[SOLVED] Where to back my Clients Data up too?

[TECCS]

So usually I use a HDD solely for the use of backing up data for customers to while i work on there PC or recover data upgrade HDD etc.

Recently though had 1 HDD fail which had user data on there before it could be transferred luckily the customer was fine with it as nothing important they had a backup it was a just in case.
then today I have gone to turn one on and the power isn't working to it.

I have a spare NAS here that I was going to sell as upgraded but now thinking is it a better idea to use that for the backups. most backups I use FAB's. and just have a drive for cloning when needed.

HDD i use are currently self built desktop drives and caddies which get stored in the caddies original box on a cupboard shelf when not in use.

Just wanting some advice really on what i should could do

Thanks in advance

Tom

 

[Umbra]

When i worked as "Repair guy" , i used to save them on 2 mirrored HDDs and on a USB (if datas are not too large).

 

[TECCS]

When i worked as "Repair guy" , i used to save them on 2 mirrored HDDs and on a USB (if datas are not too large).

well that's why I was thinking the NAS as it can be set to mirror the other HDD. USB usually not big enough

Thanks for the input

 

[Diggs]

When i worked as "Repair guy" , i used to save them on 2 mirrored HDDs and on a USB (if datas are not too large).

I too use a pair of mirrored drives on the machine doing the imaging/backup and then transfer the data at network speed up to a NAS (edit - not SAN) I keep on the network just for customer images and backups.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I use a DAS mirrored RAID, which I connect to the patient via USB, or to my system via eSATA. In the latter case, I either remove the patient drive and image/Fab it to the DAS or transfer the data over the network from the patient to the DAS. If the drive is not healthy, I'll use a hardware imager to create a clone or disk image file on another system dedicated to data recovery.

 

[TECCS]

Thanks for letting me know how you do your backups.

I guess the think I'm asking now is I have a NAS its not in use that mirrors the 2 HDD. I don't have much to spend is a DAS any different to a NAS other than direct connection and how is a SAN different?

basically if i start using the NAS rather than just an external HDD is that better than what I am doing now?

Thanks again

 

[Diggs]

Anything external with good redundancy. RAID 6 or 1 preferred but I still use RAID 5 on my NAS. Others here can give you better advice than me.

 

[TECCS]

Anything external with good redundancy. RAID 6 or 1 preferred but I still use RAID 5 on my NAS. Others here can give you better advice than me.

Well thats Good as readyNAS does X-raid by default which is basically raid 1

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Take away the chance of a single storage hard drive failing on you. In many cases...one of the RAID types that mirrors. Such as 1, 5, 6, 10...whatever your budget and needs allow.

Plenty of "boxed" retail products like Drobo, Synology, QNap, as well as ways to "roll your own" using old spare parts and open source NAS OS's like FreeNAS.

 

[TAPtech]

I put together a system using some new parts and some spare parts, and leveraged my Action Pack Subscription. So I have a short depth 5U case with 8 3.5" drive bays. Setup a RAID 10 using WD RED drives, and RAID1 of SSD's. Installed Server 2016 Standard as the Hyper visor.

I run a handful of virtual machines on the box, and have plenty of relatively speed RAID10 storage to keep client data on. I backup the important VM's to an 8TB external usb drive as well as Azure (again using Action Pack credits.)

 

[phaZed]

FreeNAS on a 24 HDD NORCO case totaling about 20TB is where I drop my backups.

 

[TECCS]

OK so looking at what i have I have a spare NAS setup with raid 1. So going to use that. some of yours look very impressive. my business is small and i don't keep the data that long.

sound like some of you guys have really nice equipment far outside of my needs and budget.

but got my redundancy now so all should be good

 

[Diggs]

Which brings up a question I've never been able to answer. Can the pair of non-boot drives running RAID 1 under Win10 (with customer images) be moved to another Win10 machine "as-is". Do they maintain RAID? Meaning if the machine died can the RAID drives be moved and be readable? (I'm talking about a pair of internal RAID 1 drives.)

 

[TAPtech]

In Windows you can import the RAID volume but it'll likely trigger a rebuild any ways. So with RAID1 you're looking at adding one disk, and then adding another to the RAID1 volume. If you want to be extra safe, do this with a third empty disk. That way if something goes wrong, you still have one of the original RAID1 disks in tact.

 

[Diggs]

In Windows you can import the RAID volume but it'll likely trigger a rebuild any ways. So with RAID1 you're looking at adding one disk, and then adding another to the RAID1 volume. If you want to be extra safe, do this with a third empty disk. That way if something goes wrong, you still have one of the original RAID1 disks in tact.

Rebuild with data is fine, but when ever Windows creates a RAID volume initially it wipes everything clean first unless those drives were designated in Storage Spaces previously. I've danced around not using Windows RAID for years but have been trying to use/experiment with it more.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Plenty of "boxed" retail products like Drobo....

I would avoid Drobo like the plague! Today I refunded all but my attempt fee to a client who has spent months trying to recover his sensitive data from clones of 5x 2TB Seagate drives that were in a Drobo. This was a Drobo with advanced redundancy (or whatever they call it) that should have been recoverable after 2 drives failing. The rebuild he tried proved to be totally incapable and recovery using ReclaiMe Drobo recovery software on the clones was stalled for days at only 38% complete after running it against the clones on an i7 with 16GB of memory. The customer is a very advanced Unix guy and worked with ReclaiMe support on the case, only to conclude that once the file map is gone, it's game over.

Drobo, however, was invented before TRIM and earlier than filesystems started supporting TRIM. That is why Drobo developers had to invent another mechanism for determining what blocks are used and what are free. They came up with making Drobo aware of the filesystem or several filesystems stored on the disk pack. Drobo can peek into a filesystem metadata to get the list of occupied and free blocks so that to discard the unused blocks from the map. This process is implemented as periodical garbage collections. This very process makes it impossible to recover deleted files or formatted volumes because once it is complete, the map for the formatted volume becomes empty and deleted files have their blocks unmapped.

 

[NJW]

I would avoid Drobo like the plague!

Yes, the big showstopper for me is the proprietary filesystem – vendor lock-in taken to the extreme. I'm surprised no-one has come up with a FLOSS Drobo work-alike, because the basic idea is pretty good.

sound like some of you guys have really nice equipment far outside of my needs and budget.

It's easy to suffer equipment envy on here! Your RAID-1 NAS will be fine. I have a Debian server, built mostly from leftovers, which does me fine. 2x 2 TB in RAID-1 (mdadm) and a 64 GB SSD for the OS. The OS drive is backed up to the RAID daily. Only the big HDDs were bought specifically for the application.

 

[Your PCMD]

I drop all my backups to a Dell 2950 with 12 TB of storage and use XPEnology. I love the damn thing! If you want to try XPEnology (which is Synology software on your own hardware) see below.

 

[cyde_ePhex]

@Your PCMD My PlayHouse has some pretty good videos. I like this guy

 

[Your PCMD]

@Your PCMD My PlayHouse has some pretty good videos. I like this guy

Indeed. I've been watching him for a long long time.