Just bought one of these http://www.netgear.co.uk/digital_home_sc101.php

and a 205gb hard drive. Seems quite a decent bit of kit for about

It's a handy extra storage device. Please do remember though that it also has a wearing part in it (the HDD) and that it is worth keeping a copy of the important stuff in multiple places (different systems/drives).

For the money it is a very nice bit of kit though and you can probably upgrade the HDD to a larger one at a later date as well

Glad i saw this, as i've been considering getting one of those myself (i like the netgear stuff) - like said above though, always best to have high risk items backed up in other areas/ media types.

cheers,

lee

Yes please bear in mind single disk = no backup at all.

Also backups do not equal security of backup. You could quite easily loose all that data wit ha corrupted FS.

Other options and these are cheaper to more expensive.

Linksys make a unit called NSLU2, circa 50 quid, plug into network and attach USB disks. These can be made from disc + external cases. Still a single disc, but you could add 1terrabyte to your network this way, of course you could just buy a USB disc and plug it in...

Thecus make a unit called the NS2100, takes two discs and is dual networked. This unit can run in spanned or mirrored mode. The relevance of this is two discs mirrored means if one fails you have not lost everything.

Buffalo also make a home station, 0.6Tb and a 1Tb unit, very good but high initial cost, but raid 5 for even better protection.

Discs traditionally fail once every 5 years, I've had discs fail from 18months to 10+years.

Also bear in mind back up to dvd and optical media decays.

I personally have

NS2100 for core data, 2x250G raid 1.

Linksys with 250Gb for rsyching the NS2100, copies the NS2100 entirely so I can the usb disc caddy on the nslu2 with me, and should the NS2100 be stolen I still have my data in a form.

And a 250Gb usb disc on the pc for download / scratch data.

PC only has 2 80gb drives in raid1.

If you are going use network stuff, consider speed, 10 network is painfull, wireless just as much for large transfers. so consider wired 100 and with gigabyte cars and switches dropping in price you could easily stream dvd's off your network device. *note NS2100 has gigabyte con, nslu2 100 max.

All pc's are connected to NS2100 or nslu for downloads/media etc.

NSLU2 can be fiddle with to provide webserver etc

NS2100 comes with web front end for files, iTunes Server, FTP server, gallery application (but it's pants)

Hope that helps, there are a zillion ways of doing backups, I go for the copy of data in lots of places approach...

Have a read also on microsofts synchtoy.

I have it on a login script for my documents etc.

Gonna have a RAID1 raptor (75GB RAID ed) plus a Raid 5 with 400GB WD RE setup soon, have used a RAID5 with 3 x 120GB drives for yonks in the past.

Mirroring is not a bad way to go with current drive prices as well as motherboard support for it

It can run in a mirrored setting as it takes 2 hard discs but I've only bought one 250gb which when full can be replaced. I've just dropped all my invoices and photo's on it which are on a combination of laptop, desktop and our mildred's computer. I would back everything up on usb stick thingies but I keep losing them

RAID is not a replacement for a backup.

If your system gets too hot all the disks may cook, and if it get wet, lightning struck, stolen or similar, you have lost your data.

RAID is not a replacement for a backup.

If your system gets too hot all the disks may cook' date=' and if it get wet, lightning struck, stolen or similar, you have lost your data.[/quote']

And if one is virused all are virused.

For really important stuff use off site backups - optical or tape are best for large volumes though for home use a 4gb flash drive might be ok - just keep it at work or whatever and you're sorted.

These days (and I support backup solutions for a living!) we tend to not only suggest a backup solution, but also data replication of some sort.

So by all means copy to a disk device, but I'd always advocate copying to a passive media of some sort, like DVD, CD-ROM, or even good old fashioned tape.

A friend of mine, who's a semi-professional photographer with a lot of digital client images stored has a RAID box inddors and a tape autochanger in his garage (which is networked, obviously!), so he has a copy out of the house.

At the most extreme example, after 9/11, lots of companies had to do data recovery, but the ones who got going quickly had their data copied to a remote location, rather than backed up to local tape.

Phil

I would defo say set a RAID (Not 0) array up and when selecting drives go for those that are described as "enterprise grade" as they are much better tested.

However combine that RAID backup with regular backups, Maybe a monthly snapshot and weekely diffs, or 6monthly full image and monthly diffs, if just depends how much data you store.

Ive got a NSLU2. (well 3 actually lol)

Currently only using one.. overclocked of course

The latest firmware supports USB hubs.. so theoretically you can add as many usb drives as you like to them.. they aint the fastest things on the planet.. get about 5mb a second from them.

I use mine as a 2nd backup for my "my documents" and email files.. use a free MS toy called synctoy which i run every couple of days to sync them.

I also use it as storage for all the stuff i download and films etc, as ive got a "kiss" dvd player which can play films/music etc off the lan.

Current problem is.. with the cost per GB on hard drives being very low.. so the average person has more data, backup media/technology isnt really keeping up with the trend... considering one LTO 2 tape which can store 200-400 gigs of data is