Home / business backup and storage solution

[heatemyfather]

Anyone looking for a good backup solution or just an extension of their computer hard drive might want to check out the Netgear ReadyNAS range of Network Attached Storage RAID devices.

I got the ReadyNAS Duo with two 1TB hard drives, configured for mirroring this gives me 925GB of storage with redundancy, so if one of the hard drives should fail I can simply replace it and not lose any data.

The Duo handles all the mirroring automatically, all I do is connect to it and mount as a network share, then use it as I would any other hard drive or folder.

As this device sits independently on my home network I don't need to have my computer switched on to access it via the internet or from another computer on the home network, my files are always available to me where ever I may be. It can also be accessed from many different computers simultaneously.

This setup was not cheap - at just over £500 for the whole setup - but as I've only managed to use 22% of the space so far after backing up my laptop and main computer, I can't see the free space disappearing any time soon!

Compare this to spending £150 on a stand-alone 1TB external hard drive - if it dies you've just lost about 1TB of files, ouch, and once you do fill it up then what? Buy another? Buy a larger hard drive and copy 1TB of data through a USB2 port? That could take a very long time indeed!

With the ReadyNAS setup I can easily take out one of the hard drives and replace it with a larger one, the unit will automatically sync my data to it, then I can insert a second hard drive of the same size and my data is synced again, and I'm done. I can also take one of my hard drives and put it in a larger ReadyNAS unit if, for example, I want to upgrade to 6TB or 12TB, my data will automatically sync and I can change the RAID mode to give me more hard drive space with some degree of redundancy (over five hard drives of equal size). Syncing does take several hours for 1TB, but it can do this overnight without any need for a computer being left on.

What's more, the hard drives are hot-swappable which means that there's no interruption to file access: the hard drives can be pulled out one at a time and replaced while the unit is running.

Considering how much RAID units can cost, I think the price of this unit (which is barely larger than the two normal 3.5" hard drives that fit inside it) is very good indeed, the hard drives I used were Enterprise grade which means that they are much more reliable than the normal cheaper consumer grade ones.

I likes my quality, I do!

Find out more on the Netgear website.

[canuckbid]

Hello. I agree that a backup is a good idea. I just listed one that will not stay in stock long. It's a good unit.
http://ca.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...810&mo=auction

How big of a backup do you want though? If a 1.5T HDD crash's, that would be a pile of data lost.

[heatemyfather]

Hello. I agree that a backup is a good idea. I just listed one that will not stay in stock long. It's a good unit.
http://ca.nine.ebid.net/perl/auction...810&mo=auction

How big of a backup do you want though? If a 1.5T HDD crash's, that would be a pile of data lost.

That looks like a nice little drive, good for regular backups, but I would say the thing to do with a drive like that is to connect it up and do the backup then disconnect and put it somewhere safe until the next backup.

I think people tend to make the mistake of keeping an external backup hard drive permanently connected, which leaves it open to the same dangers their internal hard drive faces, e.g. accidental erasure, file corruption, virus attack or just simple wear and tear.

My ReadyNAS is only on when I want to use it, and it has redundancy so if one of the hard drives dies the other one still contains a copy all of my data, which is always up to date.

[kengillam]

Keeping backups 'offsite' is really a good idea if the house burns down you don't want the drive going as well, keep it hidden in the garden shed or something.

[heatemyfather]

Keeping backups 'offsite' is really a good idea if the house burns down you don't want the drive going as well, keep it hidden in the garden shed or something.

There are online backup services available now, although I've always been a bit dubious as to the security and reliability of such things. It's kinda like asking your bank to look after your money... ;-)

[gazlannathai]

A number of web hosting companies are now offering combo hosting and online storage deals - such that you might get, for example, 100GB of web hosting space and 250GB of online backup storage that you can use for both your hosting data and your own computer's backup space.