Topic: online data storage?

[gkatz]

anybody do this? I may want to find some place where I can backup some data if I sell my external HD's in the yardsale... shameless plug http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=138570.0

I see a few sites with "50 gb with free 14 day trial" stuff like that. is this reliable, feasible for maybe 200 gb of data? mostly flac... do the sites take a long time to recieve the data?

[Brian Skalinder]

I imagine the time it takes to send or receive data depends on your broadband speeds.

I've considered, but I always come back to:  Do I really trust someone else to safeguard my data?  Would I really have access to ALL my data if and when I need it (e.g. policy changes, out of business, etc.)?  The answer to both questions:  I don't know.  And that kind of uncertainty is unacceptable for my backup requirements.

If I did it, it would only be in addition to my regular backup plans (redundancy & backups on-site + back-ups offsite...+ online backup).

IMO, replacing external HDD backup / redundancy with online backup (which it sounds like you're contemplating) is ill advised.  Online backup in addition to local backup makes more sense, if one does it at all.

[gkatz]

yea so im looking on getting a terabyte drive, and the the online backup would only be temporary, because I have no space left on my internal harddrive to put the data on. ill borrow a friend's drive if i can.

[phanophish]

I imagine the time it takes to send or receive data depends on your broadband speeds.

I've considered, but I always come back to:  Do I really trust someone else to safeguard my data?  Would I really have access to ALL my data if and when I need it (e.g. policy changes, out of business, etc.)?  The answer to both questions:  I don't know.  And that kind of uncertainty is unacceptable for my backup requirements.

If I did it, it would only be in addition to my regular backup plans (redundancy & backups on-site + back-ups offsite...+ online backup).

IMO, replacing external HDD backup / redundancy with online backup (which it sounds like you're contemplating) is ill advised.  Online backup in addition to local backup makes more sense, if one does it at all.

I'm with Brian here.  HD storage is just too cheap not to do your own local backup.  I do use Mozy for an online & off site backup.  My scheme is this.  Primary data is on a internal drive in my PC, it is backed up locally to a external USB attached drive with a simple Xcopy batch file about once a week.  Any critical data is also backed up to Mozy on a nightly basis.  I currently have about 600GB to Mozy.  I'm comfortable with it being my off site backup as it should only be required if something catastrophic happens and my PC is stolen or house hit by tornado.

[rastasean]

I know what I'm about to say will be quite different than us storing flac masters but just follow me...

Almost all businesses/corporations use email (specifically exchange servers) and network drives. These same corporations most likely have policies to save data to network drives and all outlook psts to be stored on network drives or some form of email backup that does not store them on the actual hdd of the users machine. I believe if millions of people are willing/forced to save WORK CRITICAL DATA on network drives that they NEVER see, the idea to save FLAC masters on network drives should be obvious--it is safe.

I'll agree with Brian in that it shouldn't be used to replace one method over another but perhaps the same can be said of optical media, burn to CD & DVD.

[phanophish]

I know what I'm about to say will be quite different than us storing flac masters but just follow me...

Almost all businesses/corporations use email (specifically exchange servers) and network drives. These same corporations most likely have policies to save data to network drives and all outlook psts to be stored on network drives or some form of email backup that does not store them on the actual hdd of the users machine. I believe if millions of people are willing/forced to save WORK CRITICAL DATA on network drives that they NEVER see, the idea to save FLAC masters on network drives should be obvious--it is safe.

I'll agree with Brian in that it shouldn't be used to replace one method over another but perhaps the same can be said of optical media, burn to CD & DVD.

This logic breaks down though when you consider off site backup.  Storing a backup to a network drive is fine, but should never be a substitute for off site backup and local redundancy as well.  Any corporate IT department worth anything has multiple levels of redundancy on their corporate file shares.  Typically there is some form of RAID at the local disk level on the network shares to guard against the failure of a single hard drive.  In addition there is typically a process to get a copy of the data off site in the event of a failure of the RAID array or physical damage to the server, often a form of backup to tape or replication to a different physical site.  Think of recovery from fire, flood, finger (think delete button) or theft. 

If data is truly important and not replaceable there is no reason you should not practice the same level of care with your personal data.  I run a RAID array for much of my home storage and still keep a backup on a local USB attached drive, PLUS use Mozy for an off site backup of my photos and other important documents.  Burning to optical media breaks down real fast when you start talking about terabytes of data, even with BluRay it would take 40 discs to back up a 1 TB hard drive.  Never mind the problems of maintaining the backup set as current and remembering to get them off site.  It's all a matter of scale.  I'm assuming that anyone here is talking significant amounts of digital media, photos, flacs etc, so we are not talking a few gigs of data, but hundreds of gigs as a minimum. 

[Johnny Thunder]

So many replies to so much great info here at TTD.

A agree with phantophish on many points. One being the idea of saving to 10" 160K floppy drives. Takes too long - too many disks. Truth is, that anchent, magnetic, 10" floppy disk, packed chock full of 160 big kilobytes of data, still works today. It's magnetic storage. Those optical disks don't do nearly as well. The moment they are written they already contain errors. They depend on an error correction scheme that (I believe,) relies on checksums, to correct those errors. That data correction alogrythm info is stored on the drive's firmware, and just about the data on the disk would all be corrupt without it. (It actualy is corrupt, it's relying on what SHOULD only be relied on as a safty net.) Magnetic media is so much more stable and accurate. (read, closer to bit-perfect copies.)

Standard rotational (not SSD) disks rely on magnetic technology. So does tape backup. So do those original big floppies and Winchester drives. Physics hasn't changed. It's still better than optical technologies. (Including BluRay and HDDVD.) Storage on these magnetic drives is CHEAP too. Multiple externals is a great way to go. An e-SATA docking station makes for one or two docks in most cases, and there are two drive units available. Read, two drives in one dock both accessable concurently. Keep one of your external backups offline when the backup is done, and put it out in the shed. An airtight box with some silica gel packs is essential in that circumstance. Keep it at a trusted neigbor or family member's house. Storage unit of you pay for one of those. Safe deposit box if it's super-critical data, ect. The idea as basic and it's exact execution has many options. Detached garage? Not as good as another residence or office space, but better than nuttin'.

I say physical drives you yourself can put your hands on also, because in my world the idea here is not only to have critical data safe & available, but to be able to retrive it and access it FAST.

Definately consider a RAID 1 array in your server, main, or only machine. If the only machine available is a laptop, consider a RAID 1 external solution.

rastasean makes a great point too.

-JT

[gkatz]

thanks alot everyone for all this good info. for now I am freeing up space on my hard drives so I can have room for more phish when the fall tour comes around.
Johnny you mentioned E-sata docking stations. I am wondering if I plug my USB drive into one of these docks will the transfer rate from the dock to the laptop be in e-sata speed? I really wanted to get a new drive with e-sata capabilities, since it is 3-4 times faster than USB, in my experience.
I also may consider doing some kind of raid configuration when I get money for some new drives. should I stick with 2.5 inch drives (laptop size) if I want to do this raid thing, or will 3.5 work? my next computer upgrade will most likely be an internal SSD, once they go down in price some more. then I could take my old 2.5 drive, and maybe buy one more? can you do raid with 2.5 inch drives?

lots of questions here, but it seems like there is significant knowledge of this subject around

[phanophish]

The limiting factor in data xfer speeds is going the be the slowest connection in the chain.  So while you may have a sata drive in a dock/external housing, unless it is connected via eSata & not USB 2.0 you will see slower performance.  I have some of both.  Most of my backup stuff is connected via USB 2.0 for simplicity.  It is slower than eSata but for my purposes I'm not accessing the data on my backup HDs all that often so the performance hit is not an issue.  Esata is very simple to use and performs just like a directly connected sata drive, you just have to be sure your PC has a eSata port available or have to buy an add in card.  One other consideration is other high speed bus solutions.  USB 3.0 is just becoming widely available and is on par speed wise (technically a bit faster) with esata.  The other big player is FireWire 800, it is also very fast, but slightly slower than USB 3.0 theoretically.  In practice any of those (sata, esata, usb3.0, FW800) are roughly the same and greatly outperform USB 2.0.  IMO firewire is a dieing platform, the momentum behind USB 3.0 is greater and Firewire, if it survives will be relegated to specialized functions, mainly high end/pro video. 

My main storage archive is a Drobo.  There are a ton of other similar solutions coming to market and prices are falling fast while performance & features are being added rapidly.  I would guess in another year you could buy a really robust home data storage solution in the $150-250 range, right now they run around $500-600 plus hard drives.  But 2 years ago they were $3000. 

You can get a 2TB drive for <$100 if you shop around ( http://dealnews.com/Hitachi-2-TB-SATA-3-Gbps-Internal-Hard-Drive-for-90-after-rebate-free-shipping-/385783.html ) And for another $50 you can get a dock for 2 hard drives that will connect both via USB and eSata.  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112&cm_re=hd_dock-_-17-153-112-_-Product

[it-goes-to-eleven]

This logic breaks down though when you consider off site backup.  Storing a backup to a network drive is fine, but should never be a substitute for off site backup and local redundancy as well.

Agreed.  There is no way an online backup service - with unknown policies, finances, investors, etc - can be compared to what I think was implied with "network drives".   And even "corporate network drives" doesn't really mean much.  I can't count the times I've seen data lost on network drives, for many different reasons.  Sometimes an admin just deletes the data.

Ultimately, if the online backup company deletes your data, what are you going to do?

"WORK CRITICAL DATA" is relative...  Anyone serious about their work data has their own backups, and won't rely upon the "helpdesk" or anyone else.

[live2496]

I would get a docking station and copy your files to a 1TB eSATA drive.

I have been very happy with mine, but I did have one issue worth commenting about. I got the Thermaltake BlacX docking station. It worked great for a while with the 1.5TB Western Digital green drive. Then after some months of use, it would not give me a drive letter in Windows anymore. Windows detected the drive (new hardware) but no drive letter would get assigned. I got around the problem by connecting it directly to the motherboard of another computer with a SATA cable.

Thermaltake tells me that it is the firmware of the 1.5 and 2.0 TB Western Digital green drives and it is not their problem. And apparently my issue only occurs with USB. It works fine with the eSATA port on the docking station.

So if you get a drive and you intend to use USB stay way from 1.5 and 2.0 TB Western Digital green drives. AFAIK the black drives are ok.

Also, if you plan to use eSATA, the cable length is limited to 2 meters. USB 3.0 cable would allow for longer cable runs if that is a consideration.

Anyway, a minor annoyance, but overall I have been happy with having a 1.5 TB drive handy for archiving audio projects! That's a lot of free space. I plan on getting more. And the rule is that no data just lives on one drive.

[Scooter123]

Back Up Systems are both technical and personal.  Just follow the 3-2-1 golden rule.  3 copies, 2 back ups, 1 off site. 

I have 4tb of music.  So I have an external RAID drive with four 2tb SATA drives, hooked to the computer with a RAID Card. 

I use Folder Clone every Sunday, and it scans the two drives and figures out what to delete and what to copy in about 5 minutes, and then copies over and deletes only those folders which have changed. 

Once a month, I make a second back up on a couple 2tb SATA drives in an enclosure, which are RAIDEd, I guess by internal software.  Then once every other month make a third back up on an identical drive, and keep it offsite. 

Offsite Storage is not very practical for large data swaps, as the band width is very narrow and would take a very long time.  But if you have the time, then go for it.