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For anyone looking for a good backup solution

tcorn1965

tcorn1965

New Member
http://www.buy.com/prod/lg-n2b1dd2-...-attached-storage-with-blu-ray/211873636.html

I have had mine for about 2 weeks. I use it to backup my art server which has 700 gigs of art files on it. The first backup took 4 days. now it just backs up real time as files are added or edited. Another fantastic bonus it has a built in Blu-Ray burner so you can archive art to disks as well...Get this at 50 gigs a disk. It can be setup with different Raids and the drives are hot swappable. I have this connected to my network via Ethernet, it is not physically connected to any server or computer. I have had many NAS devices and this is by far the best one I have owned.

Terry
 
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Dave Rowland

New Member
yep i have this too, with the same problem.

its working quite well, but the big issue is the software ComnsoBackup, for instance I have a message right now on the screen "This database may be another user's or cracked. Contact us", well u cant contact them and backups looked stopped.

Also i noticed the database log is actually on the main server hard drive, thats getting bigger and bigger! nightmare

but its not bad... the LG drive is value for money but alternative software would be ideal.
 
rfulford

rfulford

New Member
It seems like a neat idea but does anyone actually find blu-ray to be cost effective for backup? It looks like it would cost over $400 to back up the server to blu-ray.
 
Speedsterbeast

Speedsterbeast

New Member
I just use an external hard drive with Comodo Backup. You can tell it what folders to back up and it's just one click. I think it only copies files that have been modified since the last back up so it is really fast as well.
 
tcorn1965

tcorn1965

New Member
Dave Rowland said:
yep i have this too, with the same problem.

its working quite well, but the big issue is the software ComnsoBackup, for instance I have a message right now on the screen "This database may be another user's or cracked. Contact us", well u cant contact them and backups looked stopped.

Also i noticed the database log is actually on the main server hard drive, thats getting bigger and bigger! nightmare

but its not bad... the LG drive is value for money but alternative software would be ideal.
Click to expand...

Dave,
Comnso is working well for me. Just a suggestion, delete your backup job and recreate. Your log file should not be large unless there is a problem...I am not at work right now or I would try to confirm. That error is odd, can you send me a portion of your log file?
Additionally a good backup software is Cobian, it is free but does not do real time.

Terry
 
tcorn1965

tcorn1965

New Member
rfulford said:
It seems like a neat idea but does anyone actually find blu-ray to be cost effective for backup? It looks like it would cost over $400 to back up the server to blu-ray.
Click to expand...

I do not backup my whole server on Blu-Ray, I use my NAS to backup the server. I use the Blu-Ray to archive all art off live server that is over 6 months old. I then make it searchable by creating an index that is searchable for all the graphic artists. This is an example with 2011-359 being the folder. In DOS c:/2011-359: dir /s > 2011-359.out I then upload the out file to server and compile. The artists then can open a browser to server and search by name or PO and it will tell them what disk they need...I have archived to disk over 2 TB of art to disk. We have art saved from every customer back from 2001

Terry
 
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Dave Rowland

New Member
The problem i have is the data is huge, seems to be around 1.5TB which might be my limit..i best check that.

I cant seem to find it this morning, but on c:\ somewhere is a DB file, that was growing, i did try and move it but failed.

I would have preferred is Comnso website was working, where we could download updates to the bugs but it is working well, just I prefer support on software. Buying NAS boxes contains some risk in that and then trying to work out cost effective backup software as alternatives.

To make blurays, nah i prefer just to get another box/hard drive, this is a backup of my main raid 5 server.
 
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signswi

New Member
Optical media is not ideal for backups (at least not as the *only* backup) but if you go that route you should use DVDs, not Blurays. Never use proprietary anything is in the top 10 "rules to live by" for archivists.
 
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Dave Rowland

New Member
Thought I would concluded ComnsoBackup at this point by adding that it "can" do the job if your data is not large and slow to transfer, having noticed that our LG drives backup had ran out space I noticed the program still tried to transfer.

So, the only thing I could do was to try and change the way I was backing up, so I attempted to remove files/folders from the archive but got nervous when the requesters where not "english" enough making me think that I might actually remove the data from the server. Not Good. So I took the decision to delete it manually from the backup drive, well this set off a rebuild and the drive is not continuosly trying to backup and it is showing folder data which doesn't tie up with what it is backing up. Bugs!

So, the quest continues for decent software.
 
jfiscus

jfiscus

Rap Master
We are working with the owners of a company that are just rolling out their corporate backup solution for public purchase. The company is GorillaBackups.com - you pay a yearly plan for the amount of data that you are backing up; so this may not be an ideal solution for ALL of you, but for most it should be useful.

The owners/support are available to answer questions & willing to help however possible, plus they speak English (lol). Keeping your data on another box in-house is never a smart idea in backup/emergency situations. Give them a call or email for more information & pricing options. I'll try to get them to answer any questions you might have here for them...
 
Techman

Techman

New Member
Never use proprietary anything is in the top 10 "rules to live by" for archivists.
Click to expand...

+2
OR
Use open source FREE. ITs some of the best stuff around. In fact some authors are "taking" ideas from the open soruce land and building pay as you go apps.
 
cdiesel

cdiesel

New Member
choucove

choucove

New Member
There are a couple of things that make me kinda wonder about using a NAS device personally. First of all is backups. While NAS devices often integrate RAID setups, I very rarely (actually, never) trust RAID as a form of backup. If I use two drives in RAID 1, I have a completely separate non-RAID drive that's just backing up the actual data so it is not linked in any way to a possibly fault-prone RAID array.

Using a full file server, even just a desktop running Windows 7, I have the ability to use simple backup applications such as Cobian or Backup Magic to create very simple but very powerful backup routines that allow you to hook up an external hard drive to the system and copy the data. This isn't always quite as easy to do with a NAS, and often times requires that you use a separate desktop device to run this kind of external backup anyways. This further complicates your backup system by itself.

The next thing is authorization. Many good NAS devices have a web-based interface to configure file sharing settings, but sometimes they aren't that detailed in what options you can set. With a basic Windows 7 desktop file server you can still configure individual user account permissions to specific shared folders, disk quotas, hidden folders, etc.

The final thing is the physical hardware. Again if you have a file server system built on a desktop (or even server) platform, the hardware is usually pretty simple to switch out in the case of needing a repair or upgrade. For instance, if you buy a NAS device, you're mostly stuck using the included low-power processor, so if you find that you're serving up more data than expected, or wanting to do more with your hardware than just store data, you can't really upgrade the processor and add more RAM to accommodate more demanding tasks. Likewise, if the power supply in your NAS device ends up failing, your solution is most likely going to be replacing the NAS entirely where as a standard desktop/server platform would allow you to just replace the power supply and continue trucking along.
 
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signswi

New Member
a) Don't use RAID 1, use RAID 5 at minimum
b) Good commercial NAS solutions are all linux or bsd based with robust networking support you could easily use 3rd party commercial software backup solutions with them just as you indicate for additional ghosting or workstations or whatever
c) You should never be running anything from a NAS other than fileserving
d) You can build your own NAS from consumer parts if you want, my NAS at home is such a beast (running Ubuntu server using MDADM in RAID 6)

cdiesel & ZO6 nice job, drobo and synology are both solid companies and serve their respective markets well.
 
choucove

choucove

New Member
signswi said:
a) Don't use RAID 1, use RAID 5 at minimum
b) Good commercial NAS solutions are all linux or bsd based with robust networking support you could easily use 3rd party commercial software backup solutions with them just as you indicate for additional ghosting or workstations or whatever
c) You should never be running anything from a NAS other than fileserving
d) You can build your own NAS from consumer parts if you want, my NAS at home is such a beast (running Ubuntu server using MDADM in RAID 6)

cdiesel & ZO6 nice job, drobo and synology are both solid companies and serve their respective markets well.
Click to expand...

All of the points that you made are very good things to point out. One reason why I do not like to use RAID 5 (or any others for that matter really) is because it completely relies on the RAID controller to be able to access the data. In theory with a RAID 1 array, if your controller goes down or you simply have to yank the drives out of the system, you should be able to plug in one of those drives into any computer and, given that they can read the original file system type (such as NTFS) they should be able to access all the data for retrieval. This isn't something you can do with any other RAID because of the way information is striped or written to the drive. You have to have that exact RAID controller to have access to your array data.

I never really thought about building your own NAS (such as using FreeNAS) but that's what I would probably choose personally. This is pretty much what I was thinking of when describing building your own file server system. After all, that's what a NAS is, a basic file server computer. What I was meaning about running additional services on the system (not a NAS) is that a file server has the flexibility of doing more than just hosting files if you so wish such as running a basic website, while most pre-built NAS devices share files and that is it.
 
GP

GP

New Member
Well this is the information I was looking for - so please excuse my duplicate post in the Premium section.

Unfortunately, this is all over my head.

I wish someone would just tell me what to get so I can concentrate on making money!

GP
 
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