Storage and Backup Options

[MoneyGuy]

For backup, I love my ClickFree system. It's easy as pie. That reminds me I'm overdue. I'm off to do a backup now.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

I was in the same position. I garbaged almost all my DVD cases and kept my original DVD in case the MPAA Nazzis come knocking.

I bought 2 1.5 TB Hard drives and made a clone copy onto the second one then took it out of my computer. Its kept in a cool low humidity location with its antistatic bag. I have outlook reminders set to test it twice a year just to make sure.

Online backup options arent cost effective for that kind of storage. They are good for documents etc but not the archiving of all your DVDs.

FYI - Handbrake + AnyDVD is the shiz. 30 day free trial of AnyDVD - if you need it longer just rebuild your computer - I did 3 times. If AnyDVD was reasonable priced I would have no problem dropping $20 for it, but not $60 for a 1 year license.

I also plan on keeping the DVD's. I'll just pack them away in my TV cabinet or something. Although throwing out the boxes is not a bad idea to save space.

Since your backup hard drive isn't connected to your computer are you not backing new movies or are you not buying DVD's anymore? Or are you fully Blu-ray now? I'm fully Blu-ray when comes to movies, but I haven't quite let go of DVD's when it comes to TV series. Especially when the cost difference is so great as it is with some series.

I've been running my test rip DVD's with DVD Shrink and Handbreak and it seems to be working not too bad so far.

[photon]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I don't use a NAS, I have a physical machine acting as a file server (among other chores neccessary for running my one-man empire)

That is definitely one issue with online backup systems as they exist today.

Ah ok.. I used to do that but the power usage was totally unnecessary for my needs.

The other feature I'm after now is Time Machine integration... Some of the NAS devices (and HP's WHS boxes I believe) now actually support Time Machine out of the box so I don't have to jump through hoops with unsupported commands to get it to work over the network.

So yeah I've been kind of looking at the HP WHS so I can have Time Machine and have an OS that I can do other stuff on.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by photon

Ah ok.. I used to do that but the power usage was totally unnecessary for my needs.

The other feature I'm after now is Time Machine integration... Some of the NAS devices (and HP's WHS boxes I believe) now actually support Time Machine out of the box so I don't have to jump through hoops with unsupported commands to get it to work over the network.

So yeah I've been kind of looking at the HP WHS so I can have Time Machine and have an OS that I can do other stuff on.

I don't worry too much about power...system draws about 80 watts all the time, at 0.12 per KW/h after all the fees and taxes for electricity, that's only like 8 bucks a month.

[Burninator]

I am having a slight problem.

I bought a 2TB hard drive and installed it inside my computer. I then went into the Disk Management and added the hard drive. I also ran a full NTFS format. Windows has no problems with the hard drive and says everything is fine and formatted to NTFS. However when I run my backup program (Todo Backup) it says the hard drive is unformatted and the unused space is 0.00kb and the used space is full available amount of the hard drive. I'm not really sure what is happening. I would like to backup the information on this hard drive to my NAS using the backup program, but it wants to backup the whole 2TB drive even though I only have a couple hundred gigabytes on it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Burninator

I am having a slight problem.

I bought a 2TB hard drive and installed it inside my computer. I then went into the Disk Management and added the hard drive. I also ran a full NTFS format. Windows has no problems with the hard drive and says everything is fine and formatted to NTFS. However when I run my backup program (Todo Backup) it says the hard drive is unformatted and the unused space is 0.00kb and the used space is full available amount of the hard drive. I'm not really sure what is happening. I would like to backup the information on this hard drive to my NAS using the backup program, but it wants to backup the whole 2TB drive even though I only have a couple hundred gigabytes on it.

I think partitions over 2TB require GPT partitioning, which might be where the issue is cropping up.

Yup, that’s what it is

Quote:
Q: Does EASEUS Todo Backup support Dynamic Disk or GPT disk? A: No, EASEUS Todo Backup does not support Dynamic Disk or GPT disk. ...

[Burninator]

I'm not really sure what that means...So I should either partition the drive differently or find a different backup program? Finding a different program is probably easier.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Burninator

I'm not really sure what that means...So I should either partition the drive differently or find a different backup program? Finding a different program is probably easier.

Yeah, there is no excuse for it not to work with GPT. And it makes you wonder what other deficiencies are lurking under the covers.

[photon]

http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS210j/index.php

Another NAS option that I read a review on that looks very attractive.. only the disk throughput makes me hesitate (it's good, just not that much better than what I've got already). The DS210+ is a lot better but also twice as much.

But they have almost every feature you could imagine, even iPhone/iPad apps to stream media to your devices!

[HeartsOfFire]

I too have a DS-323 with 2 1.5TB hard drives RAID 1'd. When it was mentioned about possible file system corruption though, I began rubbing my chin in thought.

I'm now considering buying a 3rd 1.5TB drive and cycling the drives in and out of the NAS every 6 months.

Thoughts?

[photon]

6 months is a long time between backups.

[HeartsOfFire]

It also just dawned on me that I'm not entirely certain what firmware I'm using on my DNS-323. Hypothetically, if I have an out of date firmware, should I remove the drives before upgrading it?

[photon]

I guess you could but if upgrading the firmware is going to toast everything it'll probably still do it when you reinsert them.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by HeartsOfFire

I too have a DS-323 with 2 1.5TB hard drives RAID 1'd. When it was mentioned about possible file system corruption though, I began rubbing my chin in thought.

I'm now considering buying a 3rd 1.5TB drive and cycling the drives in and out of the NAS every 6 months.

Thoughts?

I don’t recommend it. Although pulling and storing half of a RAID-1 mirror set works, its not a best practise and is not how RAID was designed or intended to use.

I have seen some very unfortunate circumstances where people played with RAID sets like this, because in theory nothing bad ever happens, only to have the RAID controller decide to rebuild in the wrong direction, or they get the drives physically mixed up, etc.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by HeartsOfFire

I too have a DS-323 with 2 1.5TB hard drives RAID 1'd. When it was mentioned about possible file system corruption though, I began rubbing my chin in thought.

I'm now considering buying a 3rd 1.5TB drive and cycling the drives in and out of the NAS every 6 months.

Thoughts?

Buy an external drive that you backup your NAS to every (week?) with a program like Crashplan or SyncToy

[Bill Bumface]

You can enable the USB on the back of your DNS-323 to let you attach an external drive. Set up a cron on the DNS-323 to back up onto the external drive at whatever interval you want.