Unplggd reader Jake had this following question:
I am a college student, majoring in game programming. Currently, I've been running out of hard drive space. I recently bought a 1tb internal hard drive for my desktop, now my overall hard drive space is around 1.6tb and I only have around 200gb left. I would like some advice in getting large amount of space for a backup hard drive. A lost of data would be a tragic situation I cannot afford. If it ever happen during finals week, I will have no choice but to repeat the classes to which I've lost data of. And, I am on a budget. No more than $250.
Hi Jake, our initial thoughts went to stand-alone, two drive external RAID enclosures, which can be had pretty cheaply right about now. Basically, they are a box in which you can plug two HD drives. The ones that we have selected for you come with 2x1TB drives, so in total, that's 2TB of storage, if you use the RAID 0 setting. Since you are worried about the security of your data, we recommend that you get a drive like this and set it to RAID 1, data-mirroring. Even if one HD fails, all of your data will be safe. Plus, this type of enclosure gives you room to grow. You can swap out the 1TB drives and change them for larger ones.
We like the FD G-Force MegaDisk, that can be bought for about $185 thanks to this link. The other one is by Calvalry and is about the same. It's available for almost the same price, but with a mail-in rebate at Newegg. The only issue is with noise. The external drives can get quite noisy thanks to the fans. There is no way around this. Of the two, the Fantom looks quite spiffy. It's got blue LEDs.
If you are good with computers and you are willing to get your hands a little dirty, then you can try setting up a RAID array inside your computer. All you need to do this is a number of hard drives and a RAID controller. RAID controllers can be had cheaply nowadays. You can find one for $30 or $40 at Tigerdirect. Then you can install two additional hard drives through this controller, and set it to RAID 1. We found two Seagate drives for you for about $90 at Tigerdirect, though in my personal opinion, I'd stick with Western Digital, if you can afford them. Their warranty is the best if you ever toast your hard drive.
From your comments, we think that the 1st situation would be best for you, since you intend to use your solution as a backup drive. RAID is the way to go to make sure that your data is safe. Sure, one HD can malfunction, but both HDs? This is extremely unlikely. [top image by Eston, via creative commons license]
I also use backblaze for offsite backup. For instance, if you had a fire or flood in your space, you'd loseeven the externals.
It'll take forever to upload your 1.6 TB of data, but backblaze (and many others, carbonite, etc) will adjust the speed of the upload so it's faster when your computer is idle.
Most of the offsite backup services also offer a next day shipment of a HD with all your data on it (for a price of course) should you lose everything on site.
view Mike T's profile
my father in law swears by an offsite/online solution. i think it's $50/year but i don't know the company. that way in case of fire or flood everything is protected.
view Joan in SB's profile
The computers in the pic are Macs, and I don't know what their backup programs do, but I assume it must have similar capabilities to Windows...
The external raid boxes are fine, especially if you have someplace further from your computer area to stash them. Alternately, if you're on more of a budget you can take pretty much any old computer and install FreeNAS on it to set up a standalone file server.
Then set up the backups to go to the NAS (Network Attached Storage) unit on a rotating basis. One full backup on Friday, with differential backups during the other days, then the next day a different file, with different dailies. That way you can protect against things like viruses and accidental deletion. Plus, if you can locate it away from your other stuff, and just connected with a network cable, you're a little more protected against fire, or even just clumsy cats and water glasses. If you set up two drives in your NAS rather than set them up in a RAID array, you could direct the rotating backup sets to different drives, so even in the event that one drive failed, you would only potentially lose up to two weeks (or whatever schedule you set up.)
view Iceberg's profile
P.S. - A NAS solution would let you locate it further from the computer than eSATA or USB/Firewire. That's why I suggested it.
view Iceberg's profile
Hi all,
I really like the RAID idea. the off location backup however is not something i would consider at the moment. Currently i am using the windows vista "previous version" feature. But it is eating up the space and needs a dedicated drive for it. I am currently saving up for the RAID double or more hard drive. I am planning to get the Fantom. originally my desktop which is an mATX, have 4 or 5 raid ports on its motherboard. after buying a video card it is now blocked and useless. thank you all for the suggestions. i would consider all of the above when i purchase my backup system.
view Mr. Programmer's profile
I saw this Western Digital 2tb MyBook on Newegghttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136281href>. Will any of you recommend it?
view Mr. Programmer's profile
I like Drobo, but it's quite expensive. The box alone costs $430, which is a lot more than the permitted budget budget. I do like the Drobo system and if money wouldn't be an issue, it's the one I recommend, using WD drives of course!
Off-site backup solutions can be costly but useful if it's appropriate. For a student, I believe that this can be easily implemented by getting an extra external HD and leaving it at your parent's place while you are at school. You can get some easy software to manage the date remotely, if that's what you want, but in essence, you'd have off-site storage without a limit in size.
view range's profile
If you don't want to do offsite/online, you could purchase a hotswap HD dock. Then you could just buy internal hard drives to use as backup which is less expensive than repeatedly buying externals.
view wunami's profile