[hblug] External Storage

[Ralph Slooten]

chris morris wrote:
> Perry Spiller wrote:
>> Anyone got any tips on a good external storage device?
>> And the 'approach to it?' I.e.
>>
>> 1) A networked external hard drive?
>>
>> 2) Or a local USB-connected external hard drive?
>>
>> Could/would either fit with a samba share on a windoze network?
>>
>> Or one would work better/easier than another?
>>
>> Perry
>>
>>
>>   
> I've been down this road in all its forms.
> 
> For option 1 your essentially talking about a server ?
> 
> For option 2 there are several issues:
> An external usb drive is good for windoze boxes but not so good for linux.
> Yes they will work with linux but you would need it to be FAT32. This
> presents a problem with bigger drives.
> You could format it as ext3 or some such but then it wouldnt work on
> your windoze boxes - and also it wouldnt auto-mount on a linux box like
> FAT32 usb devices do.


If I might add my 5c to the discussion regarding external USB backups....

Firstly a small correction to the above statement regarding FAT32:
FAT32 has a 2TB limit on partition size. I seriously doubt anyone here
has drives that size in one partition ;-) "Windows XP and Windows 2000
limit partition creation to no larger than 32GB on FAT32. This
limitation is by design: Microsoft wants you to use NTFS for large
drives." You can still create the partition in something like Linux and
then just use it on XP etc.

Read more here:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/38803/38803.html

I am also presuming the backups are intended for a server of sorts. The
approach our company takes seems to work great regardless of the initial
OS follows this concept:

a) All backups are kept locally on an internal harddrive. These backups
are rotated automatically using whatever software / scripts / etc. I
would guess that the storage needed here on average ranges between 20G
and 200G, depending of course on what you are backing up, and how often
you rotate.

b) Once a day or week (depending on our client's wishes and our advise)
an external harddrive is plugged in via USB, and those internal backups
are synced with the external harddrive. Generally I like to use rsync
(Windows version available if you are backing up from a windows server)
for syncing to the external drive.

Advantages are:
a) Clients forget to plug the bloody things in sometimes. You cannot
rely on them plugging it in always on a certain time to backup directly
to. If they forget at least you still have a backup!

b) Using rsync (or similar tool) is a LOT faster than re-copying all
those backups across again and again and again.


At the moment we are looking at NAS for storage, but to be really honest
it doesn't have that many advantages. Sure it supports different
protocols (scp, ftp, samba) which makes it pretty easy to plug into any
network, but all it is is simply a glorified storage mechanism. The
backups still need to be made, and dumping a backup directly to a remote
drive always has risks I find. Even if we were to use NAS we would still
make local backups and then synchronize them.

Cheers,
Ralph