Large NAS, any suggestions for backup ?

mipevo6

mipevo6

Messages
2,624
Name
Martin
Edit My Images
Yes
Folks,

I just rebuilt my old faulty 4 bay NAS into a shiny new 8 bay system.

I am currently running 4 volumes in a raid config

Volume 1 =2 x 2Tb - full (I will probably copy onto Volume 4 at some point and replace with 2 x 6tb )
Volume 2 =2 x 3Tb - full
Volume 3 =2 x 4Tb - 85% full
Volume 4 =2 x 6Tb - Empty

They are mostly filled with RAW files & my music files.

I would like to back up the system just in case, but doing so onto a USB drive would require at least 8TB today and the same again soon.

I did find a seagate backup hub 8TB for about 220 which I could back up to then store off site.

Any other suggestions of potential solutions to the off site backup requirement?

Thanks in advance
 
that much data it kind of depends if you do full backups or incrementals as 8TB is huge and very slow.
possible tape solution?
 
Mr Bump said:
that much data it kind of depends if you do full backups or incrementals as 8TB is huge and very slow.
possible tape solution?
Click to expand...

The raid should be fairly bullet proof, but a nice offsite backup followed by incremental backups would be fine.

Out of touch with Tape backups, I used to fix the large corporate versions 20+ years ago :)

Time to go look at whats out there I guess.
 
what about theft? Fire? accidental damage? is that bulletproof?
 
I assume you're running 4 Raid0 arrays? To host flat Raw and music files what benefit is raid giving you? The Raw files may benefit from faster access possibly if they're large but realistically it appears to be overkill for hosting music. Have you considered splitting some arrays to double your storage instead?

With regards to backup, it will be painful running your first one but a cloud backup to a provider like Crashplan might be your best option assuming their costs for that much storage aren't astronomical!
 
Hubic do a 10TB backup cloud option which we use it is 50 euros a year.
painfull at first and does depend on a spanking good upload speed
 
Is any of your datasets more than 8TB? If not backup to external USB drives; at least 2 copies of each data set and take one copy off site. https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/433/Seagate-Backup-Plus-Desktop-inch-External-Drive/B00SJBHPYQ or similar. If you can manage smaller backups then will be less (for example archive your older images separately). Make sure you refresh your archival backups every 12 months of so. Cloud backup is another option though some of the T&C for consumer services can be restrictive or potentially loose you control of your images and commercial services are still quite expensive.

Tapes are going out of fashion in my experience except for long term archival purposes. Corporate backup is moving to drive arrays.

RAID0 gives you the benefit (if running ZFS or BTRFS) of protecting against hidden corruption / bit rot. Ideal for photographic (and music) archival purposes.
 
Last edited:
from re-reading the OP post the biggest issue to me is why keep all your stuff on a NAS?
it is ery expensive storage, needs backing up and is potentially expensive to maintain over years?

Do you need everything on there available 24/7?

I woul look at cloud archiving and hive off the stuf you just need occasional access to and just work with say the last 6months of live client data etc?

with fast broadband anything you want can be back local in an hour.
 
Wow lots of great replies that really get me thinking.

Some answers to various questions:-

1) I do tend to go backwards and forwards to many of the files across the years and access them from multiple machines hence wanting them to be online
2) Often access is from a laptop so doesn't have expandable storage to take multiple disks
3) Managing multiple USB drives is a PITB in windows especially as Windows is unable to manage you swapping disks in and out without messing up drive letters.
4) Cloud storage looks to be a pain due to the upload speeds (most appear to throttle upload and download)
5) Raid does at least protect from a drive failure (yes I have had this happen)
6) I asked the question in the first place exactly because I want offsite backup as I realise Raid is for availability not backup.

So all that above, some kind of hybrid might be best

1) Don't expand the NAS beyond where it is at (I have multiple users over multiple machines so it keeps it available)
2) Store the older least accessed stuff on cloud (I have Amazon Prime so get free photo storage but it appears only from 1 directory)
3) Backup the recent stuff to a decent USB drive and get someone trustworthy to look after it

Thoughts?

Martin
 
mipevo6 said:
4) Cloud storage looks to be a pain due to the upload speeds (most appear to throttle upload and download)
Click to expand...

I use solution I advised I have BT infinity 2 and arq can max out my 20meg upload easily to amazon. It will still take some time archiving all old data if you have a lot but is definitely doable if you have a good line and easily keeps up with new stuff. I also sync all current data to one drive so I have a proper versioned backup on amazon of all data and quick access to synced data from anywhere to current and important data on onedrive.
 
That looks like a crazy set-up having all those mirrors.
And 6 TB mirrored sounds like a nightmare if both drives are the same make/model/batch. It will take you a while to resilver the raid if a disk fails, during which time you are vulnerable to losing your data if a second disk fails - which is exacerbated if both disks have been manufactured with the same flaws.

Quite honestly, with 8 bays at my disposal I would fill it with 2TB disks and put them into one RAID10 volume for ~7.3 TB of usable storage. Or RAID6 for ~11TB of usable storage. Both will withstand up to two disks failing.
If you bump up to 3TB disks, you get 10.9/16.4 TB of usable storage respectively.

With smaller disks, it will take less time to resilver the array following a disk failure, massively reducing the likelihood of you having to recover data from backup.




With regard to a backup solution, I'd build a second identical NAS, copy all the data over to it whist it's connected to the same network (seeding it), then take it to a friend or relatives house, set-up a VPN connection between your house and the remote location, and then rsync the updates across. (ZFS snapshots works beautifully for this type of thing because they offer point-in-time recovery).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top