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Looking for VERY LARGE backup solutions...


jcarle

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A shame that they chose Maxtor hard drives. I could only imagine using WD RE2 drives that it would last ages. Re-confirms my beliefs that 3ware makes some of the best RAID hardware though.

Honestly, I'll take anything over WD drives - they're the only brand I won't buy at any price. We've seen FAR too many go bad (not just talking about number of units, but ratios, in a large corporate setup) I've had similar problems at home (and with friends' & family's PCs too), and never really have with other brands (except the notoriously bad batches that we've all seen - like the 6.x-8.x GB Fujitsus, 5 platter IBM "deathstars", etc). I do not trust my data to WD drives. These days I buy Seagate drives mostly (but also have other brands).

3ware makes good stuff though, but they're not the best IMO. I prefer the Areca cards (PCI-e, does RAID6, available with up to 24 SATAII ports, very fast, has staggered spin up, good drivers for all OS'es, etc) But regardless of which card is better, hardware SATA RAID cards are WAY too expensive for home use, especially when you have like a couple dozen HDs. Either I can buy cheapo software RAID cards (like 50$/4 ports to supplement those on the motherboards), or I could just use one ARC-1280 card - but it's like 1600$USD (+extra for cache upgrade, battery, tax, ship, etc). About 2600$CAD with 1GB cache & battery, with tax and shipped (~110$/port). Since most of what I do doesn't really require high performance (e.g. streaming video @ 1mbit to XBMC), cheapo Sabrent Silicon Image PCI cards work just fine (~12$/port, ~10% of the price). It's an easy decision (2600$ vs 300$), unless one truly needs the speed at any cost. It would be a nice xmas gift though (one can dream!)

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Here at UNC, we are testing a service called Iron Mountain. As I'm typing this post, I'm backing up my documents for the first time. I'm not sure if there are any data restrictions, nor the cost for an individual, but they just updated their software and it seems to be a nice solution with automated backups and security in mind.

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Here at UNC, we are testing a service called Iron Mountain. As I'm typing this post, I'm backing up my documents for the first time. I'm not sure if there are any data restrictions, nor the cost for an individual, but they just updated their software and it seems to be a nice solution with automated backups and security in mind.

I never considered such services before, so it was definitely worth looking into - at least to see if I've been wasting hundreds of $s for nothing :lol: Here's their plans for data backups for 1-5 PCs. 30GB/month (I could perhaps live with 10x that) is 800$/year (or 900$ if you pay monthly). The 5-200 PCs plan starts @ 90$/month for 5 PCs max (+50$ setup fee), 10GB max per PC. Their SBE plans aren't much cheaper.

So, not cheap (800$ - the price of one year of service - buys over 2TB of HD space), and requires a LOT of upstream bandwidth - something ISPs limit very much.

Mind you it's still an interesting option. It might be very worthwhile for small businesses that have a few computers, where they locally keep a small amount of data (ms office documents and the like), or to backup documents off a small server perhaps. Cheaper than buying backup hardware and software, hiring a consultant to set it all up, having someone change the tapes and send them offsite, etc. Hassle free too. But for most home users, it's more expensive than buying a couple cheap spare HDs, backuping on that, leaving the 2nd at someone else's place as an offsite copy (in case of fire/flood/theft or whatever).

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Well, I find that for an 8-port SATA RAID card, the 3ware 9500S-8 is reasonably priced at $480.

It's interesting how some people swear by WD and some swear against it. I've never had a single dead hard drive. I've heard third-hand of people having problems with 2MB drives and a series of 120GB (i think it was). Second-hand of ONE person getting a dead 250GB. Out of the hundreds I've sold, installed, seen, I've never seen any that were dead first hand.

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I've heard third-hand of people having problems with 2MB drives and a series of 120GB (i think it was).
That was the WD1200BB... the JB ones were fine, though. I have a pair of WD1200JB in my system that have been working for 3 years now.
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Well, I find that for an 8-port SATA RAID card, the 3ware 9500S-8 is reasonably priced at $480.

Reasonably priced for big businesses, definitely. But for home users that's way overpriced. The areca is cheaper too (310$).

I just checked, and the cheapo 4 port Sabrent SATA RAID (PCI, yeah) are 33$. They have a PCI-e version that's cheap too, but it's only 2 ports. Hopefully they make a 4 or 8 port version some day...

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Here at UNC

Whoa. fellow Chapel Hill resident. Heya!

On the subject of HDD reliability - I find that it has a lot to do with how the drives are handled pre-end environment and in their end environment. I remember a case where a client was getting them from a grey market by the case... come to find out they had been shipping them ship freight without *ANY* padding whatsoever, just a gob of drives in static bags inside a box. Yikes!

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I remember a case where a client was getting them from a grey market by the case... come to find out they had been shipping them ship freight without *ANY* padding whatsoever, just a gob of drives in static bags inside a box.

Yucky grey market drives.

DON'T buy hard drives from Overclockers UK!

When I worked their they shipped them in jiffy bags...thats it, OEM drives in jiffy bags...and then we had to deal with LOTS of returns! lol No matter what, they wouldn't change the shipping method.

Always nice to hear a thud when your hard drive gets posted through your letter box :blink:

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