Best Solution for Backing up a NAS

[cuzed2]

I am planning to put approximately 10Tb of movie and music media on to a 4- bay NAS (with 4 x 4Tb Red drives) configured as RAID5 or RAID10.

I have been advised that I should have one additional level of backup should the NAS box become problematic. With these RAID configurations I don't understand the need for another layer of backup? Or perhaps the need for this add'l layer of back-up varies with the brand of NAS that is selected?

I'm a newbie to NAS and networking, and welcome all suggestions

 

[kanewolf]

RAID only protects from disk failure. Data can be lost for lots of reasons. If you accidentally delete a file RAID offers no protection. Backups provide protection from multiple types of data loss. If you have a fire, RAID and on-site backups may not protect. Off-site backups for truely critical data (like home movies) should be included in your disaster planning.

You have to decide what the tolerance for loss. Is it inconvenient because you have to re-rip a DVD or is it irreplaceable because it was a single copy of a home movie.

 

[USAFRet]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from cuzed2 : "10~12 TB data drive on an older DELL XPS-7100"

I need to find a backup solution for my large media library that is currently housed on 2 external USB portable hard drives drives. Is it possible to put a 2nd LARGE data drive 10Tb to 12Tb into an older windows 7 machine (a DELL XPS 7100 with an AMD processor)?

1. Kudos for delving into the backup thing.

2. I should think that wold work.

But...a backup IN the PC isn't much of a backup. A virus that hits the PC also hits that drive.

1) I'm actually planning to move my media collection from the 2 portable drives to a 4-bay NAS (RAID5 or RAID10).

2) I am having a hard time fully understanding the advice >>> "One should have an additional level of backup should the NAS box fail " ?

I understand a 2nd drive in the PC for backups might not be ideal for the additional backup, however I have looked at cloud storage and found it to be an expensive option. Open to all suggestions

1) I'm actually planning to move my media collection from the 2 portable drives to a 4-bay NAS (RAID5 or RAID10).

2) I am having a hard time fully understanding the advice >>> "One should have an additional level of backup should the NAS box fail " ?

I understand a 2nd drive in the PC for backups might not be ideal for the additional backup, however I have looked at cloud storage and found it to be an expensive option. Open to all suggestions

2. I have a mostly 3 level backup.
What is in the PC
Which gets backed up to the NAS nightly
Which gets backed up to another single drive of sufficient size, once a week. And this drive is offline, except during that once a week backup.

That is for things I really care about.
The movie and music lib are only 2 level...in the NAS and on its weekly backup.
And still other things are also in a geographically separated drive. In a desk drawer at work. 4th level.


Read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

Thank You - makes sense to me

 

[Jwpanz]

Raid10 is great for backing up information by spreading it around to every disk. However, if the entire NAS box were to fry and kill every disk then you would be left without a paddle. The likelihood of that happening are extremely slim provided you have the proper power backup systems in place and keep the NAS somewhere safe.

If you did want to create some sort of backup for all of your data then you would have to use some other sort media to backup your data to or use a web service. However, using a web service sort of defeats the idea of a personal NAS.

 

[Solandri]

As stated above, RAID only allows you to keep accessing the data even if a disk fails. It doesn't prevent you from accidentally deleting or overwriting a file, or ransomware from encrypting all your files.

My NAS is the same size as yours. Due to the largest HDD on the market at the time being 8 TB, I bought a cheap RAID box by Sans Digital so I could use multiple drives to backup my NAS. Several other companies make them too, but you're not going to be using it as RAID so there's little point paying too much for it. The Sans Digital one has a JBOD mode, which makes all the drives you put into it appear as one big drive, but doesn't split the data up across each drive like RAID 0 does. It just stores the data sequentially on each individual drive. If a drive dies, I only lose the files backed up to that one drive. The idea being that I'll notice the drive failure during a backup, so I'll still have the original files on my NAS. (My most important files are backed up again to a smaller external drive, and in the case of photos to my Amazon account - they give you free unlimited photo storage if you subscribe to Prime.)

Raid10 is great for backing up information by spreading it around to every disk. However, if the entire NAS box were to fry and kill every disk then you would be left without a paddle. The likelihood of that happening are extremely slim provided you have the proper power backup systems in place and keep the NAS somewhere safe.

The likelihood of that happening is actually a lot higher than you'd think. You could droop your NAS while moving it. Your house could catch on fire and burn down. A lightning strike could fry all the drives at once. Redundancy protects against independent failures (a single drive dying by itself). But if a single failure hits all your redundant drives at once, then redundancy offers no additional protection.

People forgetting that redundancy doesn't protect against common failure modes led to the Challenger disaster (designers responded to o-rings leaking by adding more o-rings, which did no good when the launch temperatures were cold enough that all the o-rings leaked), and the Fukushima disaster (they put all their backup generators in the same basement fed by the same fuel tank, where the tsunami flooded them all at the same time.).

 

[Deleted member 1771594]

The simplest & cheapest solution would be to buy another 10TB, connect it to your PC & copy all those files that you need to back up. You don't have critical files that need regular backup. What you have are massive amount (music & movie) files that need a duplicate copy so if something goes wrong (catastrophic hdd failure) you have a copy to use instead of rebuilding from scratch (ripping from original source).

 

[failboat]

Depends on how much you want to spend. You want to be able to rebuild your raid if you have hardware or software problems. If you use 0 or 5 your disks won't be readable unless the raid is rebuilt. If it's not rebuilt that means 100% gone. Separate pools of 1, not a raid 10, would give you redundancy and you should be able to pull any disk out a disk and read it on another computer. Your performance would be that of 1 disk, which wouldn't be ideal for movies around 2-5+Gig per hour or multiple streams off the same disk. backups are ideal with raids. If your NAS is using ZFS, google expansion limitations. It's awesome besides that. I use ZFS on proxmox and it's great.

 

[cuzed2]

The simplest & cheapest solution would be to buy another 10TB, connect it to your PC & copy all those files that you need to back up. You don't have critical files that need regular backup. What you have are massive amount (music & movie) files that need a duplicate copy so if something goes wrong (catastrophic hdd failure) you have a copy to use instead of rebuilding from scratch (ripping from original source).

Thank You!
I have been considering this option, two concerns;

1) Making sure my older Dell XPS7100 will be compatible with a 10 or 12 Tb HDD? I think it will work out as a 2nd drive for data storage only. However at ~$400 - I need to be sure. (or maybe this would be my excuse to buy a new PC with the advantage of higher speed everything, including 3.0 USB ports
2) With this large backup being installed in my PC, I'm a bit worried about it being vulnerable to a Virus. I guess I could perhaps mount in an removable drive bay, that would have the added advantage of easy removal for safekeeping in a different geographical location

 

[Deleted member 1771594]

You can just take the HDD off once you're done with the backup. It doesn't have to be connected at all times. You can hide it somewhere (inside a box) & have the peace of mind that you have a backup copy if needed.

Again in your case, no critical files but only massive files that doesn't need regular backup. Even with RAID it's no guarantee that you can recover from a catastrophic disk failure. Backup your files & hide the backup copy.

 

[cuzed2]

You can just take the HDD off once you're done with the backup. It doesn't have to be connected at all times. You can hide it somewhere (inside a box) & have the peace of mind that you have a backup copy if needed.

Again in your case, no critical files but only massive files that doesn't need regular backup. Even with RAID it's no guarantee that you can recover from a catastrophic disk failure. Backup your files & hide the backup copy.

 

[cuzed2]

Ralphort,

Thanks for your suggestions! One more A related question; I have four WD 8Tb external drives that I am "shucking" to use the WD reds for a NAS.

I am liking your suggestion of using a 10~12 TB internal drive for another layer of backup.

I am now wondering if I could install the 10~12 Tb internal HD into one of the WD enclosures and use this as a very large USB portable drive?