For the most part you're not, though it's probably fair to say most NAS manufacturers put working with AFP (Apple file system) at a lower priority than working with SMB/CIFS (Windows file system).
I usually set clients up with BackBlaze ( www.backblaze.com ). Unlimited storage for $50/year per computer (you can back up external disks connected to your one computer, but not multiple computers).
By default all data is encrypted on their disks but their admins hold the key. If you want your own private key you can enable that in the preferences. Just DON'T LOSE THE KEY
Go here to test the speed of your connection to their servers. I get 1.2Mbps up (and 10 down).
LaCie is a very good choice for external backup. They consistently play nice with a Mac's ability to boot and run from an external disk. Just get one with a FW800 connection if you're looking for that capability (USB is s l o w . . .)
Yeah this is the same problem with Time Machine and FileVault - huge files!
BackBlaze limits backup file size to 4G. Anything bigger is ignored (with a very short list of exceptions: iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom file bundles are backed up regardless of size).
By the way, it seems BackBlaze is also available for PCs! Cool
i had an external lacie drive. it died with all my backup data.
i now backup to tape.
Something for RAID5 fans to consider (I only use RAID1 myself):
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162
That is what I use together with Acronis True Image...
fwiw. this is my set up.
all machines run hard disks in raid 1 setup to avoid data loss through disk failure.
some data periodically backed up to tape or dvd. this is ad hoc and not very systematic.
i would like to automate the system to back up over the network to another raid 1 disk array but at the moment can't be bothered.
most important data is my email which is stored on server, and also on local clients: mobile phone, desktop, laptop.
Interesting article. I'll let you know if this ever happens to me.
Even RAID 1 is not safe if your House burns down or somebody walks off with it.
So you need to have a second copy in a at least one other location!!!!
I have a yellow slip in my pocket (from the post office for a parcel) which I hope is for my new NAS and hard drives :-) So my second NAS should soon be living and providing me with an offsite backup.
I use a RAID 1 array at home and keep an additional copy of my multimedia data at work. I usually create a new backup after each photo shoot and bring the new data to work (and take the 2nd mobile HD home).
For my normal documents I have an off-site backup using Sugarsync.
Unfortunately, networked off-site backups only work for normal docs, not for multimedia photos, videos etc. because ADSL has ridiculously low upspeeds in Switzerland - completely unusable.
Peter
I hope ADSL will work for Photo's. We have ADSL MAX which gives us 1MB upload. If not it's back to a frisby network just with bigger frisbies than the old floppy days.
I have have 'distributed' a lot of my non-critical / non-personal data which is in houndreds of GB if not over a TB
Ouch . I have a Netgear Ready NAS NV+ with RAID Version hard drives (which cost an arm and a leg). This has not had any outages yet.
I have however just bought a QNAP (TS-659) so I hope this does not have the issues you experienced. This will be filled with non-RAID drives.
for JPEGs it's bearable. Not good, but bearable. For RAWs it's impossible with 1mbit up. I have 2.5 up with Cablecom and it's still not even close to being fast enough :-/ Takes me a whole weekend to transfer a couple of gigabytes
Seriously?
I guess I'll find out soon enough. But I have often downloaded hundreds of Mb if not over a Gb in less than an hour when getting ca. 1Mb/sec downloads But that is not always the case.
The biggest data will mainly be photo's so if necessary I can just back this up manually at the second site.
I also want to transfer from Video tape (from Cam corders) then edit and want to back this up and will also burn to DVD.
Apart from the upstream, the second bottle-neck is the provider you're moving your data to. I have yet to see one that'll actually let you upload data with more than 300-400 kbit/s. I'm (very) open to suggestions here as I'd really like to be able to move my 500+ GB of RAWs offsite without the effort (and danger) of having to carry around external harddrives.
Peter
I bought a one terabyte external backup drive which I run twice a week using the free Microsoft Synctoy programme.
This free software can do a complete backup every time, or just back up files which have changed since the last backup or copy new files over without deleting anything. It is dead simple to use.
Just to be safe, I then mirror this drive to another one which is then stored in my safe.
the Synctoy is available here
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Me too. Sent it back and they sent me a new one but no data. Luckily thsi was not my only backup. This version is with a network interface but this keeps crashing, and have issues using the USB interface. So this is collecting dust right now, may just rip out the drive and use it in my SATA dock (which has e-SATA that I hope will connect to my New NAS's e-SATA).
Maybe we should exchange data
Anyone have personal experience with online backups for Linux OS?
Another backup method for your Photo's:
http://www.ifolor.ch/ They regularly have cut prices which I get told about via email.
Also why not distribute your backups to frineds and family: http://www.snapfish.co.uk/
The RAID1 is only to protect against hardware failure. It doesn't cover things like fire, theft or basic user stupidity (e.g. erasing everything on the disks).
There are several options available. Most seem to by rsync based. I found scp has some strange performance problems and when i can be bothered, i will look into using rsync or ftp for transfers.
If you're weary of carrying a drive around when you worry it might break, a more expensive solution would be to use tapes. You could potentially backup all data to a tape which is relatively robust (if a bit slow to get your data from), and have a tape drive at your source and destination locations (and most offer encryption on the fly as well...).
Not very comfortable, but uploading 500gigs will definitely take ages...
if you're moving 500gb around then hard disks might be the only sensible choice. just get an extra couple so it doesn't matter if you destroy one in transit as you always have a couple of spares.
as I always have most of my stuff on at least 3 different hard drives, I'm not worried about one of them dying on me. I'm actually a lot more worried that one might get stolen - that would be an absolute catastrophe :-/