(If a mod feels this could go somewhere else, feel free to move it. It's in off-topic now as I didn't know where to post it) Hi folks, I know some of you are experts in data archiving (Keven?) and I need help! Recently my old backup external USB2 1TB hdd died, taking away a good part of my life's memory with it. I might pay to get the data retrieved (as I know the discs are probably ok, it didn't burn or something it just stopped working after a 10 hours car ride, it was well packed IMO) so if you have any tips for a cheap and effective company it'd be appreciated. Back on topic, in order to avoid this kind of disaster in the future, I want to build an external USB2/3 RAID array with error recovery support, so RAID1/3/5. I'm in Canada and my budget is around CAN$300. I want to get a 1 drive failure resistance while optimizing the capacity of the array. I'm always switching between linux and windows, so it should work on both without a hitch. Speed isn't a priority since it's for archiving, as long as it's not slower than a single drive I'm ok with it. [EDIT] Portability is less important than saving money. Bullet list: External USB2/3 RAID array Linux + Windows Support ~ CAN $300 (or less) 1 drive fault tolerance As big as possible within budget Speed isn't a concern, nor is portability I prefer Newegg.ca or amazon.ca since shipping is cheap for me and I can combine it, but ebay or other are fine for bargains! I looked a while and I got a setup right now: #1 #2 #3 Any tips, advice, or offers are welcome! FG
I'm guessing you tested the drive itself as well as the external case? I've had the drive controller in the case fail, but the drive still be good. You might want to check that if you haven't and see if you can recover any data.
Thanks but I tested the drive using two different sata2usb adaptors. I'll try to find a desktop to try as an internal drive, but I'm in a "student" city so everybody got a laptop! It's not even recognized by the computer through the adapter though. If it was simply a formatted/corrupt partition drive I'd have already backed it up completely. I'm seriously thinking paying for data retrieval, any tips on a good company would be appreciated! The data should be easy to retrieve by swapping the discs in another compatible drive, as it didn't really suffered big physical trauma afaik. In fact I had troubles making it mount under linux, so I switched to windows where it was working "fine", I even copied some files, but when I tried to open some folder it just hung up and upon restart wasn't working anymore.
Buy a drive thats the same, then swap the PCB from the new (working) drive onto the old one. Pretty sure firmware needs to match, there used to be a guy on ebay who sold just the pcb's. Regarding external raid - to get the most space for your money (and drives) you dont want to use raid 1. I assume your requirements need it to be portable (like a USB hard drive?) rather than something like a NAS? You can pick up NAS's pretty cheap, then just add disks to it - also removes the OS issue.
Thanks for the PCB input, I'll look into that for sure if I can buy a pcb without the rest, but I can hear the drive spinning and the head moving, so IDK if it can be it... Yet it's a probably cheap way to verify! For the raid1 inefficiency problem, I understand, but with my small budget, I can only afford 2-bay enclosures. The SAFE50 mode is a fine alternative IMO, I get 1TB of RAID1 duplicated safe storage, and 2TB of non-safe storage. That said, with a bigger budget I'd buy a RAID5 array for sure! I don't ABSOLUTELY need it to be portable. If it's safe at home, I can still ssh into it to retrieve small files. And 32GB usb sticks are cheap nowadays, so I could use that instead for "on the go" storage.
Is portability a requirement? i.e. are you taking this with you? or will it be sitting at home for backups etc?
I updated the post while you replied back. It doesn't have to be as portable as a thumb drive. I mean I want to move it every once in a while mainly when I change apartment. But to avoid any future headache I want the safety it gives, at the cost of portability. I'm not loosing my childhood memories and pc backups twice! If I want I can still access my network from anywhere using ssh, and retrieve not-too-big files. [Edit] I modified the 1st post with 3 setups I think are good for their price. Considering my budget, I think setup #3 at CAN $272 with a 750GB RAID1 partition and a 1.5TB RAID0 one seems the best choice. Any though? Do you think this is optimizing my money Bad_Ad84? Using SAFE50 (or SAFE33) sure is more efficient than plain raid1!
Thank you, but I need something that doesn't require a Desktop. I'm a poor student, and I'll be for a while so I need something cheap that I don't have to buy a whole pc for. But damn I hope I had the kind of money to build a real great raid computer with a shitload of drives! Just like I think you did right?
+1 for the Proliant Microserver, With the Cashback it actually becomes more cost effective than a dedicated NAS. I've also tried Synology disk stations and Netgear's Readynas. On balance I'd go for the Synology as it's got a better UI, it's quiet (the readynas sounded like a plane taking off!), has support for four disks and has required the least work to find the right balance of security/functionality.
DO you have a desktop? It is probably easier just to chuck a few more drives inside it as you'll probvably move your PC when you move, right?
I don't and I'm not planning to get one for years. While the microserver & synology are nice pieces of hardware, I could not afford two HDD after buying them... Even if they offer the cash-back here up in the north for the microserver... If I wanna keep eating everyday, I really got to stick to my budget! If I really want a NAS, I'd just buy a 35$ raspberry pi and configure is as a server. Thanks for the heads up though!
I've been eyeballing the readynas, I wanna setup a NAS system for the sake of not running my desktop as media server 24/7 to cut power cost
obviously budget is an issue but i really do recommend a NAS drive, went for the ReadyNas NV+ with 8TB (4x 2TB drives with 5.5TB Usable space, the rest is redundancy) and its been the best investment ever (although did cost £600), used to use xbox's and xbmc for streaming in each room but recently upgraded to raspberry pi's with a central database of media on the nas, the library is stored on the nas so all xbmc installations display the same media, very handy only having to update once the 2 bay NAS drives are a decent option and may fall within your price range
Out of curiosity, why do you need the NAS if you're using raspberry pies? Couldn't you simply plug your NAS into a pi then share it on the network via the pi? Is it for speed purpose (USB2.0 being slow)?
well firstly i bought the NAS first before the pi's were announced but yes mainly its a speed/reliability issue, NAS's are a proven technology and the Pi software is still in its infancy, it works yes but its not streamlined yet and it wont be for a while so im sticking with the NAS drives for now, they offer everything i need i am also going to be getting a new NAS soon as i have filled this one nearly, however i think i will be looking at a 6 bay one with 3tb drives, im not rich so will be selling stuff to fund this as it will be expensive
Are you really willing to lose 1.5 TB of data if a disk goes? Capacity is always sacrificed to gain security but in my opinion it is totally worth it. Then again I am pretty paranoid and mirror all my disks at a minimum. Is the special formating the enclosure does transportable to other devices? It sounds like it might not be. You should always keep in mind enclosure failure. While not as serious it can be a pain to track down and buy the exact same enclosure to read your data. Don't forget cloud options for backups. Not speedy to recover from but some options are inexpensive and something is better than nothing in failure scenarios. Also helps for scenarios where things get stolen.
Thanks for the input. I don't have, yet, more than 300GB worth of important data, if I can retrieve it anyway. It's mainly pictures, sd videos and documents, things that doesn't take too much space. I'd use the 1.5TB for things I can get or rip back easily, backup of discs, music, films etc. The problem with cloud storage, is that here in Canada we have downloads caps per month. So if I want to retrieve 1TB of data from internet, I'll have to pay a big whole lot of fees or span the download over 20 months... I guess it depends on how much important stuff you got. For me it's mainly school stuff (numbers and text compress easily), and jpeg pictures. Though if I feel the urge I could swap to full raid1 anytime. As for enclosure compatibility, as I understand, if I remove one drive and put it in a computer, the "safe" raid1 partition will be accessible, but the "concatenated" partition wouldn't. Allowing to backup the data on any pc. Given a total enclosure failure, I could still replace it by another enclosure supporting the safe50 mode right? Sorry if it doesn't make sense I should be writing in the "I'm drunkne" thread.
In case someone might find this useful in the future, I've went with option #3. Two 1.5TB Barracuda (not green) with the AMS Venus eS2 enclosure, in Safe50 mode it gives me one 1.5TB partition for random stuff and one mirrored 750GB partition for important stuff. I also bought a raspberry pi model B which shares the two partitions over my lan in ssh/ftp/nsf/vnc and downloads my torrents directly on the big partition, controlled by a web interface. Very nice setup IMO, for slightly over 300$.
