Lately I've been thinking about purchasing an external hard drive for official backup purposes. A cheap little NAS drive would be nice, probably around 500 GB. I've been looking at the shared storage drives from Maxtor as well as a drive from LaCie. I'm also aware of numerous remote storage sites that one could upload backups to on a scheduled basis. Even though these sites state that all the data is secured, I can't help but think that the site and servers are run by 14 year old kids. I tend to be a bit paranoid with my own computers connected all the time to the Internet....even though I've taken steps to protect my home network. I know these sites are used, just don't think I will ever be trusting enough. Any recommendations on an external drive or thoughts about remote storage sites?

1. Stephan H. Wissel09/03/2006 02:56:31 PM
Homepage: http://www.wissel.net

For NAS you need to be careful of the file system. USB attached storage can be formatted NTFs. A lot of the NAS stuff does FAT32 only and won't take your >2GB file (e.g. your mail archive). For backup you could look at Syncback (2BrightSparks, basic edition is free). It does local drives, network drives and FTP. You also have the option to zip every file with a password (if you want to use an external provider).

At work I'm using Tivoli Continous Data Protection for Files. It keeps multiple copies local and remote and queues remote backup when the server is not reachable. Once configured it runs in the back... backing up the file once it's changed.
stw

---

2. Mikkel Heisterberg09/02/2006 08:37:57 AM
Homepage: http://lekkimworld.com

Forgot to mention that an extenal backup vendor can be avoided by using PowerToys from Microsoft whch allows you to schedule backups of your PC on a regular basis. For more info read about SyncToy from PowerToys (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx)

---

3. Mikkel Heisterberg09/02/2006 08:33:32 AM
Homepage: http://lekkimworld.com

I have a 300GB network drive from Maxtor which is really nice. Easy to setup and use from all the computers in the house.

I would highly recommend getting a networked drive rather than a simple USB connected drive - a little more expensive but much more functional and more versatile. Of cause a "real" NAS with RAID 1 or 5 is preferable but they are also more expensive.

---

4. Tony Kelleran09/01/2006 10:48:28 PM
Homepage: http://www.dominodude.com

I guess I would prefer that the drive I buy had the software to do the backups. Granted there are some pretty inexpensive open source backup util programs that would consider purchasing if the software that came with the drive wasn't that good.

---

5. Sean Burgess09/01/2006 07:34:54 AM
Homepage: http://www.phigsaidwhat.com/

I am with you and most organizations out there. I just don't trust anyone enough to allow them to host my data. I mean what kind of guarantees do you have that they will be there when you need them. I am also looking into and external HD solution for backing up my computers. Are you planning on purchasing additional software to do the backups or going for a solution that has the hardware and software together?

Sean---

---