[ghart999]

Hi all. Just set up a 6TB unraid server with a 3TB parity drive.

Do any of you backup your unraid server with another local hardware-based storage solution?

I know that unraid has recovery from a parity drive, but I can't help get nervous anyway.

I mean if my house was burning I would grab my disks before anything else (photos for the past 40 years), and grabbing a server is a lot harder than a small usb JBOD enclosure.

Or the alternative is online storage, but the thought of uploading 5.5TB of data makes me cry. Not to mention pushing an additional 10GB a week.

Gregg

[Dougie Fresh]

Here's my thoughts.

Cloud backup is for stuff you can never ever replace: documents, photos and home videos.

For the rest, get an external drive and take it off-site. Every once in a while, bring it home and do another backup. Or, if you can afford, have two drives and just swap them between home and off-site every once in a while.

This will also protect you from accidental erasures. RAID won't protect you from the delete button.

[teaguecl]

I agree with Dougie F. Unraid is great for storing media, but don't confuse it for a reliable backup system. It can recover from a single disk failure, which is great. This saves you hours (days?) of time in re-ripping your DVD collection. It is appropriate for storing things that are replaceable, but are a PITA to replace. It does not save you from:
- a fire in the house. Or a flood. Or a lightning strike, or any other natural disaster.
- a robbery
- a two disk failure
- an accidental deletion. (most likely of all)

For irreplaceable data, the advice hasn't changed in 30 years. Keep multiple copies. Keep at least one copy off-site.
For my important data, it is stored on my Unraid array (primary copy). It gets backed up nightly to an external drive (I use rsnapshot). It is synced to Crashplan. Three copies, one being off-site. I find the key to managing the multiple copies is that they sync automatically. If you leave it up to a manual process to keep all the copies up to date - they will drift, and chaos will ensue

If you don't want to use a cloud service, you could use something like Bittorrent Sync. Just set up a drive at your office (or a relatives house, or anywhere other than your home) and have BTSync keep it up to date. That way you don't have the manual step of periodically updating your offsite backup.

[GortWillSaveUs]

For the irreplaceable data (family photos), I burn DVD copies.
Most everything else is replaceable.

[wsume99]

+1 * 2

Good advice by both. Unraid is not a backup solution it is a time saver.

[teaguecl]

For the irreplaceable data (family photos), I burn DVD copies.
Most everything else is replaceable.

I like this idea, but I also am nervous about it. I've read terrifying things about the shelf-life of optical media. Some disks have been reported to rot in less than 18 months, especially if stored improperly. Add to that the quality of media these days is erratic at best, I'd be worried that my DVD set wouldn't be a safe backup. I think they make "archival quality" media for things like this, but I haven't looked into it. My take on using DVD's would be:

Pros:
- very portable. Could keep a copy in your office, or safety deposit box
- Inexpensive. DVD's are dirt cheap, and everyone already owns a DVD drive.
- puts safety of your data in your own hands. I love Crashplan/Carbonite/Dropbox/etc. for remote backup. They are very reliable (and varying degrees of secure). However, someday one of these companies will have some catastrophic disaster or mistake and clients will lose data. These companies will swear up and down that it can't happen, but trust me - it will. Never underestimate the power of human error.

Cons:
- media might go bad after a few years. Need to refresh your backup from time to time.
- Would need more than one set of DVD's for redundancy. Maybe make a set every six months, and keep 2 years worth?
- Manual process. I've found making backup automatic means that it gets done. If it's manual, it doesn't. That may just be my own laziness.
- Doesn't scale to large data. If your irreplaceable stuff is less than a few GB (and it should be), then DVD's are fine. If your backup requires lots of DVD's to hold, then this gets a little onerous. In truth, this is probably only an issue for people who are creating video (professionals in the business, or home movies). Most of us don't generate that much stuff that is truly irreplaceable.

In thinking through this problem, seems like a manual DVD backup process could work for a lot of people. If you are diligent enough to actually do the backup regularly, and don't mind a little manual work - it seems like a very effective and inexpensive solution.

[SPC CHEESE]

I have a 25 Terabyte ZFS storage pool with 2 parity drives and about 11 TB of data on it and still redundantly backup. I back it up to 3 TB drives and put them in a fireproof safe. I also keep one complete offsite backup. I'm not risking the time I spent gathering, ripping and organizing my media due to lightning, fire or even theft.

Just build an XBMCbuntu media center loaded with HDD's for a friend and there's your offsite backup. They pay for it and always ask if you have new movies and even bring it to you to get backed up. I connect it to my network and Rsync it, it's headless and painless for me.

[Mick1152]

For all my valuable, irreplaceable stuff, I am currently using Zoolz to back it up. Got a free 100GB account which automatically backs everything up. That stuff is stored on my unRAID server so it does have parity protection locally, but it can be restored from the online backup without issue.

My unRAID server is currently at 16TB in size, with about 14TB of actual data. The unRAID server gets mirrored about once a month to my RV HTPC which has a 15TB array in it. The RV HTPC is kept in my RV offsite so, if something happens to the house or unRAID server, etc, I have an offsite backup. There is no parity protection on my offsite RV HTPC.

[ghart999]

Wow thanks for all the replies. I think I will backup photos and family movie to crashplan and then do an offsite system too. I appreciate it.

[T800]

I would love to back up everything. Maybe when I win the lottery I will or then I probably won't care.

[GortWillSaveUs]

For the irreplaceable data (family photos), I burn DVD copies.
Most everything else is replaceable.

I like this idea, but I also am nervous about it. I've read terrifying things about the shelf-life of optical media. Some disks have been reported to rot in less than 18 months, especially if stored improperly. Add to that the quality of media these days is erratic at best, I'd be worried that my DVD set wouldn't be a safe backup. I think they make "archival quality" media for things like this, but I haven't looked into it.

Don't believe all the hype about DVD shelf life,...I have CDs and DVDs that are over 10-15 years old and still work like a charm. Sure,..it is possible to scratch DVDs, leave in direct sunlight (a no-no), mislabel, or lose them in the other pile of media.

Now,..I'm not saying that I trust them all that much either. Once a month, I copy off all new pictures to a secondary external hard drive and burn the new pictures to a DVD.
Once every 6 months,..I burn a complete set of new DVDs,..and keep one set of the prior copies. Rinse and repeat.

Is this ideal,...not really,...but then before there were digital cameras,..family pictures were typically thrown in a box(es) and stored in a garage or attic.
You can imagine what happens to pictures stored in basements, garages and attics. Mold or disintegration.

This may be a little premature,...but I imagine finding old family pictures the old way is more of a find.
I can't see someone in the future, finding a DVD with thousands of pictures being all that interesting.
Why do I say that? If your digital pictures are anything like mine,...you've got all sorts of garbage pictures.
Back in the day,...you didn't take 1,000 pictures while at Disney,..since processing costs would have broken your budget.
So you took maybe 2-5 rolls of film (24 or 36 times 2-5 rolls equals 48-180 pictures) and then maybe 1/2 of the pictures were garbage and were disposed of immediately after processing. The good pictures (12-90 pictures) were stored in that box in the attic for future generations to find.

The same family trip to Disney with digital camera(s) (probably every family member has a camera as a opposed to one film camera from yester-years) results in 1,000 or perhaps many, many more than that. No one ever goes through and purges the crappy pictures and hence you have perhaps 500++ garbage pictures that will make future generations think we are all idiots when it comes to picture taking.

But I digress,.........it's raining here,...how about there?