If it were me I would certainly take the price into consideration, as it all depends on what you are backing up.
If you are running a small business from home, or have documents that you can't lose then this would be a viable option.
If its just personal files/photos/media, would it not be best to buy a spindle of CDs and come up with some rotation system for backup?
It would have its benefits.
1. cheaper 2. less can go wrong 3. probably less prone to weathering (does the garage get extremely hot during the summer? 4. less enticing to any thieves 5. doesn't cost anything to run!
Maybe I'm too naïve, but I'd favour CD/DVD media as backup over a server!
J
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Chris G Sent: 24 August 2009 13:39 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:36:36AM +0100, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:34:17AM +0100, Chris G wrote:
Synaptic, Qnap and IcyBox all offer NAS servers which handle NFS as
Oops, that's Synology not Synaptic.
A little further research on Google (especially the reviews and comparisons found at www.smallnetbuilder.com) has led me to the Western Digital My Book World Edition II. Price for a 2Tb version of this is about £215, it has ssh access built in, no hacking needed, power consumption is 16 watts when active, 5 watts when idle. The performance is not quite as good as the top of the range Synology and Qnap ones but it's *way* cheaper.
£215 for a low powered Linux box with 2Tb of storage seems excellent value to me.
So I'm off to buy one and will report back when I've played with it a little (if anyone is interested).
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 01:49:24PM +0100, James Elsey wrote:
If it were me I would certainly take the price into consideration, as it all depends on what you are backing up.
If you are running a small business from home, or have documents that you can't lose then this would be a viable option.
Yes, we are a small business and one of the things that gets backed up to the garage system is the accounts etc.
If its just personal files/photos/media, would it not be best to buy a spindle of CDs and come up with some rotation system for backup?
I'm not convinced, you need a *lot* of DVDs to back up a 500Gb hard disk (yes, I know it's no all new data every week but solutions which only back up changes to removable media sound complex to me).
It would have its benefits.
- cheaper
Probably!
- less can go wrong
Hmm, my experience of writing CDs and DVDs is that *lots* can go wrong. Don't get me wrong, they work OK in general and I do copy stuff to CD/DVD, but there are often issues with compatibility, unclosed disks, etc.
- probably less prone to weathering (does the garage get extremely hot during the summer?
It's a big brick built garage with a games room above, lots of people think it's a house. So, no, in this case the garage is quite a civilised environment.
- less enticing to any thieves
But they're rather less likely to go rooting around in the garage (full of boxes of screws, old car parts, etc.) than elsewhere.
- doesn't cost anything to run!
Yes it does, among other things it costs *time*.
Maybe I'm too naïve, but I'd favour CD/DVD media as backup over a server!
J
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Chris G Sent: 24 August 2009 13:39 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] A low powered backup solution probably/possibly.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:36:36AM +0100, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:34:17AM +0100, Chris G wrote:
Synaptic, Qnap and IcyBox all offer NAS servers which handle NFS as
Oops, that's Synology not Synaptic.
A little further research on Google (especially the reviews and comparisons found at www.smallnetbuilder.com) has led me to the Western Digital My Book World Edition II. Price for a 2Tb version of this is about £215, it has ssh access built in, no hacking needed, power consumption is 16 watts when active, 5 watts when idle. The performance is not quite as good as the top of the range Synology and Qnap ones but it's *way* cheaper.
£215 for a low powered Linux box with 2Tb of storage seems excellent value to me.
So I'm off to buy one and will report back when I've played with it a little (if anyone is interested).
-- Chris Green
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At Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:58:28 +0100, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 01:49:24PM +0100, James Elsey wrote:
- less can go wrong
Hmm, my experience of writing CDs and DVDs is that *lots* can go wrong. Don't get me wrong, they work OK in general and I do copy stuff to CD/DVD, but there are often issues with compatibility, unclosed disks, etc.
CDs? DVDs? Surely these archaic technologies are long overdue for going the same way as the floppy disk? I haven't owned a system with a working optical drive for about 2 years and I haven't missed them at all.
CDs are for music and DVDs are for films. Data which must be moved goes over the internet, on cloud storage, or on removable SSDs.
On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 14:13 +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
CDs are for music and DVDs are for films. Data which must be moved goes over the internet, on cloud storage, or on removable SSDs.
Writable CDs don't seem to be a good proposition as the media seem to be rather fragile, being particularly vulnerable to temerature cycling. A week in the car seems to be pretty good at turning an audio disk that plays flawlessly into one where the player can't even read the table of contents. The drives to write the media also seem to wear out pretty quickly.
I haven't had a chance to try writable DVD for data backups - the capacity is not particularly high and I'd be nervous of the same problem as with CD.
If you have the network bandwidth to do it, backing up to a hard disk storage in a remote location seems good both in convenience and in the probable reliability of the media.
Steve.
Hi,
On 24/08/2009, Steve Fosdick lists@pelvoux.nildram.co.uk wrote:
On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 14:13 +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
A week in the car seems to be pretty good at turning an audio disk that
I haven't had a chance to try writable DVD for data backups - the capacity is not particularly high and I'd be nervous of the same problem as with CD.
You wouldn't keep a data CD/DVD in a hot sunny place like a car any more than you would splash a big bucket of cold tap water all over your motherboard/PC to "cool it down".
Don't the CD/DVD labels say not to place in a hot sunny place?
Srdjan
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 04:32:55PM +0100, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
You wouldn't keep a data CD/DVD in a hot sunny place like a car any more than you would splash a big bucket of cold tap water all over your motherboard/PC to "cool it down".
Erm, yes you would... because how would you get the mp3s onto the mp3 players disc otherwise?
Adam
On 24-Aug-09 16:06:49, Adam Bower wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 04:32:55PM +0100, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
You wouldn't keep a data CD/DVD in a hot sunny place like a car any more than you would splash a big bucket of cold tap water all over your motherboard/PC to "cool it down".
Erm, yes you would... because how would you get the mp3s onto the mp3 players disc otherwise?
Adam
Well ... just as a surgical operation inflicts a serious wound on the patient, but is done with controlled finesse so as to achieve a desired beneficial effect, so also does zapping a CD with a highly concentrated laser beam bring about extensive damage to the recording layer, but in a controlled manner, which has a desired beneficial effect.
Which is in contrast to exposing yourself to a stab-wound by wandering around your local Yobs' Mile at chucking-out time ...
Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 24-Aug-09 Time: 17:24:15 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 04:16:31PM +0100, Steve Fosdick wrote:
Writable CDs don't seem to be a good proposition as the media seem to be rather fragile, being particularly vulnerable to temerature cycling. A week in the car seems to be pretty good at turning an audio disk that plays flawlessly into one where the player can't even read the table of contents. The drives to write the media also seem to wear out pretty quickly.
I've got mp3 CD's in the car that were burnt at the same time as I got the mp3 player which was September 2003, the discs still play fine (apart from one that got scratched). Burning at a slower speed with decent media does make a big difference. If your car CD player doesn't like them then it's probably more down to the CD player laser not liking the discs I'd suggest a different media and burning at single speed.
Adam
On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 17:05 +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
I've got mp3 CD's in the car that were burnt at the same time as I got the mp3 player which was September 2003, the discs still play fine (apart from one that got scratched). Burning at a slower speed with decent media does make a big difference. If your car CD player doesn't like them then it's probably more down to the CD player laser not liking the discs I'd suggest a different media and burning at single speed.
Certainly the CD player is a factor in that writable CDs that have reached the point where they won't play in the CD player in the dashboard will play in the CD multichanger in the boot and the temperature of the dashboard CD player also seems to make a difference independent of the temperature of the disk. That said the dashboard CD player always plays the stamped disks regardless of how hot it is.
I was not saying that with care CD backups couldn't last well, i.e. if the media are good and are kept well and the equipment used is in good condition but talking about whether the media are first rate or whether the equipment is is top condition takes me back to the days of the 5.25" floppy disk when such considerations seemed to be common and unreadable disks common enough to be a fear.
My impression is that hard disks are much more reliable than any removable media I have ever used with the possible exception of SSD memory sticks for which I have not had enough use to comment.
The hazard with hard disks is that having such high capacity, on the rare occasions they do fail the effect is so much more significant which, of course, is why you want a backup copy in the first place.
Regards, Steve.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:18:29PM +0100, Steve Fosdick wrote:
I was not saying that with care CD backups couldn't last well, i.e. if the media are good and are kept well and the equipment used is in good condition but talking about whether the media are first rate or whether
You've not seen the state of me looking after things in my car ;) If they can survive that for 6 years then they are doing very well :)
Adam
Steve Fosdick wrote:
The hazard with hard disks is that having such high capacity, on the rare occasions they do fail the effect is so much more significant which, of course, is why you want a backup copy in the first place.
The issue with hard disks is that they don't cope with offline storage very well. There are a variety of issues that will effect hard drives that only happen if the drive is left stored for long periods without power.
Stiction is one that can sometimes be overcome (although a drive that has suffered it should be discarded once the data has been copied off) but also if not stored in the right conditions condensation can form on the platter surface getting in through the atmospheric breather hole.
Another issue I have just recently discovered is I have a couple of drives from circa '92 that had some data on I wouldn't mind looking at again (mostly out of morbid curiosity at old college work etc) and I have found that I can't even get a drive controller to talk to them. They spin up, these are IDE but pre "auto" setup and I don't have the bios magic (sector count etc) that they were formatted to. I'm sure that isn't insurmountable given time and effort so they have been put aside for a rainy day.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 01:42:08AM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Steve Fosdick wrote:
The hazard with hard disks is that having such high capacity, on the rare occasions they do fail the effect is so much more significant which, of course, is why you want a backup copy in the first place.
The issue with hard disks is that they don't cope with offline storage very well. There are a variety of issues that will effect hard drives that only happen if the drive is left stored for long periods without power.
Generally though all my 'backup' data stays on line, disk capacity increases as technology advances and provides the extra space required.
E.g. my new garage backup system will be 2Tb compared with the old one's 750Gb.
[snip]
Another issue I have just recently discovered is I have a couple of drives from circa '92 that had some data on I wouldn't mind looking at again (mostly out of morbid curiosity at old college work etc) and I have found that I can't even get a drive controller to talk to them. They spin up, these are IDE but pre "auto" setup and I don't have the bios magic (sector count etc) that they were formatted to. I'm sure that isn't insurmountable given time and effort so they have been put aside for a rainy day.
A classic example, I expect those disks are only a few hundred Mb and the data would fit on your existing system's disk (or backup) without you even noticing it.
Most backups are for security of *current* data rather than archive purposes aren't they? Any 'historic' data that I want to keep (e.g. photographs) I also want available live on my current system so all I need to do to keep it safe as well is to backup my current system.
Does anyone (here) actually keep old data off line? My company accounts etc. are so small (in disk space terms) that they just stay on the current system right back to 1987.
Hi,
On 24/08/2009, Chris G cl@isbd.net wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 01:49:24PM +0100, James Elsey wrote:
Yes, we are a small business and one of the things that gets backed up to the garage system is the accounts etc.
Curious - do you also have offsite backup? I think for a business, this would be extremely useful.
I'm not convinced, you need a *lot* of DVDs to back up a 500Gb hard
Yes it's a pain. Anyone know how compatible/reliable/useful dual-sided dual-layers DVDs are?
- less enticing to any thieves
But they're rather less likely to go rooting around in the garage (full of boxes of screws, old car parts, etc.) than elsewhere.
That depends on what they want to steal.
- doesn't cost anything to run!
Yes it does, among other things it costs *time*.
This is true.
Regards, Srdjan
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 02:28:33PM +0100, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Hi,
On 24/08/2009, Chris G cl@isbd.net wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 01:49:24PM +0100, James Elsey wrote:
Yes, we are a small business and one of the things that gets backed up to the garage system is the accounts etc.
Curious - do you also have offsite backup? I think for a business, this would be extremely useful.
What's curious about it? I do also do "even more offsite" backup to my account at Gradwell. The garage is fairly offsite as it's twenty yards or more from the house.
Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Yes it's a pain. Anyone know how compatible/reliable/useful dual-sided dual-layers DVDs are?
My experience is that dual layer DVD-Rs are less reliable/compatible than single layer ones.
Dual sided I don't think I have ever seen in a writable format but really unless the cost savings are huge this offers no benefit over using two single sided DVD's as you still have to split down your backup to DVD size chunks and change discs/sides manually.
Also with no label side how do you write "Plans for Evil World Domination part 1 of 6" with a marker pen on them ?
-
Adam Bower -
Chris G -
James Elsey -
Richard Lewis -
Srdjan Todorovic -
Steve Fosdick -
Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood