Backup for 1TB NAS - BluRay??

[alfadog]

Got around to looking at my high-perf box and it looks like it is the mobo that went south, not the CPU as I thought. Anyway, I am on Newegg getting a new mobo (I will RMA the old one and dump the replacement on eBay) and thinking about backup for the NAS.

I have a mirrored 1TB setup and it is getting kinda full. Mostly junk but still a lot of pix and vids that I want to save. What do y'all recommend for permanent backup. I was double-burning on DVD but would like something larger.

Is BluRay a good option? Any caveats?

 

[John221us]

Hard drives are cheap. Replicate to another NAS or a local drive on a PC. If it is just file data, you could setup a Robocopy script. How are you attaching to the NAS? Are you using iSCSI and mounting the storage locally or are you using a file share?

 

[gismo]

Got around to looking at my high-perf box and it looks like it is the mobo that went south, not the CPU as I thought. Anyway, I am on Newegg getting a new mobo (I will RMA the old one and dump the replacement on eBay) and thinking about backup for the NAS.

I have a mirrored 1TB setup and it is getting kinda full. Mostly junk but still a lot of pix and vids that I want to save. What do y'all recommend for permanent backup. I was double-burning on DVD but would like something larger.

Is BluRay a good option? Any caveats?

At around 50GB per disk a TB is gonna take a big stack. If you can sort out the wheat from the chaff, you might fit on a practical number. I think there's a new format (BluRayXL) coming out with 128GB per disk, that might work pretty well.

 

[wsuffa]

I back up my NAS with a couple of 2 TB hard drives. You can get USB3 or even networked backup drives. Faster & not outrageously priced.

 

[alfadog]

Hard drives are cheap. Replicate to another NAS or a local drive on a PC. If it is just file data, you could setup a Robocopy script. How are you attaching to the NAS? Are you using iSCSI and mounting the storage locally or are you using a file share?

I have ReadyNAS Duo with mirrored 1TB drives wired to a GigE network router. I guess I could perform backups periodically to another drive but it just seems like I want something more permanent and not electro-mechanical.

 

[John221us]

I have ReadyNAS Duo with mirrored 1TB drives wired to a GigE network router. I guess I could perform backups periodically to another drive but it just seems like I want something more permanent and not electro-mechanical.

Is this for home use or a business? For home use, I wouldn't worry about it. DVD's are no more permanent than magnetic media. They all degrade over time. Your consideration should only be protection against media failure. If you want to just archive some photos or videos, that would be a good use for DVD, but it is a more selective process. Backups are for recovery. They should be fairly automated, if possible and are written regularly, so degradation is not usually an issue. When backup media fails, you replace it. If you are protecting business data, you will need offsite and multiple media destinations (not just one backup location, but at least three media sets, in case one of those fails).

For home use, weekly backups are usually adequate. For business, you typically need at least daily, but the data should really be evaluated and recovery point objects (RPOs) assigned based on business requirements.

 

[alfadog]

Is this for home use or a business? For home use, I wouldn't worry about it. DVD's are no more permanent than magnetic media. They all degrade over time. Your consideration should only be protection against media failure. If you want to just archive some photos or videos, that would be a good use for DVD, but it is a more selective process. Backups are for recovery. They should be fairly automated, if possible and are written regularly, so degradation is not usually an issue. When backup media fails, you replace it. If you are protecting business data, you will need offsite and multiple media destinations (not just one backup location, but at least three media sets, in case one of those fails).

For home use, weekly backups are usually adequate. For business, you typically need at least daily, but the data should really be evaluated and recovery point objects (RPOs) assigned based on business requirements.

This is for home and is for archiving, not regular backup. Just for pix, vids, and other files I want to keep. Have them going back at least 15 years now.

This is a whole thing, isn't it? There is really no good archival solution for digital media. My folks have pix and slides going back many decades. What are we going to have? Facebook?

 

[John221us]

This is for home and is for archiving, not regular backup. Just for pix, vids, and other files I want to keep. Have them going back at least 15 years now.

This is a whole thing, isn't it? There is really no good archival solution for digital media. My folks have pix and slides going back many decades. What are we going to have? Facebook?

I think a lifetime of good backup habits will protect you. If you keep multiple copies and replace failed media (hard drives) as they fail, you should be protected. The good news is that the pictures are digital so they won't lose quality (like a fading photograph). If you stay semi vigilant you will have your pictures with their original quality indefinitely. Disk space is cheap, so there is no real need to archive. Just replicate the data for protection. I do copy pictures up to online services as well (like Flickr, which will maintain the original resolution and size). Not so much Facebook, except for fun, as Facebook compresses and downsizes the photos. Just create a Robocopy script and schedule it to run to a couple of alternate locations once a week (AT Scheduler http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Schedule-a-task ). You can pick up a 1 TB drive for under $100 now.

 

[alfadog]

I think a lifetime of good backup habits will protect you. If you keep multiple copies and replace failed media (hard drives) as they fail, you should be protected. The good news is that the pictures are digital so they won't lose quality (like a fading photograph). If you stay semi vigilant you will have your pictures with their original quality indefinitely. Disk space is cheap, so there is no real need to archive. Just replicate the data for protection. I do copy pictures up to online services as well (like Flickr, which will maintain the original resolution and size). Not so much Facebook, except for fun, as Facebook compresses and downsizes the photos. Just create a Robocopy script and schedule it to run to a couple of alternate locations once a week (AT Scheduler http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Schedule-a-task ). You can pick up a 1 TB drive for under $100 now.

Thanks for the advice. Can't wait, though, until we have the below - lasted thousands of years with no power: