Time and time again I tell my Clients, Friends and Family...BACKUP YOUR FILES! Slowly, some are taking heed to my warnings, but others I simply find myself shaking my head that in this day and age, it's still not a priority to most. There are lots of backup solutions one can chose...from external hard drives, to using Windows Backup, to the good ol' copy/paste method. Although I won't go into all the possibilities in this posting, as that would be a blog topic in itself, I want to share the one I hand picked from the pack as MY ideal solution, at least for the time being. It costs a little more than some, but in the end I wanted something with a large capacity, transportable to future technologies, and most importantly of all WORRY FREE! With that said, on to the specifics:
So my 'important files' consists of a plethora of photos, documents, software, TV Shows & Movies, music, and random other content I don't care to categorize. My ideal solution involved something self contained, RAIDed (will explain what this is later), with USB 3.0 connections. Why were these important aspects? Dammit, calm down, I was getting to that!
Until now, I had a standalone server, with 3 internal hard drives. One drive was solely for the OS and applications, the other two were setup in a Mirror RAID to house all my data (this is when the PC sees only one logical drive, but data written to the drive is actually written to both physical drives simultaneously. If one drive tanks, the other can be restored). The data from the server was shared out to my home network and media devices, acting as central storage for everything. The pain in the ass was such that if the Server went down due to hardware issues (and it did on occasion), I had to worry about the Server AND the RAID installation because the RAID information/setup is specific to the system board with such an internal setup. If I had to replace the system board for any reason, I had to hope that the RAID would be recognized on the new board. I know we're getting somewhat technical here, but go with me on this, it gets easier. Anyway, I knew I needed to separate the RAID from the Server if I was ever going to have piece of mind...
There are lots of options for external hardware RAID setups, but I was looking for something specific. My ideal solution housed multiple disks, had hardware RAID functionality, and used some form of fast connection that might keep up with my gigabit network. Initially I was looking at the Drobo 4 Bay Storage Array, at a price of $399.99 plus the cost of disks. At the time, this was really the only option I could find, given my requirements but I was still not quite satisfied. The Drobo is pretty, it's easy to setup, it houses 4 disks and uses RAID, but one thing was standing out that I didn't like; it used it's own proprietary file format... While not a big deal to some, this was a deal breaker for me as when something breaks or goes wrong, I like to be in the deep end of the pool, drowning with lots of other people! A grim analogy I know, but what I mean to say is that I like to have the best chance at finding someone with a similar problem and reading about how they went about fixing it. Something told me, with a proprietary file format, I'd be pretty alone if I needed to restore a file from a broken RAID. And so I waited for something better to come along...
Luckily I didn't have to wait long! MemoryExpress (who you will get used to me citing quite a bit, as they're my favorite PC company to deal with where I live) suddenly listed a new player to consider, the MediaSonic Pro Raid Box, at a much more affordable $219.99 plus the cost of disks. Not only does it use a standard NTFS filing system, but it also came equipped with the new USB 3.0 standard, which boosts transfer speeds from 480Mbps to 5Gbps (if you don't have the faintest idea why 5 is better than 480, then just take my word that it's quite a bit faster). As the new emerging standard, I knew it would be my favored connection choice.
So I picked it up, as well as a couple of 1TB Seagate SATA drives (I already had 2 from my Server RAID, so together it totaled 4 identical drives), and it was a breeze to setup. Basically insert all 4 drives, follow the instructions on how to define the RAID Array (this time going with RAID 5 instead of Mirroring to maximize space & speed), and connect via USB. My PC picked it up as a single 2.73TB drive and I was golden! I've yet to redo my server (which I will do a future blog post on when I find my ideal solution) so that means I'm stuck on USB 2.0 for right now. I could spend $39 and buy a USB 3.0 expansion card, but really I don't care right now, as I still get 35 - 40 Mbps speeds on USB 2. The result I have achieved now is such that my RAID is portable, and fully independant from my server... Go ahead server! Crash! I dare you! Muahahaha...but seriously don't, I need you in my life server!
Anyway, I know this isn't quite your typical review of a piece of hardware, but really if you want to know the knitty gritty specifics of the device, Google it yourself! LOL This will be the typical format of my Blog, basically stating my reasons for going the way I did, and why I'd recommend it to anyone.
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment