Tarmac@TarmacSportz Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 What data storage solutions do people use other than a hard drive ? I've got loads of data I need to store safely without risk of going up in flames or lost etc. Any suggestions ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aliensurfer Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 How much data are we talking? few Gb's or up to a TB or more? I'm assuming this is business related data, so would you need it being encrypted or are you just making sure it's backed up in case you need it? You can look at large external hard drives, or even SAN's (Storage Area Networks) depending on how much you want to keep and for what purpose. Alternatively, you can look at online storage, again depending on your requirements Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gudzy Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 (edited) Cloud storage seems to be popular at the moment. It depends how much data you are talking about though. Edited November 13, 2012 by Gudzy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 What are you wanting to store Chris? Most cost effective is just buying a few HDDs and storing them off site, however its not very easy to keep them up to date and can be a pain to manage. I currently run a Synology DS411slim ( http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS411slim/index.php ). This takes 2-4 laptop HDDs and will keep the data safe on them, replicating it between the HDDs so should one fail you can replace it and rebuild from the other. I also run CrashPlan on it which backs up the data to their servers over night to keep it extra safe. Costs $5/mo and well worth doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dErZ Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 Another thumbs up for Synology. I have a Ds211j (2 disk) a fair bit more affordable than chris'l Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flex Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 I use dropbox, costs about 6 squid per month and I get access on my mobile too if I'm out and about and want to look at something. Also lets me share between machines and I can invite people to share certain folders which is handy for clients too. It backs up continuously so I dont need to remember to do it, I was using idrive but this only backed up and did not let me share with others or if it did wasnt as easy as dropbox. I get 100bg of storage which may or may not be enough for everyone's requirements. A laptop went kaput on me years ago and I lost a couple of days of data which was lost time and money to me, I've made sure that never happens again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarmac@TarmacSportz Posted November 13, 2012 Author Share Posted November 13, 2012 Sorry should have been more specific, I basically have thousands of price sheets, images, spreadsheets etc. if I lost them I would be in serious trouble, I was thinking Cloud or similar as they have bank grade security apparently. The thought of an external hard drive might be a PITA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gudzy Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 What's the combined size of all these spreadsheets though?! If its security of data that you want look at truecrypt which can encrypt entire drives or just certain folders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSet Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 There are lots of online backup solutions that'll give you 5 gigs for free. I use Mozy on my main machine and IDrive on my laptop. Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaydnH Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 I would suggest starting with a consumer NAS box (network attached storage) with at least 2 hard drives running RAID, this plugins in to your router via a network cable and is accesible from any device on the network which will be useful in the future if you expand and have multiple people needing the same data. As you have no need for mega performance (that you would need for video editing etc) RAID 1 known as mirroring would suit your needs, in laymans terms this tells the NAS box that when you write to the box it will write the data to all the disks at once (hence mirroring) so that if one fails you can swap it for a different disk and the contents from the surviving disk will be resynced on to the new one. You can add more disks to RAID 1 for extra resilience, so if you have 3 disks in a RAID 1 setup and 2 fail at the same you still have 1 good disk to get the data from, this obviously has the down side that for each GB of data you want you need to by 2+ times that amount of storage, although HDDs are relatively cheap anyway, especially compared to the cost of losing the data. This may also has the benefit of faster read times as the data can be taken from more than 1 disk at a time although that will depend on the NAS box and network config. If you had enough disks and wanted to save a little cash you could opt for RAID 3, 4 or 5 which without going in to too much detail stripes the data across the disks but uses one of them as a parity. As a simplified example, if you had 5 disks and striped data across them the first 4 may read 1, 0, 1, 0, as the sum of those bits is even the 5th disk, or parity, would be a 1, therefore losing any one of the disks would allow you to figure out the missing 1 or 0. While this is cheaper, for the amount of data you're talking about I would personally stick to RAID 1 as per above. Further, I would ensure you have the monitoring service on the NAS setup and tested so that if a disk fails you know about it immediately, this is usually in the form of an e-mail but there will also be green/red lights on the box that you should check regularly. Buying an additional spare disk (or 2) is also a good idea so that you have them on hand when a disk fails, you'd be suprised how often disks fail at close to the same time. It's also a good idea to test how you would swap out a failed disk before you put your data on there (just with some test data) and document the procedure yourself rather than relying on the manufacturers process. Once that's done and you have your local data fairly resilient, I would create an off site backup solution as well, you never know when your office is going to get robbed/burn down/get blown up by terrorists etc. The cloud is a great place for this and many modern consumer NAS boxes have cloud partners for off site backups. You could go with tape or a seperate portable HDD for this but if you're not a professional IT guy I'd personally go with the cloud as they will have the experience. Hope that helps, Haydn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarmac@TarmacSportz Posted November 13, 2012 Author Share Posted November 13, 2012 Thanks all, your help is truly appreciated as always Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricey Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 If your storing any customer data now or in the future make sure you ask the question again as that is a whole new box of fecking problems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rtbiscuit Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 i just use an old HDD in a conversion box and every now and then back up the RTCustomZ folder to the HDD. but then my turnover and customer base is very tiny in comparison. if storing customer details are you meant to do anything special? i have copies of all the reciepts i've written on the computer so i can track sales etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThriftyFifty Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 HP Microserver with automated encrypted backup to Rackspace cloud. https://www.jungledisk.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricey Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 i just use an old HDD in a conversion box and every now and then back up the RTCustomZ folder to the HDD. but then my turnover and customer base is very tiny in comparison. if storing customer details are you meant to do anything special? i have copies of all the reciepts i've written on the computer so i can track sales etc. It depends on the type of data you're holding but basically if you are a company (not sure of Chris has formalised his business into a company) you will probably be bound by the data protection act and if you process customer card details via a merchant the PCDISS. As a private individual I'm not so sure that's much of an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 Wouldnt imagine Chris will fall within PCIDSS unless he is taking/storing card numbers. As most payments will be over PayPal, they are responsible for that so its all ok. Data protection will however be applicable as he will be holding customer names/addresses/phone numbers/etc so data will need to be store securely and restricted access. I would recommend just getting something like crashplan to backup your data to their servers which is encrypted. Safe enough in terms of security and redundancy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricey Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 Do you need to be registered with the ICO as well if you're holding and processing customer data? At what point do you become big enough to need to do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 Do you need to be registered with the ICO as well if you're holding and processing customer data? At what point do you become big enough to need to do that? http://www.ico.gov.uk/notify/self/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricey Posted November 13, 2012 Share Posted November 13, 2012 Clear as fecking mud then. Good luck Tarmac! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 14, 2012 Share Posted November 14, 2012 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaydnH Posted November 14, 2012 Share Posted November 14, 2012 I thought that was pretty clear if you do the 9 questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted November 14, 2012 Share Posted November 14, 2012 Cant get much more simple really Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabbitstew Posted November 14, 2012 Share Posted November 14, 2012 I have a server in the house which has 6TB of space in it, i store all my documents, photos, media etc.. on there and it then has the added benefit I can access it from any media device I want (except the missus`s ipad 3 which was a nightmare trying to get it to see the thing, let alone play any videos etc). For backup, anything "important" is automatically sync`d with the google cloud, so again, i can access it from anywhere. I found google to be the cheapest, although i also use dropbox for a few things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarmac@TarmacSportz Posted November 14, 2012 Author Share Posted November 14, 2012 Hmm Think it's either gcloud or Dropbox. Cheers guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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