Need a mirrored external solution

[[JiF]Crash]

Hey Guys...

Looking to solution something out. I have 3 computers at home. All with gigs of data in "My Documents" The wife's PC alone has 150 gig of family pics. I want to protect this data. If her hard drive ever died, we would be screwed. I know there are 1 and 2 drive USB external enclosures out there. That would work, BUT I want the 2 drives in the enclosure to be mirrored. So if 1 drive in the enclosure died. I could rebuild with the other good drive. This USB external enclosure is going to be the "My Documents" for all 3 PC's in the house. That way all 3 PC's will be covered if a drive died in the enclosure. I don't think the software that comes with these external 1-2 drive enclosures has mirror software with them. If they do, then I'm good. But if they don't what is a easy to use, cheap software to mirror these 2 bare drives in the enclosure that will be access by PC's via USB?

Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
[JiF]Crash (Jiffer since 2002)

[[JiF]Mike]

XP can mirror all by itself. Just go into "Disk Management" it's not to hard to setup. Grab yourself one of the 2TB external HDD's that have 2x 1TB drives in them. They may even come with some software to help you do this as they say in their literature that they can. For example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136281

[[JiF]Crash]

Nice find Mike. This is exactly what I was looking for. Now the question is.... 1TB or 2TB. For another $50 I can get the 2T version.

Thanks again Mike...

[[JiF]Crash]

I guess the next thing I would need is a good USB hub as I will be tieing 3 systems to access this external solution.

Thoughts on a good USB hub. Or is any powered 2.0 USB hub good? Is there a better solution?

Thanks
Crash

[[JiF]FrenchAfroman]

get the 2tb drive thats what i have at home. most of the 2tb drives with 2 hard drives in them have the mirrior thing in them for mine i just had to switch it on, its an expensive one but its easy to use

[[JiF]KellysHero]

Would and outdoor mirror work Crash?

[[JiF]Crash]

D U D E !!!

[[JiF]Thos]

Not sure I would recommend a USB solution. They tend to be much slower and also require you to keep the PC it is attached to available. I would go with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution. If you have an extra port on your hub/switch/router, you plug one of these in and it is available to all PCs on the network. There are many available depending on your budget, but D-Link provides a couple of good products with great reviews.

Two drive version ($99 + whatever drives you install):
Manufacture: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=666
Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822155009
review: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30521/75/

Four drive version ($400 + whatever drives you install):
Manufacture: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=667
Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... pk=DNS-343
review: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30535/75/

Great link with many reviews for external storage devices:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/ ... ory/50/75/

Chart with exteranl storage ratings:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/componen ... temid,190/

[[JiF]Mike]

Yeah Thos's idea is best, nice to dream... If only I could afford such things.

[[JiF]lini]

Hmmm, NAS boxes... Problem is that the affordable ones usually are rather slow or rather loud (and sometimes even both...).

Crash: Do I understand you correctly, that your main goal is data safety? Then you'd better be aware that RAID solutions in general (with the exception of pure striping, of course) aren't meant to be primarily used for safety, but rather for availability purposes. Hence I'd rather suggest to go for (at least) two separate external drives (eSATA, FireWire, USB 2.0 (HS) - whatever suits your systems...) and use one of the usual software replicators for the cloning. That will not only make you more flexible in terms of what kind of back-up strategies you can use, but will also better protect you from quite a few technical failure or user error scenarios in which a single mirroring solution wouldn't help more than just a single external drive.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

[[JiF]Crash]

OK,

I went from a solution found to confused.

I basically just want to protect all my videos, photos, and "my documents". I want peace of mind that if a piece of hardware dies, that the other piece carries on until I can fix the broken part.

I don't care about speed as much as price.

Any thoughts to get me back on track???

[Shalghar]

External USB or firewire harddisk and loads of time and backup discipline would be one solution.
As long as you do not forget to tell windows, that you want to remove the device (as important data keeps being in RAM and is only written after you decide to deactivate the device to the disc) this is far more secure than any CD/DVD media.
That´s at least my experience after both copies of old photos were unreadable after just one year of those discs in a normal pocket.
That little story i am trying to write since about 5 years is on several harddisks and i made a little script to copy it to its place on every active partition with one mouseclick.

Up to you to decide what level of security you want and what you´re willing to endure to ensure it.

[[JiF]Mike]

Trying to stick to basic principles here, the NAS boxes will do the same thing in the end that a USB solution would. The big difference is the NAS boxes are attached to the network directly and would not require any specific pc to be on so other pc's could access it. The other difference is price, you'll spend more on the NAS.

[[JiF]lini]

Crash: Sorry for the confusion, but if it helps to prevent you from spending good money on a semi-helpful solution, that should be ok, I guess...

Alright, so I'd probably best start with an explanation for my claim that there are quite a few scenarios in which the hardware mirroring solution you had in mind wouldn't ensure any more safety than just a single external drive. The fundamental problem in all of these scenarios either is the automatic mirroring (or respectively the wide-spread misconception about in which cases it can be useful) or the fact that affordable mirroring solutions usually use two identical drives housed in one case and powered by a single power supply. Just a few examples: You carry the thingy around in the house, stumble on the stairs and drop it - now the chances are pretty high that, if that accident was good enough for breaking one of the drives in the case, the other one will also be broken. Same goes for really mean power spikes (e.g. caused by lightning): If that's strong enough for ruining one drive, you'll again have a pretty good chance that the other will be ruined, too. And if the power supply fails badly, frying one of the drives, chances yet again are pretty low that the other won't be fried just as well. In addition, with two identical drives that are used in parallel, there's also a certain chance that possible serial flaws or wear-out could even manifest themselves more or less at the same time.

Another example is user error: For instance, you've just reformatted the drive and performed a fresh re-installation of the operating system and application software on one of your computers, then want to restore your data from the mirrored back-up - only to discover that you unfortunately haven't paid attention and saved the wrong stuff the last time, and to realize that wrong stuff that's backed up a bit safer than usual by mirroring (namely being protected from single drive failure) still remains wrong stuff. Or imagine a malware attack happening when your mirroring solution is connected: Again you might end up with safer than usual ruined data - which is just as worthless as less safely stored ruined data.

I won't bore you with more examples, as I'm pretty sure you got the point by now: For typical private use, mirroring hardly provides any advantages, 'cause there is only a very limited number of problem scenarios in which it provides more data safety than using a single drive only - and the extra advantage of avoiding data availability drop-outs in such single drive failure scenarios usually isn't so important for private users either. So, in the end, a hardware mirroring solution would be quite costly for offering a rather small safety plus compared to a single drive and for definitely being less save and also less flexible in terms of possible back-up strategies than two separate drives.

Hence, as already mentioned above, I'd rather recommend to go for at least two separate external drives - which, in order to reduce the chance of systematic problems (serial flaws), should ideally be different models from different manufacturers or at least from different series from the same manufacturer (and that should go for both the drives and the enclosures). The rest depends quite a bit on your individual circumstances and preferences, so without knowing your situation in detail I can't really give you a suggestion that's tailored exactly to suit your needs. However, I could make up a sample situation and tell you what I'd suggest for that, if you want...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

[[JiF]zougathefist]

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