I've got a lot of hard disks - 2Tb or so, filled with movies, pictures, music, etc. Some of it is backed up - the pictures for instance and much of the music. Data as well, though that is not much storage. But most of it - the bulk of the movies and music - are just sitting ducks on 6 externals (200 - 500gb drives) and a few internals on different machines.

I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet and set up a more formal storage system. Right now, I just have a backup program moving new pictures and data to an external 500gb. I'd like something bigger and with some redundancy, as one of these drives will fail soon.

I've looked at Drobo and other RAID solutions. The nice thing about the drobo is that you can add different sized drives on the fly. On the other hand, it is $500 just for the box.

RAID is nice, of course, but is also expensive. I could buy a few 750gb drives and just mirror everything as well.

Anyone else have any large-scale backup systems they like?

[forums.macresource.com]

---

----

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs [fakesteve.blogspot.com]

Sorry...

If you buy a Drobo-use the code cali for $50 off and help support uber Mac girl Cali Lewis from [www.geekbrief.tv]

Quote
Ken Sp.
If you buy a Drobo-use the code cali for $50 off and help support uber Mac girl Cali Lewis from [www.geekbrief.tv]

....just what I need. Some cute geek girl who wants me to be her sugar daddy.

You know, I just read that whole RAID / Infrant NAS / Drobo thread, and I still don't have any clear answers. Seems like both have pluses and minuses. Both are expensive.

whats your budget?

---

----

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs [fakesteve.blogspot.com]

I built my own. About $100-150 for used PC parts plus hard drives, and hacked a copy of Windows XP to allow software RAID5 (very simple hack, it's all over Google). Hard drives are the bulk of the total cost. I've built two of them, 3TB and 4.5 TB, and with enough cooling built in, they've been very solid. You don't need much computing power for personal server use (even HD video playback), an 867MHz Pentium 3 is plenty.

Quote
volcs0
You know, I just read that whole RAID / Infrant NAS / Drobo thread, and I still don't have any clear answers. Seems like both have pluses and minuses. Both are expensive.

Exactly.

If you're a mac user, and you go down the road of curiosity about RAIDs and backup Appliances, it's a road to hell, a very time-consuming research project awaits you with few satisfying conclusions. There are no easy answers or sensible bargain solutions. All involve either compromises, complications, or sheer cash.

Riddled with paradoxes, too.

Why not just back up to a giant external drive? One might ask. Well, because it's not secure, there's no redundancy. The risk that your boot drive AND the external hard drive will fail is enough of a concern that you're backup isn't fully and completely secure.

But if that's true, and you set up a RAID or mirror situation between 2, or 4 or 4 hard drives in some sort of single external enclosure, then the risk that some OTHER part of that system (hardware enclosure, cable, card, adapter, or software, etc.) will fail also increases. You now have a lot more "stuff" engaged in the backup and recovery process. Now the hard drives are about the only thing that is secure, because you now have redundancy, because you have to have multiple hard drives serving this goal.

To have network-attached storage that is secure but very slow, you can get by on a pair of mirrored drives. To have a NAS that's secure but fast, you have to have 4 or 5 drives. It's a costly proposition.

And many of the appliance products that do this aren't really aimed at mac users. Many of the NAS Storage solutions run Windows, or Linux, and stuff like that, not impossible to adapt to a mac, but not an ideal solution, either.

To get the best results, really, you'd need to take an old mac and just dedicated it as a RAID server, running OS X. Build one yourself, so to speak. RAID card, SATA drives, old G4 Tower, stuffed full of HDs in a RAID configuration. If you already HAVE an old G4 lying around, that could be a fun project...

For myself, after asking around here, I'm doing research into the latter. Build my own. For the amount of data you have that you want to protect, it might not be a bad idea to look into that option, too.

Or, something simpler like really big (large capacity) external hard drives, and do multiple backups, back up to more than one destination (and maybe store one of them off site)

Apple's "Time Capsule", the new Airport Extreme base station w/Time Machine (up to a Terabyte of storage built in) isn't perfect either, but it's a step in the right direction. A quiet, low-profile, smart appliance that can serve as an "always-on" backup destination. It doesn't have redundancy built in (only one HD) but it has the advantage of being by and for mac users, in the form of a simple multi-use, multi-purpose appliance. I hope to see more development in this direction. Better home solutions for mac users.

Thanks for the detailed thoughts.

Right now, I have attached to my G5: one 4-bay external and four single drive externals.

I'd like to have a 2Tb solution (final size) with redundancy. 5x500gb = $400 - figure about $80 each for a 500gb SATA if I find a good deal somewhere.

That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

Is that a solution? I have several PCs laying around (and a G4 Mac tower, for that matter)...

Would that be a $500-$600 2Tb RAID?

Quote
volcs0
That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

And when it fails, what are you going to do? Hope to find an identical one and put your drives in there? One of the issues at hand is replacement options. It will fail, it's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend your time tracking down some obscure box, or do you want to know that a replacement part will be fairly easy to find?

Not all RAIDs are created equal. If you do a RAID5 and the controller dies, so you put a different controller in, there's a good chance it wont read your old data.

In my mind, the options that will get you the best Mac support, be easiest to replace and offer you the most features for the cost are the Linksys/Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ or rolling your own from a Mac.

---

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guitarist, that was a detailed, yet simple explanation of alternatives. Thanks!

Regarding the AirCapsule, since it has a USB port, what about attaching a RAIDed box to it of say 4 HDs, (1+1) + (1+1), so you have speed and redundancy?

(I don't know what those two RAID schemes are called. RAID X + RAID X = RAID 5?)

---

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

There is no safety for honest men
except by believing all possible evil
of evil men.

I *love* Sigs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
RAMd®d
guitarist, that was a detailed, yet simple explanation of alternatives. Thanks!

Regarding the AirCapsule, since it has a USB port, what about attaching a RAIDed box to it of say 4 HDs, (1+1) + (1+1), so you have speed and redundancy?

(I don't know what those two RAID schemes are called. RAID X + RAID X = RAID 5?)

I'd question the speed part. Keep in mind, it's connected via USB2 port, not eSATA or anything like that, and it's going through your home network, not connected directly to your computer, so it's got that too. I don't know how much headroom that involves, or how fast a pipeline that would be, but it's essentially just a USB-connected external device on a home network at that point, even if it is a RAID. I wouldn't rule it out, but I'd have questions about it.

Also, the Time Capsule isn't built with the notion of the consumer accessing its internal HD either, it's like a lot of Apple appliances, it's sealed up. Not impossible to crack open, but not designed for customers to be easily opening and closing it.

With that in mind, and the fact that you're BYO external device and drives, not depending on the Time Capsule's built-in internal storage, you wouldn't necessarily benefit (and it costs considerably more) from the purchase of the upcoming Time Capsule. Just the Gigabit-enabled Airport Extreme Base Station would do, which already has the option of connecting an external USB drive. If you're in the market for a new Airport Express Base Station anyway, it's something to consider.

But again, your backup device is going through both your home's ethernet network AND the Base Station's USB2 port. Is that fast? Or slow? I don't know. I'd be interested in any reports from people using this feature, I'd like to hear how fast or slow it is.

*one more update: also, the Time Capsule (Airport Base Station with internal storage built-in) is REALLY designed to be a seamless hardware companion to Leopard's new "Time Machine" software.

There's been some debate about whether or not it's flexible enough to allow other uses, too, like use-your-own backup software, and if you can just bypass the Time Machine program and use it for anything you want, like storing media. The latter is true, from what I understand, you can use it for storage or media or other stuff, not just Time Machine.

Also, here's a cool resource if you haven't seen it yet, for people who have questions like we do, and are interested in appliances, solutions, reviews, links, etc.

[www.smallnetbuilder.com]

I just started reading this last week, it is a deep reservoir of info about all this kinda stuff.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2008 04:17PM by guitarist.

Excellent points, g.

Thanks again.

---

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

There is no safety for honest men
except by believing all possible evil
of evil men.

I *love* Sigs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
volcs0
Thanks for the detailed thoughts.

Right now, I have attached to my G5: one 4-bay external and four single drive externals.

I'd like to have a 2Tb solution (final size) with redundancy. 5x500gb = $400 - figure about $80 each for a 500gb SATA if I find a good deal somewhere.

That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

Is that a solution? I have several PCs laying around (and a G4 Mac tower, for that matter)...

Would that be a $500-$600 2Tb RAID?

If you're going to build a PC-based RAID server for your backup solution, then you've struck gold considering that you might be able to score that RAID box for less than its $275 retail price, as it's listed in the manufacturer's website...not a bad deal at all, but I've never been one to trust my data to PC-based anything.

I run a RAID 0-based Mac workstation, with this RAID 0 system here, a FirmTek SeriTek system with 4 E7K500 Enterprise 500GB HD's, a 2TB RAID 0 system with my Leopard OS, and all major applications on it for my business use, and personal use:

[firmtek.com]

Bootable, it runs my Dual Core 2.3Ghz G5/8GB RAM/BT/AE (etc) via 2 PCI-Express 2SE-2E bus masters, and retains zero data daily, so all I really have to backup on my RAID are the applications themselves, Entourage (calendar, mail, etc), the OS, and part of my home folder...which I'll get to in a minute. That's less than 250GB total, so I have one dedicated FireWire external HD (750G that Time Machine uses for hourly, daily, weekly and monthly backups of everything on the RAID 0 so that's covered fully, and everything that's not OS or application-based (iTunes, other external HD's etc) is excluded from Time Machine backups.

Inside the G5 are two Hitachi A7K1000 1TB SATA II HD's, one with Leopard, one with Tiger 10.4.11, and they are used for various tasks that come up, and/or storage of personal projects like iDVD/iMovieHD or Aperture/Photoshop PS3 things that I'm working on that I don't want on the 2E-EN4 system.

iTunes is a separate entity, a huge volume of music and videos with my Apple TV library included, so that's on a dedicated FireWire 800 2TB HD set up in another RAID 0, a Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II 2TB HD. How do I back that up? Simple really. Every time I make a new Apple TV movie or add music to iTunes, it goes into the My Book Pro iTunes Library first, then I back it up on a separate OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro HD, a 2TB (2 A7K1000 Hitachi 1GB HD's) where iTunes is totally backed up.

Everything client-based, my actual work files daily, are backed up into a 2TB FirmTek SeriTek eSATA 2-Bay 2SEN2 enclosure (2 Hitachi A7K1000 1GB HD's), which runs off a 3rd 2SE-2E bus master in the G5. When I'm actually transporting valuable files and projects off to clients I have a second 2SEN2 enclosure ( 2 Hitachi E7K500 500GB HD's) that's my portable storage system, unless the client doesn't have eSATA, in which case I use either of 4 spare (Seagate ATA/100 750GB 7200.10 HD's) FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosures, all AMS Venus DS3 Oxford 911-TQ-A-based chipset units.

I don't have any fancy theories about backing up with Retrospect, have given up La Cie's SilverKeeper for Time Machine's coverage, but I think I am completely covered with the above systems. Does it all cost $600? Hardly, but it's all Mac OS-based storage with top-drawer HD's and enclosures, and I personally wouldn't have it any other way. I still have a lot of spare HD's other than the above, more 400GB and 500GB FireWire/USB 2.0 enclosures that are used for the odd thing that comes up, but I think one has to put a high price on serious backup, use the best products available, and stay away from PC-based systems if you really value your work, your personal data, and the entertainment and media that has become so integral to today's lifestyles, like an Apple TV-based media center of huge proportions like mine.

Good luck, and I hope you can find a Mac OS-based storage and backup system that works for you. It all depends on how much value you place on your data, entertainment, and media, but my recommendation is to stick with Mac-based backup systems.

___________________________________

---

What's the difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make some sense.

Quote
rexrzer

...not a bad deal at all, but I've never been one to trust my data to PC-based anything.

... you might be surprised how many of the middle tier enterprise storage solutions actually have a windows variant on their backends. ;-)

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
volcs0
That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

And when it fails, what are you going to do? Hope to find an identical one and put your drives in there? One of the issues at hand is replacement options. It will fail, it's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend your time tracking down some obscure box, or do you want to know that a replacement part will be fairly easy to find?

Not all RAIDs are created equal. If you do a RAID5 and the controller dies, so you put a different controller in, there's a good chance it wont read your old data.

In my mind, the options that will get you the best Mac support, be easiest to replace and offer you the most features for the cost are the Linksys/Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ or rolling your own from a Mac.

This is exactly why I went with software RAID for my DIY. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but at least I don't have to worry about getting a particular piece of hardware to recover if I have a failure. Would have used Linux or FreeNAS, but I didn't have the patience to learn the former and the latter was too unstable. The hacked-XP option turned out to be pretty simple, and it's a lot easier to deal with since Leopard fixed the lingering SMB transfer issues in OS X 10.4.

Why not use two of these?

[eshop.macsales.com]

And fill them with 1TB drives? Take a hammer to your other externals.

---

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MacBook 2.2GHz Core2Duo SR, 4GB ram, 120GB HDD, 8x SuperDrive
PowerMac G4 Cube 450MHz, 1.25GB ram, 128GB HDD, 5x DVD-ROM

Quote
Will Collier

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
volcs0
That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

And when it fails, what are you going to do? Hope to find an identical one and put your drives in there? One of the issues at hand is replacement options. It will fail, it's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend your time tracking down some obscure box, or do you want to know that a replacement part will be fairly easy to find?

Not all RAIDs are created equal. If you do a RAID5 and the controller dies, so you put a different controller in, there's a good chance it wont read your old data.

In my mind, the options that will get you the best Mac support, be easiest to replace and offer you the most features for the cost are the Linksys/Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ or rolling your own from a Mac.

This is exactly why I went with software RAID for my DIY. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but at least I don't have to worry about getting a particular piece of hardware to recover if I have a failure. Would have used Linux or FreeNAS, but I didn't have the patience to learn the former and the latter was too unstable. The hacked-XP option turned out to be pretty simple, and it's a lot easier to deal with since Leopard fixed the lingering SMB transfer issues in OS X 10.4.

Software RAID can still have the same problems, especially on Windows. And by using using SMB doesn't work for everyone, especially those who want to backup their iTunes library.

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I think it all comes down to how much time you want to put into this project. If you put a price on your time then building your own RAID isn't that much cheaper than buying a dedicated device.

Buy a Drobo or Infrant device and you're done. You have your RAID.

The biggest differences between the Drobo and the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ -

Infrant is $500 more.
Infrant has ethernet rather than usb.
Infrant is 3x faster.

---

I'm very happy with my drobo and the data security it provides. While a speed boost would be nice, its not worth $500 to me.

---

Quote
mattkime
Infrant is $500 more.
Infrant has ethernet rather than usb.
Infrant is 3x faster.

$500 more? Was there are recent Drobo price drop? If they're going for $299 now, that's pretty sweet. As of a week ago, they were $200 less than the ReadyNAS NV+ and their NAS attachment was $200.

The Infrant also offers Apple File Sharing, unlike the Drobo. It also has more expansion options than the Drobo. Lots of other bonuses too.

But if the Drobo is going for $299 now, that makes it much more worth it.

Quote

If you put a price on your time then building your own RAID isn't that much cheaper than buying a dedicated device.

Depends on what you build. The expandability and many other features that building my own NAS offers, was well worth my time even at $150/hr. Someone can roll their own in under an hour.

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Is the Dobro really USB only? A device that's USB-only seems sort of limited.

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
Will Collier

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
volcs0
That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

And when it fails, what are you going to do? Hope to find an identical one and put your drives in there? One of the issues at hand is replacement options. It will fail, it's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend your time tracking down some obscure box, or do you want to know that a replacement part will be fairly easy to find?

Not all RAIDs are created equal. If you do a RAID5 and the controller dies, so you put a different controller in, there's a good chance it wont read your old data.

In my mind, the options that will get you the best Mac support, be easiest to replace and offer you the most features for the cost are the Linksys/Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ or rolling your own from a Mac.

This is exactly why I went with software RAID for my DIY. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but at least I don't have to worry about getting a particular piece of hardware to recover if I have a failure. Would have used Linux or FreeNAS, but I didn't have the patience to learn the former and the latter was too unstable. The hacked-XP option turned out to be pretty simple, and it's a lot easier to deal with since Leopard fixed the lingering SMB transfer issues in OS X 10.4.

Software RAID can still have the same problems, especially on Windows. And by using using SMB doesn't work for everyone, especially those who want to backup their iTunes library.

What do you mean about backing up an iTunes library? Copying the files certainly isn't a problem, do you mean backing up a library and then playing from the backup version? I don't have any trouble playing back video over SMB using Front Row, but I haven't tried running anything from the SMB servers over iTunes.

As far as I can see, the Drobo's are $400-$450ish, depending on coupons, and it costs more for the DroboShare.

With the Infrant, can you add drives of different sizes? I ask because if I got a Drobo, I could just start with drives I have here laying around. But if I got an Infrant, would I need to start by buying 4 large same-size drives?

I agree, time=money. But if I invest $800-$1500, I want to make sure I am making a really good decision that will last many years, though many upgrades.

>>Is the Dobro really USB only? A device that's USB-only seems sort of limited.

Yes, but the device is rather slow so it isn't much of a limitation. Unless you needed ethernet access.

>>But if the Drobo is going for $299 now, that makes it much more worth it.

Agreed. That was a price offered to current drobo owners and i'm not sure if its good anymore. Perhaps generous forum members were consider sharing.

---

I do have a G4/500 Tower sitting here - doing nothing. I also have a PC, not doing much - was going to donate the PC to my kids' school. I will look into options for using the G4 as a RAID server... maybe that's the best option.

Quote
volcs0
I do have a G4/500 Tower sitting here - doing nothing. I also have a PC, not doing much - was going to donate the PC to my kids' school. I will look into options for using the G4 as a RAID server... maybe that's the best option.

Then you have an advantage. Excluding the SATA HDs themselves, you're only a few hundred bucks from your goal.

I want to do the same thing, but am going to get a donated to me, or purchase, if necessary, on CL or eBay, a G4 Tower to do the same thing.

As for the RAID card, Highpoint's RocketRAID the one recommended for what we're trying to do:

[eshop.macsales.com]

Quote
guitarist

Quote
volcs0
I do have a G4/500 Tower sitting here - doing nothing. I also have a PC, not doing much - was going to donate the PC to my kids' school. I will look into options for using the G4 as a RAID server... maybe that's the best option.

Then you have an advantage. Excluding the SATA HDs themselves, you're only a few hundred bucks from your goal.

I want to do the same thing, but am going to get a donated to me, or purchase, if necessary, on CL or eBay, a G4 Tower to do the same thing.

As for the RAID card, Highpoint's RocketRAID the one recommended for what we're trying to do:

[eshop.macsales.com]

I only see one PCI card there - and it only does RAID-0 and RAID-1 and only connects two drives... is that enough?

Oh - I see the PCI-X cards are backward compatible to the 33Mhz PCI slots on the Powermac G4. They are also $249/$295.

Quote
volcs0
Oh - I see the PCI-X cards are backward compatible to the 33Mhz PCI slots on the Powermac G4. They are also $249/$295.

That's the one. I'm thinking of grabbing one myself.

Quote
guitarist

Quote
volcs0
Oh - I see the PCI-X cards are backward compatible to the 33Mhz PCI slots on the Powermac G4. They are also $249/$295.

That's the one. I'm thinking of grabbing one myself.

So, I'm curious, if the card is $300 (new) and a Drobo is $450 (or less) - is it only the $150 you're saving? It seems to me that $150 is a small price to pay for 2008 technology and the ability to add different sized drives, not having to learn about how to set up and configure a RAID, etc. Is there something else?

Quote
Will Collier

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
Will Collier

Quote
M A V I C

Quote
volcs0
That leaves finding a RAID solution. I see this:
[cgi.ebay.com]

And when it fails, what are you going to do? Hope to find an identical one and put your drives in there? One of the issues at hand is replacement options. It will fail, it's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend your time tracking down some obscure box, or do you want to know that a replacement part will be fairly easy to find?

Not all RAIDs are created equal. If you do a RAID5 and the controller dies, so you put a different controller in, there's a good chance it wont read your old data.

In my mind, the options that will get you the best Mac support, be easiest to replace and offer you the most features for the cost are the Linksys/Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ or rolling your own from a Mac.

This is exactly why I went with software RAID for my DIY. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but at least I don't have to worry about getting a particular piece of hardware to recover if I have a failure. Would have used Linux or FreeNAS, but I didn't have the patience to learn the former and the latter was too unstable. The hacked-XP option turned out to be pretty simple, and it's a lot easier to deal with since Leopard fixed the lingering SMB transfer issues in OS X 10.4.

Software RAID can still have the same problems, especially on Windows. And by using using SMB doesn't work for everyone, especially those who want to backup their iTunes library.

What do you mean about backing up an iTunes library? Copying the files certainly isn't a problem, do you mean backing up a library and then playing from the backup version? I don't have any trouble playing back video over SMB using Front Row, but I haven't tried running anything from the SMB servers over iTunes.

...Just now saw this.

Copying the files is almost a guaranteed problem for iTunes libraries. The chance of the library being incompatible with SMB grows with the size of the library.

The problem is that iTunes, by default, uses the CDDB to get track names when ripping files. If a file contains a single quote, double quote... or any other of very common characters used in song names, that track will fail to copy over SMB.

---

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