Following on from my first questions about NAS speeds i have stumbled onto another.
Do any of you backup all your NAS media (films etc not precious photos and docs) to an external source or do you rely on RAID to reduce downtime or nothing at all?
I plan to backup my photos etc to an online service as these would be difficult to replace but is it worth doing films, tv shows etc given the space required and the time to upload them?
PS. I know RAID isn’t a backup system on its own.
Thanks
In my opinion, if you have to choose RAID or backup: backup wins.
I have a nightly task that backs up my files to a separate drive. It keeps the same file structure so it’s an easy copy to the new drives (or you can mount that drive in it’s place if you want to get back up and don’t have a drive). At least this way it’s not something where a corrupt array can blow away all my data in one go.
I have been looking into some software raid options, but really it hasn’t been a big deal to me. The couple times I’ve had issues I was up and running quick with the drive mounted and a new one on the way.
If I may offer my thoughts,
RAID is not backup.
RAID provides a single, unified, larger, volume/logical disk which is assembled from a group of an Array of Indepent Disks (the AID in RAID)
Redundancy only provides for fundamental error detection and correction across that array.
If you want to backup the RAID volume, create another RAID volume and copy the entire contents there. Shut down / power off that volume. Now you have a backup.
Well you are doing good just by understanding this concept.
As to backups, it depends on the data, how easy or difficult it would be to replace or reproduce.
Obviously family pictures, documents, home videos, etc you would not be able to just replace out of the blue.
Generic media content is something else, typically can be easily reripped (even if time consuming), assuming its something you still have an original and usable source.
if you have been in the digital storage realm for a while, you quickly start to understand how quickly stuff piles up and how much time and/or money invested into storage, which can exponentially expand in both size and cost very quickly.
Like me, I suspect most people who start off with raid, either a home/smb nas or something home built nas-wise, will simply upgrade hardware over time, and old hardware can often be used as a backup destination.
I have multiple nas’s over the last many years and use one as a main storage and then distribute backup copies over the various older devices.
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