Ultimate backup solution?

[Roger]

So I've been trying to work out what the best backup solution is for a fairly large (several 100GB )filesystem.

 

You could do RAID 6 with 4 256GB SSDs for about $400, create a 100GB system partition and then back that up to BDXL bluray.

The RAID wouldn't be very large (only 512GB) but would be wicked fast. Downside is it is very pricey. It probably would be less likely to fail since the drives are solid state.

 

You could also do a RAID 6 with regular 1 terabyte drives for about the same price, they would be more prone to failure but give you 2 terabytes of space.

Or you could keep the entire main system partition on a 100GB flash drive, back up to blu-ray and also to a 2 terabyte RAID 6 NAS in the basement.

Anyone else out there have any opinions on the best disk setup for a workstation? However, without backing up the NAS you're still playing with fire.

[robcat2075]

As far as A:M goes I don't think disk speed time is a big bottle neck, presuming you have normal RAM available. If one does lots of hi def video editing then disk speed probably is a bigger issue.

 

So RAID for speed might be less of a priority than RAID for security?

 

 

You could also do a RAID 6 with regular 1 terabyte drives for about the same price, they would be more prone to failure but give you 2 terabytes of space.

 

That's the one I'd go for if that's the one that can have one drive fail and still preserve the data.

 

 

I have my OS on it's own partition so it's easy to image that and restore it separately from gobs of data that clutter the rest of my system.

[Roger]

As far as A:M goes I don't think disk speed time is a big bottle neck, presuming you have normal RAM available. If one does lots of hi def video editing then disk speed probably is a bigger issue.

 

So RAID for speed might be less of a priority than RAID for security?

 

 

You could also do a RAID 6 with regular 1 terabyte drives for about the same price, they would be more prone to failure but give you 2 terabytes of space.

 

That's the one I'd go for if that's the one that can have one drive fail and still preserve the data.

 

 

I have my OS on it's own partition so it's easy to image that and restore it separately from gobs of data that clutter the rest of my system.

 

Yeah, I'm not really concerned with raw speed since I don't edit 4k video or anything crazy like that. I'm most concerned with data security, and ease of backing up the partition the OS and main apps are on. What I'm not sure of, is if you can have a RAID split into say a C: and D: drive, or if it has to be treated as one large drive. I would think that you could do it, but not having set up a RAID before I'm not sure of the nitty gritty details. I know what the basic RAID levels are, but beyond that I'm not sure about the rest.

 

But yes, that is probably the way to go. I think 1 terabyte drives are like $50 each these days, and you could put the OS on a 100GB flash drive, then do a daily backup job to the RAID and then do a weekly backup of the OS partition off the RAID to a bluray. That might be the best combination of speed, price, capacity and data security.

 

And with RAID 6 you can actually have two drives fail and still restore the data, since it uses two drives for parity. The only way to get better data security than that would be to mirror the RAID.

[robcat2075]

Backing up to bluray sounds tedious and they only hold 50GB?

 

What not just back up to another hard drive?

[Roger]

Standard bluray is I think only 25 or 50 GB max. So yes, backing up an entire terabyte disk would be crazy tedious, even with 50GB disks it would take 20 disks and way too much time.

There is a new format that goes up to 100GB on a single disk. 100GB is about the right size for a primary OS partition and your main apps. You still wouldn't want to try and back up an entire disk, though, because even with only a 500GB drive you still need 5 disks.

 

The only reason I say back up to optical media at all, is it is less likely to fail than a hard disk. Backing up to hard disk is fine, but if that hard drive is not running for a long time you run the risk of the drive not spinning up. At least this is what I've run into when trying to use removeable hard disks. With more modern drives with a good 5 year warranty, I suppose as long as you're backing up the entire system to 3 different hard drives you are giving yourself a bit of a hedge against drive failure. It will still take you a non-trivial amount of time to back the data up.

 

Maybe hard disk backups are the way to go these days, tape solutions are much more expensive, optical disks can't hold anything near the contents of a modern terabyte or mult terabyte hard disk.