Mark Redpath - WSCC Membership Secretary Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Hi Guys A few days ago my 1Tb western digital nas drive decided it had had enough and threw a wobbler, and the outcome is that all the data is unrecoverable without spending some serious money..... So do I start again with another nas drive or go down the route of a cloud based service,??? Currys do 1tb for £50 a year, and will work with three computers, has anyone any experience of these services?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamnreeves Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Depends how you want to use it. Do you want to store documents on your PC and backup on the Cloud or Use on the cloud. Our IT department at work have providing back up on the Cloud for consultants that work away from the office like me. They use www.carbonite.com which is a breeze as it operates in background backing up your documents. For my personal stuff I use googledocs where I can edit the documents without Word, Excel or anything and I can share with my friends and colleagues. I have a NAS drive too but tend you use these services as you can you any PC, mobile phone etc to view and edit documents. Literally access anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jumpy07 Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I use a windows home server... backs up 10 clients, .. DNLA server, .. streams to Xbox, Smart TV, laptops etc etc...webserver, and remote access from anywhere... tried various NAS solutions over the years.. but found this works best for me Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreigM Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Depends on your bandwidth - obviously backing up to a remote server requires a fair bit of data and also isn't quick.... ...for home users I'd suggest a local NAS backup is preferable, otherwise you could see your ISP complaining. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekJ Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Get a NAS with RAID drives, that way if one disk gives up the ghost then you can rebuild from the other. RAID 1 is just a mirror and needs two disks RAID 5 is more fault tollerant but needs at least three disks and so is more expensive. DerekJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamnreeves Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 NAS is so last year. The initial backup can take a while but once done it backs up single files as they are created or modified. If you are on cable then bandwidth is not a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamnreeves Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Get a NAS with RAID drives, that way if one disk gives up the ghost then you can rebuild from the other. RAID 1 is just a mirror and needs two disks RAID 5 is more fault tollerant but needs at least three disks and so is more expensive. DerekJ Unless the RAID controller fails Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekJ Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 NAS is so last year. Sorry, I'm just so last decade! . I want to be in control of my own data. I have a built-in distrust of other people being responible for my data. If the cloud company goes ****-up then so does my data when the accountants turn off the servers. Sorry, I'm just an old fart but I like to be in control of my own stuff. DerekJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamnreeves Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Sorry, I'm just so last decade! . I want to be in control of my own data. I have a built-in distrust of other people being responible for my data. If the cloud company goes ****-up then so does my data when the accountants turn off the servers. Sorry, I'm just an old fart but I like to be in control of my own stuff. DerekJ Yep know what you mean. This is why Cloud uptake is not as fast as it could be. However have two clouds and you have co-located data redundancy. LOL. Mind you if you use googledocs then they have thousands and thousands of servers across the world anyway. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blatman Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I just don't trust the cloud companies not to "mis-use" my data or segments of data stored therein. NAS with RAID 5 for me... and really important stuff is backed up to a second standalone USB drive and DVD re-writables if I really REALLY don't want to lose it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wile E. Coyote Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I just don't trust the cloud companies not to "mis-use" my data or segments of data stored therein. NAS with RAID 5 for me... and really important stuff is backed up to a second standalone USB drive and DVD re-writables if I really REALLY don't want to lose it... Pretty much what I do (except RAID 1 instead of 5 so that I can have 2 separate arrays in a 4 bay enclosure). Don't scrimp on drive speed for a NAS (especially if you've got gigabit networking) as these days you can find that this is the limiting factor when it comes to large scale transfers. Lenovo do some nice PIN protected/encrypted USB drives for the backup. The other drawback with cloud is that if your internet connection goes down then, unless you have a local copy too, you're stuffed... and if there's another "megaupload"-type situation you could find your data being inaccessible and getting wiped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerekJ Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Don't scrimp on drive speed for a NAS (especially if you've got gigabit networking) It depends on what you are using the NAS for. If it's only for slow-moving archive stuff then speed it not an issue. OK you may spend twice as long uploading the latest pictures but if that's only once a week then what the devil? If you have an old PC rotting away under the bed then just stuff some new disks into it and build it with FreeNAS. Once it's set up then you (almost) never log back into it. DJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westford Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I just don't trust the cloud companies not to "mis-use" my data or segments of data stored therein. NAS with RAID 5 for me... and really important stuff is backed up to a second standalone USB drive and DVD re-writables if I really REALLY don't want to lose it... I have NAS with RAID 5 too - and for the same reasons! Westford Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Redpath - WSCC Membership Secretary Posted March 17, 2012 Author Share Posted March 17, 2012 Cheers for the info guys, Was never really taken with the idea of the cloud option, as for the reasons mentioned, not being in control of your own data etc, so I think another Nas drive but this time with RAiD...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jumpy07 Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Raid is not all its cracked up to be.. Hardware Raid failure is fine if its just a disk failure.. but if some other part of the hardware fails then you need the same hardware to restore the disks.. large raid arrays can take days if not weeks to restore... software raid is slow.. but less of an issue when you need to restore.. Personally... I am a great advocate of the KISS principle.. Keep it simple stupid..... seperate disk for video / mp3 / images... and back the whole thing up either via tape or disk and put it off site... I personally I mirror 4tb accross 2 machines.. and use a seperate backup off site backup on 2 x 2tb drives. which I update every month.. probably overboard for most people... but then again would you want to loose all your familly pictures and videos..... I wouldnt rely on raid alone... Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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