I want to build a backup storage system.

[LordJezo]

All I know right now is what I want to do, I want to build a dedicated storage system with a bunch of big drives in it that will do nothing other than back stuff up on a semi regular basis and be used as a storage device.

I will keep it plugged into the network and use it as a place to write backup images to and keep large files that I don't use often on.

How should i start?

 

[jay2472000]

Ok, how much storage do you need? And whats your budget? And do you have any old PC's laying around?


You have from my perspective a few viable options. I know technically some of what I suggest isnt "correct" as I am sure others will point out, BUT, it has/does work for me.

The easiest is probably buy a NAS device. The downside is gonna be price, and on a lot of those nifty little boxes they use some sort of proprietary raid. Personally, I wanna be able to yank a drive, and install it in an external enclosure if need be and recover my data. So fo rme, these arent the way to go, but may work for you. If you find one that uses a simple NTFS format without and fancy raid, then I would consider that.( pluses - its easy : minus' - expensive, hard to recover from in case of failure if proprietary raid is used)

Another quick and easy way would be buy some external drives, and backup to them. I kinda like this way because its simple, and relatively inexpensive, assuming you dont have more than say 2 TB of stuff. ( pluses - cheapest way, easy to recover data ; minus' - some external enclosures run drives hot, you have to remember to power on the drives and do the backup )

Next option. Assuming you have an old PC laying around, install XP Pro on it, share the drives on the network, and set up some sort of backup program to run for you. I have used Cobian, theres others out there. ( pluses - not hard to set up, backups can be automated ; minus' - this isnt the ideal situation ( I have done it for over a year this way though) , need a whole other PC running )

Last option. And probably the easiest most cost effective in my mind is to set up a separate box with WHS ( Windows Home Server) and use folder duplication. For example, if you have 800 gigs of stuff to backup, buy 2 1 TB drives. WHS will write the data to both drives so that your data is duplicated on more than one spindle. ( pluses - whs handles the duplication, if everything got destroyed but one 1tb drive, you could put that drive in an external enclosure to recover ; Minus' - you have to buy/build a separate PC, you have to buy or otherwise acquire WHS, WHS duplication is not a true backup as its not offsite, etc. Personally, for my pron collection, pictures, and music, WHS does well enough

Also, theres quite a few Linux solutions out there also, but personally I dont know much about any of the *Nix OS'es and really dont want to learn a whole new OS just to backup, but if you already have experience with those, then that is another option, and I am sure some of the other replies will guide you in that direction.

Good luck.

 

[Concentric]

Kinda vague outline, could you be a bit more specific on things like the amount of data you're going to need to store, how much you have to spend, and so on.