Surely the odds of failure literally "all at the same time" are vanishingly small? If you put 3 or more disks in a RAID 5 set, it's a good idea to keep a spare disk handy so you can quickly swap out the drive with a red light and pop in the replacement. Let the RAID software rebuild the disks.
They use: Lumension Endpoint security.
I've done this with a couple of USB stick. I could also do this with a Hard drive. Have to clear the drive first, otherwise this will take forever to do.
One isssue with encryption is perfomance is affected. Not sure I want to encrypt my whole NAS though. Alternatively I could get a smaller NAS just for personal data that is encrypted and use the new NAS for media data etc..
I subscribed to Mozy yesterday - and I'm actually getting a constant 2.5 mbit/s up (the max my Cablecom connection will allow). Transferred 2.5gb yesterday in a bit over two hours. Not bad. Will still take me close to a month to get all the 500gb up but I'll do it in 5-10gb junks, saving the more important stuff first. Sugarsync will only let me upload at about 20kbit/s :-) But it's great for syncing normal documents across computes and cell phones.
Peter
Try this on your Mac:
1) Plug in the external disk
2) Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)
3) Click File > New > Blank Disk Image...
4) Type "My Encrypted Disk Image" in the Save As line.
5) Select your external disk on the left as where to save your encrypted disk image.
6) For the options at the bottom of the window:
6.1) Name: "My Encrypted Volume"
6.2) Size: select "Custom" and put in how ever big your external disk is - say 500GB. This is the maximum size the disk image will be allowed to grow to. Click Ok.
6.3) Format: leave as MAC OS Extended (Journaled).
6.4) Encryption: select 128 or 256bit (FileVault uses 128bit).
6.5) Partitions: leave as Single Partition - Apple Partition Map.
6.6) Image Format: select "sparse disk image".
6.7) Click "Create".
7) Enter a password for your encrypted disk image and choose whether or not to keep it in your Keychain. Click Ok.
Now you should see a file called "My Encrypted Disk Image.sparseimage" on your external disk, and you should also have a new volume called "My Encrypted Volume" in Finder.
Anything you copy into/out of "My Encrypted Volume" will be encrypted/decrypted on the fly. "My Encrypted Disk Image.sparseimage" will grow dynamically as you copy stuff into "My Encrypted Volume" until it reaches the size you set when you created the disk image.
When you eject "My Encrypted Volume", the volume effectively becomes locked and when you double-click on "My Encrypted Disk Image.sparseimage" to mount the disk image you will be asked for your encryption password to unlock the disk image (or, if you saved the PW in your keychain, the image will be unlocked automatically).
This is how I store all my confidential data (tho I just store it in an encrypted image on my desktop). I also use 256bit as it's more secure than 128 and still fast enough.
If any of that isn't clear you can PM me and I'll walk your through it over a remote desktop session (my fee is 2CHF/min).
My 2p worth.
I had a disaster at work where Mandatory Encryption was brought in.
This resulted in a permanent Windows BSOD
The Engineer could not retrieve anything.
Worse still, my Backup Software although it said it had been running, it DID NOT WORK, so I learnt the hard way.
So at home, I take what I think are reasonable precautions:
I use x3 500Gb hard-drives.
I manually copy all Photos/Videos ( "my life is on there" ) and other personal stuff then store one hard-drive in the Keller and 2 others around the house in different locations.
Surely our children can't destroy them all?
Ahem!
Also, I use gmail as a "repository", but I know that Mr Google could close it down at any time and nothing is guaranteed on it.
It was a Seagate/Maxtor and they have a specialist recovery company, called i365 I think, which has branches all over Europe - we went to the HQ in Amsterdam.
They got 90% of our priceless data back but at a price - GBP1200 !!
But you have little other option..
Backup backup..
NAS (network attached storage) are somewhat simple, but can be very slow and hog your network during this time.
I recommend using a USB drive dock and running the backup software (or mirroring) like syncback during your lunch break or overnight (depending on your data size). This way you can choose what you want and take the disk out an put it in your firesafe (as we all have one ) in case something goes wrong. Do this once every 2 weeks or so.
100 GB cost $10/month.
They allow to backup an unlimited amount of devices, including network drives. Their software includes options to sync the content of folders across several devices and to share data in web rooms.
Data is encrypted on the device and stored with 'zero knowledge' data encryption. The software is multi-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).
Backups are stored with de-duplication. This means that the full file content is only stored in the first backup. In any future backup of the same file only the bit-level changes are stored. It makes backups of even very large files (for example the e-mail database) very efficient.
1. I went with a RAID solution, but a small one. I'm a single-user of my own home-network so a 2-disk RAID in a RAID-1 configuration is enough (each disk holding 1 TB). (RAID 1 means that all data copied to HD #1 is automatically mirrored on HD #2. If one HD fails, the other disk will copy over all data to the new disk when it's installed). There are bigger RAID solutions that involve more hard drives, but the odds of 2 disks failing at the same time are very slim and larger solutions are usually for high-load networks (work places) + cost more.
2. I use a NAS - Network Attached Storage. In my case, a QNAP 210-TS, about 289 CHF without hard drives @ Digitec: http://digitec.ch/ProdukteDetails2.a...Artikel=176360 . RAID is automatic for NAS's, it handles all that for you. The other beauty of modern NAS'es are that they work as low-energy servers, they can do web application hosting, FTP, SSH, Bit-torrent, iTunes server, etc, and allow full configuration from a web interface. It's truly amazing. More expensive NAS options also come with on-the-fly AES encryption, in case you have data that requires it and don't want to manually encrypt those parts. QNAP has an excellent track-record as far as NAS'es go.
3. The noise level from this particular NAS is very low, low enough that any background noise will drown it out. For multi-room houses/apartments I guess it's easy to stick it somewhere else, in your "office" or such. In my case (2.5 bedroom apartment), I don't want to see it or hear it at all (I'm very noise sensitive for some darn reason), so I bought a Devolo Powerline Networking kit (basically puts your Internet connection on every power socket in your house/apartment). Costs ~190 CHF @ digitec and just "works" (and completely plug-n-play), http://digitec.ch/ProdukteDetails2.a...Artikel=176567 . The cool thing was that my basement storage area 6 floors below me (3 floors below underground) has a power socket in it, and amazingly enough it works through the whole building, through power-switches and what not, so now my NAS sits happily in a cool/dry place where no one can hear or see it (just make sure it has ample breathing room and don't put any flammables near it - just in case). So if my apartment burns down (assuming fire didn't start in the basement) I should be fine.
4. Backup software. QNAP comes with their own if you get a QNAP NAS, and it's perfectly fine despite how ugly and basic it is (and you can schedule it). The good thing I like about this particular software is that it doesn't back things up into odd file formats, it backs stuff up as-is. I prefer this as my father once backed up everything, and in the end there was something corrupted in the proprietary-format backup file, so he lost everything instead. Horrible. I recommend plain backups if you can afford the HD space (which nowadays is cheap).
5. Schedule your backups or get backup software that automatically backs up whenever a change occurs to your files. There's so many backup software flavors that I don't know where to start. The "best" for this kind of solution is that you do a full backup of all the files you care about, then tell the backup software to watch your files. Whenever a change is made, the changed file is copied to your backup location right away. That way you are very unlikely to lose data and there's no "oh crap, my last backup is 2 weeks old and no longer relevant" kind of scenario.
6. Dropbox your smaller important documents. https://www.dropbox.com/ - it's free, it's awesome, it's so easy to use. Whenever you need a file in multiple places that day, pop it into your dropbox folder and voila, it's available anywhere, even on your iPhone. You get plenty of space with the free version, and there's cheap more-space-for-money options too. And you can share folders with friends. Super way to get pictures to your parents without having to do email attachments, it's already in "their folder". I make it sound like an advertisement but it's just great and as Steve Jobs would say - "it just works".
Ok, that got long, If anyone wants more info on any of that, just PM me. I'll happily help.
Wingnut
One thing I saw which might be useful to the less technical people here is this product:
http://www.netgear.com/Landing/en-US/Stora.aspx
Claims to be easy to use and aimed at home usage, where most other devices are aimed at businesses (so need a little more know-how to setup).
Tried searching on Digitec and toppreise but no luck.
There are lots of docks around for 2.5 and 3.5 sata and pata.
I have some if needed.
Everything else is on 2 servers, mirrored. I did have RAID on the servers but decided to break this as I have 2 ..... so have more storage space (3Tb) and can tolerate a disaster (as data is stored on 3 devices).
For anyone normal, decide what you want to keep and use a cloud-based solution if it makes sense. $50 for 150Gb per year on a personal account with iDrive....nothing for you to maintain bar an internet connection
I will never touch cloud based stuff. I find the whole concept scary and it gives me out of my hands feeling. How fast is your internet connection Boxman?
Currently I have two PCs with 4 X 1 TB HDs each. Both PCs hold exactly same data. The more important data is also backed up on external HDs. Nightmare scenario would be external HDs connected to my PC and some power problem fries all 8 internal HDs along with the external ones Highly unlikely though? I am using Samsung F3 HDs here, bloody good bang for the buck.
You don't trust AES encryption?
Have you used Google Apps, Gmail and so on?
By the way, you're giving away more valuable stuff in cookies, in your searches and so on.
I do but I don't trust my internet connection or health of the HD holding the encrypted data. What happens if the company goes bust?
I know but I meant from acces to my files angle rather than privacy angle. My data is arms length from me and I don't have to rely on internet connection.