Hi all,
I've been asked to suggest recommendations for a replacement backup system as a favour to a friend, who works in video production like myself.
His storage requirements are mixed between typical business documents, and large multimedia files (videos, images, etc). The current solution looks like it hasn't been set up correctly to ensure that he can recover (which has now manifested itself at the worst possible time).
Following his own suggestion in the second email, I'm thinking 2 x 6TB LaCie 2big NAS devices, RAID1, and set the devices to replicate. Alternatively, just a single NAS box (6TB, RAID1), and two external hard drives, which are attached to the NAS box, synced daily, and rotated weekly in a similar fashion to what he does now. Worst case scenario is a week's data is lost, best case is sourcing a replacement drive for the NAS box.
The main things I'm concerned about (on his behalf) are ease-of-setup/use, and ease of restore.
What are your thoughts? Original emails below, with my comments/interpretations in square brackets. Happy to go with a different solution too, this is not my area of expertise, and only based off what he has suggested, and my own limited knowledge.
[Original email] A Lacie NAS Drive recently failed resulting in many important records over several years being lost. The drive was over four years old and therefore out of warranty. I also had another drive plugged into this (which was swapped between two for a backup twice a week) and this was apparently set on an automatic backup twice a week. The secondary drive was set up by an IT guy and apparently was running on Linux [assuming Linux partition-type rather than running it as an OS]. I'm unable to see anything on these Linux drives either through the PC or the Mac. I'm not familiar with the Linux OS and I'm not absolutely sure if the missing data will even be on these drives [have suggested using a Linux LiveCD, waiting to hear back].
[Secondary email] The Lacie 2 Big NAS Storage Drive that failed after about four years I think was either 2TB or 3TB in size. I probably had in excess of 1TB of files stored on that - records covering a period of several years, as well as thousands of photos - JPEG and RAW, and also finished HD Movies, Promotional Films and Showreels etc. I'd like to install another NAS Drive to share all the important Files and Media - to access via my PC and my Macs. I'd like to be able to access all my files easily - whether using the PC or the Macs. Recent research showed me that Lacie now do a LaCie 2big NAS (NAS OS3) at 4TB, 6TB, or 8TB. It's expensive, but if I got a 6TB, we could set it as RAID1 and have 3TB of storage mirrored...as some protection against this new one failing. I imagine I'll need 2 - 3 TB of storage anyway. When purchasing this drive, LaCie offer 100GB of cloud storage on their Wuala client (though this is only a free 3-month trial, and will require to be paid afterwards. Not sure what the rental costs will be yet. I'm guessing I'll also need to back everything up onto another drive at regular intervals too just in case!