External HD for Backup

[TechSupp]

Can anyone give a good reccomendation for a reasonable External USB hard drive to be used for backing up of the server and its data. Would need to be around 1TB for some future proofing, able to be formatted with NTFS and of course be a reasonable price i.e. its the wrong time of year for the old one to fail.

Have an existing one but the HD is failing and its a bit small so maybe an option if cheaper to change the disk in the existing enclosure?

[deanc]

you should really consider some kind of NAS box with built in raid.

 

I think the terrastation does this, its a bit more money but saves you from hard disk failure. you can guaruntee that if your server fails the backup drive will decide to go out in sypmathy at the same time.

[TechSupp]

Thanks, been looking around and found this WD My Book Mirror Edition 11 2TB Hard Drive Extern - Misco.co.uk

 

About our price range (its for one of my primarys), not NAS though but at least it is 1TB and will Raid 1 for a bit of safety. Any thoughts?

[EduTech]

Yh i recommend you look at a NAS solutions aswell.

 

We just brought 2 of these 4TB Model

 

Buffalo Technology - Products - TeraStation Pro™ II Rackmount

 

James.

[PiqueABoo]

What happens when the school burns down?

[EduTech]

Well there in 2 Seperate locations at the moment, i.e. one in the server room and one in a totally seperate building. but if the whole site got blown up then we do have external 1TB hard drives which hold back-ups of the important information i.e. SIMS

 

Were looking into offsite back-ups aswell now. but it isn't alwats cheap

[TechSupp]

Suggestions to solve my problem then? Separate drives? Remeber that although backup is important as its a primary the budget is tight and not as big as colleges and secondaries.

 

PS. If the whole school burnt down, not having a backup for the curriculum server (remember this does not include the sims, office data as that is looked after by others) would not be high on their list of priorities I would think.

[ddcmp]

call it bad luck but ive used 2 nas boxes (buffalo terrastations) which both failed after a week (network card faulty) in the end the way forward for the school was a DLT V4, ive stopped recommending nas boxes until i find one that actually works longer than 5 days! - they still work (after a warranty repair) but not for backups - use them to store wsus updates and networked apps.....i think its the amout of data that gets passed on a daily basis that kills the network card.

[PiqueABoo]

would not be high on their list of priorities I would think

 

A couple of months later it may well be e.g. second photo down on the right. You'd probably get away with some of it coz most teachers will have their own copies of their planning but getting away with all of it is a lot better.

 

PS: Don't know if it was substantiated but the Daily Mail had a quote saying "'It looks like it was the computer room which was alight first."

Edited February 13, 2009 by PiqueABoo
PS

[rh91uk]

The LacIe porsche hard drives always have worked really well for us before when we used to do backups (we were doing this for two years). They provided the solution and it was pretty rigid and reliable.

 

But, I would reccomend if it is financially viable going for NAS boxes. We have been running them for nearly 7 months, haven't failed once!

 

Look at the NetGear Ready Nas Duo's!

[mac_shinobi]

Lacie have a few that have 2 hard drives and can be in a raid config. Short of that I would get a spare computer slap a raid card in it with some SATA hard drives and use open filer or free nas

[TechSupp]

I presume you are suggesting NAS over USB is due to being able to locate the backup anywhere on the network rather than speed of data transfer etc? Alot of the NAS raid devices suggested so far are well out of budget range, which is why I found the WD raid device (although USB) might be suitable and cover most of our requirements (1TB Raid etc but no NAS) for a reasonable amount. At a push I could always plug the backup disk to another PC and share it out but not sure NTBackup will allow you to backup to a shared drive and if that would cause any problems with a restore should I need it.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Currently using NTBackup for software, is this considered OK? Again better option would need to be free :-) if at all possible and do the same function as NTBackup, i.e save all system settings not just data folders.

Edited February 16, 2009 by TechSupp