Backup solution, my new obsession!

Here's something everyone should do, but nobody does : Backup. And part of those that do backup, don't do it well. Like me. Not so recently, I was upgrading my computer and had to reformat my hard drive. No problem I thought, transfer everything to my external hard drive, clean format my computer and get everything back from my external hard drive. Right? Wrong. My external drive decided to die on me in the exact same time frame that my computer was being setup.

So I lost everything, well, almost. I had been given a free 1-year subscription to Carbonite and had given it a try. You install a client on your PC, tell it what folder you want to backup and everything is sent over on the web to secure encrypted servers (at least we hope it is secure!). The thing is pictures are synced automatically, but not videos, they need to be synced manually. Being the optimist that I am, I never synced my videos. I know, idiot.

What this means is I could get all my pictures back and now the drive's data is in a shop somewhere with someone trying to get back my videos.

What is the poor consumer to do? I've been obsessing about what a good setup is. I want my data to be available and secure. I tried to find on the web what the best solution is but all I can find are "RAID is worth nothing" articles and "RAID vs. Backup" articles. What these articles don't say is what you should do! So my advice is, if you can, do both (RAID and backup). If you can't do both, then backup off-site. Burn it and put backups at the bank, friend's or family's place, use an external web-based service. Just do it. Have 2 or 3 backups. One more time : BACKUP!!!

Here is my master plan that I will put in place shortly. I've done a small diagram to get things started :

Here is I plan to make this work. I got a Home PC for dirt cheap. It's a P4 with a 40gig drive. It will act as a small home server. This PC will run the Carbonite client to backup everything in a specific folder on an out of location server. 

The second part of the data protection strategy is to have my data mirrored at home. I don't just want an external drive that could fail, I want two copies at all time. Enter the RAID 1 setup. I've been trying to find information on what is the best setup for this. There are many possibilities, ranging from RAID 0 to RAID 5, internal or external, software or hardware RAID, it just does not stop. In the end, there are two options that I stopped on. The first is to get an external RAID enclosure that is connected via eSATA or USB (2.0 or 3.0). These range in prices depending on brand, hard drive slots and available ports. Keep in mind that these enclosures do not include the drives themselves. I've been looking at the Startech Dual Enclosure which runs around 70$ on Amazon.

The other popular option are D-Link products. The DNS-321 provides dual RAID 1 storage with a network connection. This means that you don't need a standalone computer (although I choose to use one) and plugin the device in your router. It becomes a shared drive on the network available to all. The DNS-323 provides the same specs but adds a USB printer port and a few other options the 321 does not. I've seen mixed reviews on these devices, but in the end I've had a personal recommendation from a colleague with positive comments.

Then you have to pick your drives. I'm going to go with two 1TB or 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard drives. I chose the green line because they are more energy efficient and don't run as hot which is important when set side-by-side in an enclosure. This will allow me to have plenty of storage. I must admit that I hold a grudge against Western Digital because the drive that failed was a MyBook series external hard drive but I have to get over it chose what the best product out there is. Note that two 1TB drives won't equate in 2TB of storage. These drives will be setup mirrored so whatever happens on one drive will happen on the other. If one drive fails, the other will be a copy. To backup to a new drive, you insert the drive and the RAID array will rebuild itself.

I must add the RAID "haters" comments here. RAID is not a backup solution. It provides data availability in the event of a crashed drive. If your enclosure is stolen or in the event of a fire, you will lose your data. If you delete a file by mistake, it will be gone on both drives. What it does provides is that if one drive fails, then you can still access your data. For example, if you need access to your videos, you won't have to download them from your backup solution (Carbonite). You have a backup solution, right? I understand RAID is not for everyone, and certainly not for people who are not technologically inclined, but this is my technology and I've decided that it is a must for me!

The next part of my setup is to backup some of my phone data. I will have a Dropbox client installed on my PC. I have a Dropbox client on my Android-powered phone. If I want to backup a picture, I can move the file to my Dropbox sub-folder on my phone and it will be copied over to my Home PC. What I intend to setup from there, is use Download Mover to move files from that specific sub-folder to a sub-folder in my Carbonite backup folder. Why not just backup the Dropbox? Well, Dropbox has a limit of 2GB and I intend to move videos a photos there regularly. By moving the files to another folder, the Dropbox folder won't fill up. Sure I will need to go to the PC and backup the videos manually, but I'll have to do that anyways for my other videos. 

I think that covers everything. I just want to stress that using a product like Carbonite (or Mozy) is probably enough (as long as your are disciplined with videos). It certainly is a minimum for peace of mind. The RAID setup gives you quick access to your data if something should happen at home. I'm just trying to be extra-careful. I got burned once and I don't intend to let it happen again!