Backup options (again!)

[djones]

Sorry for the repeat of this, often asked, question but please bare with me!

I am looking for backup options for our primary school. I have been looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (2x500GB one) but have a question (or two) that I thought someone on here might know the answer to.

I want to be able to hot swap one drive (say weekly) and take it off site, bringing it back and swaping out another the following week. I presume I would need a third drive to make this possible?

Sorry for sounding stupid but my knowledge when it comes to raid and hot swaping etc is pretty low!

Thanks, David.

[tscnmuk]

As a small point, but not answering your question (sorry), where offsite do you intend to take it? It is against the DPA to take it somewhere such as home for example.

[srochford]

Which bit of the DPA says you can't take it home??

What I think you need to do is make sure that the data is safe and not open to Joe Public to read but there's no reason that it can't be safe in that way in someone's home.

[gwendes]

My guess would be that it's related to the chance that you might leave it in a taxi or something. Your home is also at a higher risk of being broken into, likely with less CCTV etc...

We have a fireproof safe on site in another building...

[aliv25]

My guess would be that it's related to the chance that you might leave it in a taxi or something. Your home is also at a higher risk of being broken into, likely with less CCTV etc...

We have a fireproof safe on site in another building...

I second that, we have a fireproof safe on site in the next building and it would be better protected on site rather thatn at home where natural causes could cause risk too.

[gwendes]

If your budget would stretch to it:

http://www.drobo.com

Up to four drives - hot swappable...

Just waiting for the NAS version... USB only

[plexer]

gwendes: you can hook up a drobo to a airport extreme wireless access point and share the contents that way across a network.

Presumably you can use the wired points on the airport as well as the wireless.

http://www.drobospace.com/article/10...rport-Extreme/

Ben

[gwendes]

ooohh..
Didn't make the link - suppose you could hook it up to an NSLU2 for the same thing a bit cheaper...

[chrbb]

I take my backup home we only have one building on one site. We have a fireproof safe in the same room as the server I just have visions of a melted unopenable safe with my backup in.

[djones]

I was planning to (and used to at a previous school) take the drive home and store it in my fire proof safe - I never considered that this might infringe the DPA! Oops! But then the data wasn't exactly available to anybody else.

We do have a fire proof safe in another part of the building that I could and would use now thinking about it.

Anyway, back to the original question

I am looking for backup options for our primary school. I have been looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (2x500GB one) but have a question (or two) that I thought someone on here might know the answer to.

I want to be able to hot swap one drive (say weekly) and store in a safe, replacing it and swaping out another the following week. (Notice subtle change!) I presume I would need a third drive to make this possible?

The Drobo system looks good but as you say only supports USB at the moment. I would prefer a NAS solution and need to buy now. Any recommendations?

Thanks, David.

[gwendes]

Why not connect it to an NSLU2?

[DMcCoy]

You will get at most, 7-8MB/s when writing to the ReadyNAS. Its a good box, but its isn't fast. I've been running a ReadyNAS 600 for two years now but only as media storage for my home network.

[gwendes]

You will get at most, 7-8MB/s when writing to the ReadyNAS. Its a good box, but its isn't fast. I've been running a ReadyNAS 600 for two years now but only as media storage for my home network.

Is that all on gigabit?

[chrbb]

Sorry sidetracking again - When you do backups what do you backup? I use server 2003 backup, primary school curicculum network, and do a weekly normal backup of c drive and system state. If anything changes on the server I redo the asr backup. Am I covering everything?

[djones]

Why not connect it to an NSLU2?

No significant reason why not, I'd just rather a 'native' network solution.

You will get at most, 7-8MB/s when writing to the ReadyNAS. Its a good box, but its isn't fast. I've been running a ReadyNAS 600 for two years now but only as media storage for my home network.

That's a bit pants! To repeat gwendes' question, "Is that all on gigabit?"