G+_Robert Gauld Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 Hi fellow know it alls, I'm after some advice for an external backup drive. Currently I use a synology set up with two volumes - one for my files and one for the backups of those files. The backup volume is copied onto one of two external drives which is then swapped with the other one kept off site. This is mostly automated - a reminder in my phone prompts me to perform a backup and swap the drives around fortnightly on a day I'm going to the offsite location anyway. My current backup drives are both a 6TB WD Green and my backups are almost that size (as in I imagine wanting more space by the end of the year). Here come the two (related to each other) questions: 1) Can you recommend a good external USB3 enclosure that will take two SATA drives and JBOD (or similar) them so my laptop sees one large drive? 2) Do I invest in some WD greens so each of these enclosures contains 2 green disks or do I use the WD reds from my synology as they'll probably be getting swapped with larger ones this year too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 If you're already in the WD world, why not just buy a My Book Duo? It looks like these can mirror your drives & probably stripe them if you need more storage. As for colors, I'd go Red over Green in a RAID... And if using Red also means you can spend money upgrading your NAS, then it sounds like a no brainer to me! Plus, WD even recommends Red on their page! http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1260 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Robert Gauld Posted May 10, 2016 Author Share Posted May 10, 2016 Thabks - they look great but I can't find any which are empty (ie put in disks I already have). Bearing in mind that I need two to replace the two single drives I'm currently rotating between home and offsite it make's them quite expensive. Thanks for the clarification about colours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 Maybe they call it something else if they're empty? I'm certain they sell something like this but empty... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Marsh Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 You may find what you're looking for by searching for JBOD enclosures at Amazon/NewEgg/etc. I don't know of any that do RAID or storage pooling/extended volumes, but I don't have any recent experience with enclosures. I used to use a NAS but always used a separate enclosure for each external drive. Twice I had enclosures die on me, but the drives were OK. The thing about storage pooling is it usually isn't done in a manner that makes recovery dead-simple. I walked away from a Linux NAS using EXT3 for a Windows server with StableBit DrivePool for ease of use and dead-simple storage upgrades and recovery. The pooled disks there are simple NTFS volumes that can be read (and recovered) from pretty much ANY system, and adding to the pool doesn't require a RAID rebuild/migration or any SysAdmin Fu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Damien Hull Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 Nice setup. I've got a Synology my self. I was backing up my files to an external USB drive. Then I found out about Amazon Glacier. There's an app / add on for Synology. Amazon Glacier is cloud storage. The downside is that you have a lot of data. Might take a while to get it uploaded to the cloud. 1. You might be able to ask Amazon to send you a drive so you can upload a bunch of data quickly. This is encrypted. 2. Any changes will be uploaded to the Amazon cloud. 3. This can be automated so you don't have to do anything. I use this and it's awesome. I don't think about my backup anymore. Amazon Glacier https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/ Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Marsh Posted May 10, 2016 Share Posted May 10, 2016 Damien Hull That's a fine solution for backup. I swear I just heard about their glacier seeding somewhere the other day, but I'm not sure if it's cost/benefit ratio is reasonable. Otherwise, glacier is a fine choice even if your initial upload is over your home internet connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 I've been using CrashPlan for a few years and it works great, but 6-12TB would likely take a long time to backup (my 4TB took about 3 months initially). There is a CrashPlan app for Synology, but CrashPlan typically uses about a GB of RAM for every TB backed up. For external enclosures, I've always heard good things about Drobo. They're a bit pricey for me, but they make a good product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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