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Best eSATA JBOD?
redlandmover writes "I already have an HP Media Server (upgraded processor, and memory) that has already been upgraded internally to 3.5TB. I'm sure everyone already has their favorite backup solution (RAID, WHS, a billion external hard drives, etc). My question is: what is the best JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives), eSATA-connected, external hard drive enclosure? (Preferably, at least 4 drives.)"
RAID 1 + swapping out/rebuilding a mirror disk periodically is a perfectly reasonable backup solution.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
You're better off with an SAS external enclosure and a SAS card with external connections. These can be expensive, but will pay for themselves quickly with the lack of extra management.
What management ? You get an eSATA chassis with a port multiplier, slot in some drives, and run a single cable to the eSATA port on the computer. "Management" doesn't even come into it.
It's a home media server. In what was is SAS even remotely justified ?
You do know that a RAID can be used for STORING backups don't you? Making your primary storage a RAID is no substitute for a backup. Adding an offline RAID storage can be a backup.
Until your controller goes berserk and craps all over your disk or your other disk fails in the middle of the rebuild. Or...
yeah sure.
Let's say it again: Backups are:
- off-site
- offline
- multiple
- tested
anything else is just some kind of high-availability solution, that does NOT protect against catastrophic failure, fires, viruses...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
He NEEDS another computer on his network.
With only one computer/disk controller if one of them fails, all FS might end up toasted.
He also needs incremental backups, just overwriting a snapshot of you data is no good when you realize that you have just overwritten your data with corrupted data because your main computing is failing slowly.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
If you are rotating your swapped-out disks rather than continually using new blank ones, then the re-mirroring (if done vaguely intelligently) will only update based on the blocks that have changed since the last time that disk was running live in the array (i.e. an incremental update, which is much faster than re-mirroring from scratch).
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I disagree, since a single mistake (e.g. mistakenly reformatting the wrong device node, or physically losing the system while moving house) could still take out the whole kaboodle.
And for something you really care about, an offsite backup is worth it and not difficult. I uploaded my family photos to my ISP-provided online file space. If you want to make sure it stays private, encrypt before uploading.
The old AT cases had a power supply with a mechanical power switch, rather than a soft-switch like ATX power supplies. Old AT cases and power supplies should be just about free, just strip out the old motherboard and you have a decent, inexpensive solution. Like someone else said, just get long SATA cables, and run them directly to the drives. You can bundle them together with zip ties periodically down the length, or use wire loom if you want something a bit neater. You may need molex-to-SATA power adapters, but those are very cheap and reliable. If you pick the right case, it will have plenty of drive bays and cooling capacity.
Or, you can use one of those 4_3.5"_drives-in-3_5.25"_bays solutions if you need even more space and cooling capacity beyond what is already in your case. Even a small mid-tower case should support at least 6 drives using one of these.
Pick up a spare AT power supply while you are at it, and you will have a very reliable, well-cooled, very cheap solution.
A single disk is more risky than I would like. Especially since it's offline, it can fail without warning leaving me (unknowingly) without a backup and unable to update my backup until I get a new disk (and hopefully I didn't need any of the archival versions of any of the files)
A RAID is far less likely to suffer that problem. When a disk fails, I have a signal that I should replace enough disks to maintain the RAID even when the remaining old disks fail.
And, as tsalmark said, it's nice when the backup disk is bigger than the primary.