[vox-tech] External vs. Bare Drive/Case

[Alex Mandel]

On 09/01/2010 10:28 PM, Bill Broadley wrote:
>> While I like the 2.5" drive option, I don't see them having the capacity
>> I need and I'm not sure if I can find as good of external cases for them
> 
> The URL I included was a 2.5" drive, 1TB, and has a nice external case.
> 
I assume power consumption on that is 5W max since it's a usb based
device with no external power source.

>> (need to look more). 2x 1TB drives just seems to double the number of
>> cases, usb ports, power ports etc... I'll have to price it to see if
>> makes sense, just seems like a lot of extra cordage.
> 
> Yeah, it wouldn't make particularly good sense unless you wanted backups
> to 2 distinct locations.  Say email them both to separate friends/family.
> 

That is the plan, though I intend to offer the hosting family members
space on the system too. So I'd need at least 1 TB just for stuff at my
house and room to grow hence the interest in 2 TB drives.

>> I am thinking about 2x 2TB actually, one on-site and one offsite cloned
>> with something like drbd.
> 
> Sounds kind of scary.  So if you accidentally delete a file you want it
> deleted off the remote copy with 100ms?  Drbd will also tend to be more
> bandwidth intensive than rsync (depending on usage of course).
>
Good point, rsync always scares me, guess I just need to run all the
commands in test mode 1st(I have tendency to create a duplicate of a
directory as a child directory instead of syncing). It might be good
though since I probably don't need to send offsite every night.

>> Since I always seem to be expanding my photos
>> and science data, I easily see the need for additional 2 TB drives in a
>> couple of years (another reason why starting with 1 TB might be a
>> nuisance)
> 
> Sure if you need the capacity, I'd suggest rsync or a rsync based
> backup.  There's plenty of backup programs that will not only give you a
> copy, but also include some churn, not to mention encryption.  So if you
> do some updates that corrupt something and don't catch it till after the
> rsync you could still revert the changes.

That one's still to be decided depending on how I back things up. Right
now my Photos are add only (and my next big project is to digitize a old
record collection); never delete and my system backups are
Full/incremental keeping between 6 months and a year. Ideally of course
all these files main versions actually live elsewhere.

Thanks, a little more pricing and I think I'm close to a purchase,
Alex