Ask Slashdot: How Do You Manage Your Personal Data?

New submitter multimediavt writes "Ok, here's my problem. I have a lot of personal data! (And, no, it's not pr0n, warez, or anything the MPAA or RIAA would be concerned about.) I am realizing that I need to keep at least one spare drive the same size as my largest drive around in case of failure, or the need to reformat a drive due to corrupt file system issues. In my particular case I have a few external drives ranging in size from 200 GB to 2 TB (none with any more than 15 available), and the 2 TB drive is giving me fits at the moment so I need to move the data off and reformat the drive to see if it's just a file system issue or a component issue. I don't have 1.6 TB of free space anywhere and came to the above realization that an empty spare drive the size of my largest drive was needed. If I had a RAID I would have the same needs should a drive fail for some reason and the file system needed rebuilding. I am hitting a wall, and I am guessing that I am not the only one reaching this conclusion. This is my personal data and it is starting to become unbelievably unruly to deal with as far as data integrity and security are concerned. This problem is only going to get worse, and I'm sorry 'The Cloud' is not an acceptable nor practical solution. Tape for an individual as a backup mechanism is economically not feasible. Blu-ray Disc only holds 50 GB at best case and takes forever to backup any large amount of data, along with a great deal of human intervention in the process. So, as an individual with a large data collection and not a large budget, what do you see as options for now (other than keeping a spare blank drive around), and what do you see down the road that might help us deal with issues like this?"

Comments

Buddy NAS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a solution I call the "Buddy NAS". Go out and get two cheap computers. It could be a PC or a mini-NAS or a low-end server. Anything that will hold multiple hard drives. You jam both full of hard disks and use them as a backup/NAS server. One PC is kept at your place, the other at your friend's house.

Both computers have an account for you and an account for your friend (it helps if your friend is nerdy and "gets" backup solutions). Both of you now have a backup solution in your own home and a remote backup server at a friend's place. Two copies of your data, one remote. Basically it's like having local and cloud storage for you and your friend and it'll cost less than a grand if you shop around. If neither of you have static IPs you can use dyndns.org to connect to the remote boxes. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue if you use rsync to backup changed files nightly.

Re:RAID array on a spare box

[swalve]

That's not a bad idea. I started with the OP's problem, trying to keep data from multiple machines in sync and backed up and with enough room to spare. After having spent more weekends copying data back and forth to clear out a drive in order to replace it, I decided to go to the fileserver paradigm. I built a machine with three 40gb drives RAIDed together and made that the only place useful data would be stored. I've since expanded it up to 3tb in various increments, and it has worked well. It has saved tons of time and money by allowing my computers to use whatever cheap harddrive was available and just restore from backup when it went TU. But with the need for increased data availability outside my house (IE, making my notebook my main computer), I'm starting to reverse course and move to your idea. Using robocopy on the clients and shell scripts + hard links on the server, I've set up a workable versioning backup system that doesn't take up too much space.

I also use Dropbox for some stuff.

Re:Solution.. buy hard drives!

[AngryDeuce]

Honestly, it's my Western Digital drives that have lasted the longest. My dad is still rocking several single digit GB capacity WD drives actively in his legacy tower, and I've yet to have one die on me. Not to say I haven't replaced them as their capacity becomes outdated, but I've had much better luck with them than Maxtor (the worst brand I've ever used), which is now a part of Seagate, which I've also had a couple fail on me (but nowhere near as bad as Maxtor).

I've never used Hitachi or Samsung or any other brand that I know of, so I can't speak as to their quality, but I'm sticking with Western Digital.

Use a NAS with backup

[AliasMarlowe]

What I did some years ago was recognize that "manual backups" were not done often enough, and important stuff was scattered around a few PCs. So I got a NAS, stuck a pair of disks into it (RAID 0 for speed), and set up its automated incremental backup to run 3 times per week to an external USB drive. The PCs now mount the NAS at login, and that's where all data files are stored by default (even the kids use it).

We're up to 2 NAS units now, with 7TB[*] of disk space between them, all backed up on schedule. The USB backup drives are rotated every few weeks with another set kept in a secure place in the garage.

[*] One NAS unit doubles up as media server, so it's got a load of movies & music in addition to user files in its 6TB. The other one is our web server and email server with only 1TB of disk space.