So, thank you one and all for all of you comments which I will be taking into account when I replace my Drobo Pro which maybe sooner rather than later as I cannot afford the chaos that it brings all too often
I have just been sent a link to Team Chase's solution to dealing with data
A server is indeed the way to go, join me on my journey to find a reliable cost effective solution
11 comments:
Build a normal windows or Mac based server, Add a esata car with port multiplier.
Now add a tower with drives.
We use two towers in mirror in our studio max cap is app 30tb at the moment 15x 2 TB
Very safe because you are using a ntfs or Mac system for storage.
Cheapish computer, mac is a little more expensive. A couple of large pSATA discs in raid 0 and you should be good to go.
Sorry to read about your problems Drew. Must be way stressful. Good luck finding a solution
How much space do you really need and what platform are you on? Mac or PC?
FYI - I've gone the NAS (network attached storage) route and it's S-L-O-W. Firewire is speedy in comparison, but eSATA is the best for data transfer, even with the new fancy USB 3.0 devices coming out.
I've gone the route of many internal drives with internal/external redundant time machine backups over eSATA, but I'm dealing with less than 3GB of data.
I've been following your Drobo woes for the last few posts. I can't imagine the frustration you're going through! Hopefully you're keeping sane. I also use a Drobo right now but if I had I had known about G-Technology stuff beforehand I'd probably take a long hard look at those products too.
http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/
It's a good start!
g'luck!
I use mac and G Technology is my answer. It mirrors my backups.
It doesn't matter what solution you pick, as long as there is redundance. Mirroring och RAID.
I have a NAS (the netgear), and as stwest79 says, it's slow with files. You can't work on it directly on larger files. Like the Phase One-files, forget it :-)
It's suppurb on backup though. I use it for backup, and media-streaming.
Netgear hade their own RAID-solution, it works very good. I have 4 discs and if one fails (never has...yet...) I just replace it and all the data' still there. 4x2TB gives 6TB storage.
If you can out more money in it, go with a file-server.
IF you have a fast Internet connection (which I don't have) invest in online storage (with backup) and put the most important files there to. You can rent a server in most webbhosting companies and stuff it with harddrives.
best regards
/joakim
Sad story Mr. Gardner.
Im just happy you took the time to share your side of this as I find the people at Data Robotics to be a bit slick...
You said that their customer service was good, but really its not.
The only thing tey do well is talk and help out as long as problem is not "complex"...
I lost 5 years of work due to a drobo crash. And that I find really strange is that out through the dialog I had with them, not once did i recieve a "we're sorry for your loss". It was mostly "have you done this or that"
Yes, they did send me a new drobo, after talking to one of the managers at customer service, but come on... I couldnt care less if they sent me a new drobo or not, what I wanted.. No, what I NEEDED was a way to get my data back.
I should mention that this was Drobo 1.0, the first one that they made. I still use my drobo, but only with Apples Time Machine.
Backup is done by dedicated servers from now on.
Hope you didnt loose to much work.
-Jon Rune-
Chases setup is possibly the best, but of course its not cheap. I dont know how much data you want to store, but I think reasonable local storage, possibly mirrored, together with a cheap Mac mini/Linux server connected to a heap of USB drives is the most cost effective solution. Maybe you should think about cheap online storage with some cloud services, too. In my experience many RAID-Systems lead to more problems than simple, manual "Redundancy", especially with Non-IT users. If I can help you, let me know. :)
Has anyone mentioned a UPS yet? That's essential if you're running any kind of server-based system. Happy to have a chat Drew, if you want to discuss computer geekery ...
Andy
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