yarr:

Two of those and 2 x replacement 2TB SATA drives comes to £304, thats got to be the cheapest 2TB mirrored NAS solution anywhere, plus, youll have 2 500Gb SATA drives.

Im so tempted myself.

Reading more about them though it seems a lot of people have problems with them and find them very slow, so now Im not so sure.

Speaking of which Im formatting my new 2Tb drive right now. Its been going for at least 4 hours (probably 5 now) and its only at 64% :lol:

beware of cheap nas boxes....

i had about 5 of them cheap ones off ebay (years ago) and stuck old hard drives in them.... but they were shockingly bad.... i tossed em all away in the end.... i think half a dozen people here did the same thing too :(

Yeah I had one and it killed my hdd.

This is different.  Especially if you install freelink/openlink on it.  Or even debian!

Seems I was a bit too hasty buying a Seagate 2Tb LP drive, Im getting what seems to be infamous click of death on the drive :( I should have read some reviews! My recommendation is avoid like gonorrhea.

Im going to RMA it and get either a Samsung or Hitachi, probably the Samsung F3EG. Bloody HDDs :( Spent 10 hours formatting the twatting thing too :disappointed:

Samsungs win in my book.

I would have gone straight for the Samsung had the Seagate not been a bit cheaper, plus the fact that one of the Spinpoints I have needs an RMA makes it off putting.

Anyway, to keep OT, other recent considerations in the realm of storage Ive been making are:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2313
One of these for the top of my Antec P183 and a four drive RAID 10 setup.

Or a couple of those in something like this:
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Cooler+Master+Centurion+590+Black+?productId=32597#moreImages

Running something like FreeNAS or unRAID on an Atom based system perhaps.

FYI, Samsungs warranty is great.  Send it to this third party company in the UK, they dont even bother to test before they send a replacement drive out to you.

For backups and flexible storage have you thought of an external drive caddy.
Something that lets you hot-swap different drives.

Ive got a bunch of old 80GB seagate Satas after replacing them with a pair of 500GB barracudas.

It mean I can dump music, pictures etc on the external drive and just hide them away as archive data.

Problem is if your house burns down/floods/plague of locusts etc.

Im using an online backup storage called Mozy.  Its $5 a month and is actually unlimited.

Anything majorly crucial I couldnt live without I may setup to be ftpd to my webspace via a batch file task scheduled to run once a month or something. Id rather do that since I pay for a load of webspace I dont use all that much. I dont see the point paying extra each month for some third party service -  as good as Im sure they all are. I like having the control aspect.

Lots of hardware arriving tomorrow (hopefully):

2 x Buffalo Linkstation Live 500Gb NAS devices

1 x ZyXEL GS108B 8 port Gigabit Desktop Switch

1 x Samsung HD203WI 2TB Spinpoint F3 EcoGreen 3.5" SATA II Hard Drive  

:ptu:

I think this should keep me going for a while - one NAS server will be set to backup to the other in realtime/immediately, so I effectively have a mirror going on. The 2Tb drive will be used as a data dump for now until I get my other drives RMAd then decide on a formidable internal RAID solution or the proposed home brew NAS server that is looking more simpler with the likes of IcyBox caddies and unRAID OSes...

I have an MD3000i, but that might be slight overkill :)

Part of my lab kit for one of the products I do (Datacore sansymphony)

A very interesting thread, I have been looking at Atom based solutions myself with a RAID card with an eye on the fact it could be used as a home media server as well as a reasonable NAS solution.


Clockd 0Ne, the route of backing up critical files to webspace is exactly what Im going to do, its a decent offsite backup and lets be honest if you lost all your tv shows etc it would be a massive bummer, but theyre hardly mega critical life changers.

Quote from: soopahflyProblem is if your house burns down/floods/plague of locusts etc.

Im using an online backup storage called Mozy.  Its $5 a month and is actually unlimited.

Hmmm this sounds pretty good. Any limitations? Is bandwidth unlimited? Might be very useful when Im travelling to access stuff from home.

Ive not come across any restrictions yet.  There have been complaints that the upload speed is limited to 1Mbps (Like that matters here) but as of the middle of last year it has been increased to 5Mbps.
Theres 448bit Blowfish encryption too.

Cool I will take a look at the site when I get home tonight (blocked here at work).

This is looking better and better to me :)

I think Im going to be looking to put FreeLink OS (Debian) on there and then install hellanzb and hellaPVR. Thisll give me a linux box and a complete standalone NZB download client w/ automatic TV Series download support.

Just as long as moving to Debian doesnt remove the DNLA functions.
Youd be able to get the TV shows through NZB and stream straight to the 360.

Oo Now thatd be even more impressive and potentially make my Revo completely redundant !

Ive been doing a bit more research and apparently the whole script based NZB downloading is bad mmmmkay; instead the plan is now a compiled application:
http://forum.buffalo.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?p=134975#p134975

I think a huge; thank you sir *tipping hat* in your direction for pointing out these could be hacked ;)

Quote from: matt5cottA very interesting thread, I have been looking at Atom based solutions myself with a RAID card with an eye on the fact it could be used as a home media server as well as a reasonable NAS solution.

Clockd 0Ne, the route of backing up critical files to webspace is exactly what Im going to do, its a decent offsite backup and lets be honest if you lost all your tv shows etc it would be a massive bummer, but theyre hardly mega critical life changers.

Indeed, I agree with that. I can bare losing some films and shows that are easy to get back and take up the most space. If youre interested Ill post up a link to the command line FTP upload/download tools Ive been using for task scheduling. I may have posted them elsewhere already but I cant remember.

My new Samsung 2TB F3EG drive arrived an hour ago and is installed and formatting away. First impressions are that its whisper quiet, no weird power up sounds, clicking or any of that crap the Seagate sat next to it is plagued by. Its also formatting much faster than the Seagate too - its been going 30 minutes and already at 7%.

If youre in the market for a new (green) 2Tb drive, dont be swayed by the Seagates cheapness or warranty - its a big brick of sh*te. Go Samsung.

Got a seagate external few months ago and I really dislike it. Loud, Clicky, randomly decides when it wants to spin up / down for power saving (even if streaming a film!) Stupid thing.

Quote from: Clockd 0NeIf youre in the market for a new (green) 2Tb drive, dont be swayed by the Seagates cheapness or warranty - its a big brick of sh*te. Go Samsung.

That line probably saved me a shed load of hassle Im in the market in the next couple of months for sure, Im old school and think Seagate are great, but all my drives are getting on a bit I think its fair to say... Wouldnt have thought to get the Sammy, so thanks :)

I was on exactly the same line of thought, Seagate have served me well in the past but from extensive reading it seems not only are their 1.5Tb drives borked at the firmware level, these new 2Tb drives are being returned by the truck load with click of death. I would suggest everyone stay away from Seagate for a while until they sort themselves out. A 5yr warranty is no good if the drive even wont last you long enough to fill it...

If youre after a fast drive, the Hitachi 2Tb 7200rpm drives are great value but reportedly on the noisy side.

Quote from: DoomsGot a seagate external few months ago and I really dislike it. Loud, Clicky, randomly decides when it wants to spin up / down for power saving (even if streaming a film!) Stupid thing.

Strongly consider backing up your data on there - thats exactly how my FreeAgent Pro started off on the road to death. Now it will only connect 1 time in 20 power-ups (off/back on at the mains) and it wont recognise via eSATA at all. Ive just had my RMA on it approved. If you have a FreeAgent drive apparently the internals are all plastic so the drives run very hot, eventually the drive heads themselves over time become prone to seizure.

nige.... have you checked out ebay for a really good raid card ?


last time I was in the market... there were some pretty top notch cards going pretty cheap :o

No I havnt actually, I might see whats on offer too, although I think if I go down that road Id want to wait for a sata 3 ready controller...

will sata3 make any difference ?

its not like youre going to max out sata2 anyway ?


havnt looked recently, but last time I did you could get pcie 12port sata cards that were £800 when new, for about £80

with 12 ports, a million featueres, and 256meg of onboard ram etc.... theyve got to remove as much of a bottle neck as youll ever be able to ?

Youre completely right, sata 3 would make bugger all difference thinking about it and it wouldnt be worth the premium either way. Ill have a nosey on eBay later :)

To highlight just how bad this new Seagate drive is (thank God its going back), heres a S.M.A.R.T data comparison:

(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/6028/seagatesamsungcompariso.th.png) (http://img38.imageshack.us/i/seagatesamsungcompariso.png/)

The drive seek error rate should be of particular note - every time a seek error has occured, the drive has made lots of unhealthy sounding clicking noises for about 20 seconds...

QuoteRate of seek errors of the magnetic heads. If there is a partial failure in the mechanical positioning system, then seek errors will arise. Such a failure may be due to numerous factors, such as damage to a servo, or thermal widening of the hard disk. The raw value has different structure for different vendors and is often not meaningful as a decimal number.

The Samsung is over 3/4 full and not a single ECC error. That is formidable. :)

:o

Oh my, that is worrying  :gag: