Tech Bleg
So I’m very nearly done with the Big Project of ripping al of our TV and movie DVDs to hard drives for inclusion in our iTunes library. That’s almost a thousand movies and 1,500 TV episodes ranging from Ultraman to Buffy to Californication.
Having all our video accessible on any iPod, iPhone, laptop, desktop or TV in the house at the press of a button… well, it pretty much rocks.
There’s just one problem. Right now, that’s three-plus terabytes of data spread out over four daisy-chained external Firewire drive — with no backup. Yep. Three terabytes of hand-ripped DVDs with no backup. Yep. I’m one hard drive failure away from having to redo weeks and weeks worth of work.
It’s pretty obvious we need to go to some kind of RAID enclosure. It’s cheaper to buy into a standard RAID bay, but when you need to upgrade one drive, you need to upgrade all the drives. At once. And I don’t even know where the backup space would come for that kind of chore.
Then there’s Drobo. The buy-in is more expensive up front, but you can mix-and-match drive capacities, making upgrades a lot simpler (and very probably) cheaper, too. Then again, I’ve heard Drobo units have reliability problems.
Anyone have experience with standard RAID and Drobo units? I don’t mind paying a little extra up front, if it will save money and headaches later. But if Drobo isn’t reliable, then what’s the point?
Anyone have any answers? And, please, I’m blegging you, keep the comments on topic.
Been using a DROBO for 2 years now to back up all my photographs for my photography business…works like a charm, I just glance down occasionally and see all the blue/green? lights and don’t give it another thought. For what it’s worth, my computer guy installed one in his business and loves it…he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do! I would disregard the “not reliable” BS…I’ve never heard it.
I’ve been using a TeraStation NAS device from Buffalo Technologies for about a year and a half. I did have an issue with the drive firmware and had to send it back to the factory for repair, and unfortunately lost all data on the device. Fortunately, it was almost all iTunes library files, and I bought a $20 piece of software (can’t remember the name) to restore the library from an iPod.
That said, the Drobo appears to be more flexible than the TeraStation.
I’ve got a Netgear (formerly Infrant) ReadyNAS NV. They allow you to expand your RAID array by replacing each drive with a larger one, one at a time, and letting it synchronize the new drive to the array. After replacing the last drive, it can expand the volume to the new capacity in the background, without requiring you to copy your data somewhere else. I have yet to actually try this myself, though.
I don’t have any experience with them myself, but I believe that Thecus and QNAP also make NAS boxes that allow online RAID expansion.
Depending on your budget, either a Netgear ReadyNAS NVX or Pro. Use your existing firewire externals to back up the RAID periodically, that way if a drive dies, you can quickly recover.
You want as many drives as you can possibly get, hence, if the ReadyNAS Pro is an option, go that route and load it with six drives. Recovering a RAID 5 with a small number of disks is not always possible, nor is it anywhere near fun or quick. RAID 5/6 with six drives is a much more recovery-friendly option.
I’m not familiar with Drobo specifically, but my advice with RAID systems in general is to be sure the company that makes the enclosure or controller is going to be around for awhile, RAID systems (usually) do a great job of giving you lots of storage and protecting you against one or two disc failures, but the “array” itself is almost never portable between different brands of enclosures / controllers. So if you enclosure or controller dies, you would have to replace it with one of the same brand (and hope that brand does a good job with compatibility). Some companies are very good about this; some are not. And of course if all else fails you can always try to buy a unit identical to your old one on eBay.
I’m not terribly familiar with the enclosure manufacturers, but some controller brands I’ve had success with are: Adapted, Areca, LSI, and 3Ware.
Hope this helps!
Oops… That’s Adaptec, not Adapted (stupid auto-correct). I’m using an Adaptec RAID 51645 in my home server (but I need lots of storage and performance), and a lower-end Areca controller in my desktop PC (if I was going to rebuild my desktop today I’d just use a big SSD instead – cheaper and just as fast).
I’ve had some seriously bad experiences with cheap RAID controllers over the years. If it’s worth the effort to go with RAID, then your data’s too valuable to risk it with something off-brand.
I tried the NAS route before, and when the enclosure died, I was stuck with four disks full of data and no way to recover it.
So my advice is: build your own. Get an ATOM/ION motherboard with a 330, 4 GB of RAM, 4 1.5TB hard disks, and use Debian’s soft RAID. As long as SATA is around, my data is safe.
If you have the cash, Dell sells some nice storage arrays, RAID 5 or 10, hot-swappable drives. They even do ISCSI.
Worth the money, if the data is not backed up regularly and is a pain to re-create.
Alternately if you just want to do redundant backups (backs up?) on inexpensive 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA drives of any size, Stephen, I HIGHLY recommend the NewerTech “Voyager Q” “docking solution”. http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php
I saw a review at LifeHacker I think. Maybe MacUser….
I got fed up with TimeMachine grinding away forever doing incremental backups and just went with ordering a “VoyagerQ” online and buying a half dozen 1 TB hard drives at my local comp. retailer for 60 bucks a pop.
Plus, it was a great way to clone my laptop hard drive to a larger 2.5″ one. I just swapped ‘em around. Easy-peasy.
One of the best things I ever bought after only reading a review!
I must say though that I’m impressed that you had the discipline to do all those transfers, S. That’d cost me a fortune in booze alone…
Steve, Windows Home Server sounds like the ticket. Microsoft downgraded windows server 2003 for home users. You can purchase boxes preloaded from up and others. Do a search on newegg.com for “windows home server”
you can swap drives and choose which shares get backed up redundantly. You can swap drives easily, just shut down, add the new drive, restart and add the new drive to the pool at the console. To remove a drive, click ‘remove’ at the console and whs will move it’s data to other disks. Then shut down and remove it.
Also, automatic backups for win boxes. I think the current version will even accomodate storage space for Time Machine.
Download it and try it for 30 days free.
Good luck. Let us know how it turns out.