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Backing up a Raid array?

post #1 of 5
12/21/11 at 9:50am
Thread Starter 
I am considering going Raid 5 for my next server setup but have a question regarding backing it up. If you have a Raid setup with a total of 10TB of data, how do you go about backup it up? Obviously, you would have to back it up to multiple drives and I would prefer it to be somewhat automated. I just cannot seem to find a solution for this.

I am not interested in tape systems - Only hard drives. And I don't want my backup solution to be another array because if your hardware controller fails then you are kind of screwed.

Any thoughts or ideas? I guess you can manually copy portions of the array to other drives but this certainly isn't automated and wouldn't be an up-to-date backup system. So I am kind of at a loss.

The OS on the server will be Windows 7, XP or Home Server 2011. But I don't believe any of those have a feature built-in that would handle this scenario. Maybe there is a third party software that will do this?
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post #2 of 5
12/21/11 at 10:23am

Ok.   I run into this often.. I'm over 28T now, after this Christmas, and I get brought up.. the reality is that in a RAID-5 or JBOD of this size, a full backup is an absolute pain.  And most of this (if you're like me) is video. 


I really don't worry about most of the video I have on there.. if it all gets destroyed, I have the original blurays in a box in my closet.   BUT, I do backup essential data which I could not restore if lost (pictures, music store, etc.)

 

You can do it two ways:  (1) get a network NAS unit to match your server - I really like the Drobo and Qnap, but Iomega is also a valid choice since they were bought by EMC  (2) use a simple external USB and backup only scheduled data.

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post #3 of 5
12/21/11 at 10:58am
Use a backup program that only backs up changed data. (Maybe that's what Matt meant in #2.) Most of the data on a 10TB system will likely not be changing. It's probably video, graphics, and music. Then just periodically copy the backup data to a writeable DVD.
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post #4 of 5
12/22/11 at 1:38pm
Thread Starter 
Hmmm. Thanks for the ideas. I deffinitely want a complete and total backup of everything - The idea and going back to source in case of a crash makes me want to vomit. I have the hard drives to do it already so I am not worried about that side of things. Getting a Drobo that matches the size of the array would certainly work - Not cheap, but it would work for sure. Good idea.

But option 2 I am confused about. Is there something I am missing that will allow me to backup a 10TB "drive" to USB drive(s)?
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post #5 of 5
12/22/11 at 9:06pm

Option 2 would be breaking up your content over 2-3TB USB drives. Not a bad option I have done it. Duping the system is the best option you can use Raid 0 for that system as you lose it you just re-backup again. 

 

You think this is a chalenge try 300TB, my last job basically replication of storage systems was the only way.

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