Planning on building a server, but how else should I backup data

[gundam83]

Ok my plan is to put together a server with about 9tb of usable storage. That'll be enough for my media files, backup images, and misc files. However I don't want to keep all my eggs in one basket, but I don't want to drop a ton of cash either. I would like to be able to keep my important files backed up on a second device. What would be the best/easiest way. I don't know if I should get a NAS device, or just schedule periodic backups onto an external hard drive. I have a spare 60gb SSD that I can put to use if need be, unless there a more reliable platter solution?

[jamerson9]

A little more information would be useful, such as how much of the planned 9TB you wish to backup or a rough budget.

 

I personally use bare bones drives with a SATA dock and keep them off site.

[Velkitor]

How often do you want to run backups?

If you wanted to be super cheap and lasy.... you could buy some hot swap drives, and make sure your sensitive data gets stored to a specific disk, once a month swap out the HDD assigned to that disk and have the array rebuild it...

 

I would say a platter solution is more reliable than a SSD.  If something happens and a platter drive dies you can still recover data... send the disk to a lab and they can pull data off (may be very expensive)  I am not sure how possible this is with a SSD, there is no magnetic platter that they can analyze to pull the data off of...

[gundam83]

A little more information would be useful, such as how much of the planned 9TB you wish to backup or a rough budget.

 

I personally use bare bones drives with a SATA dock and keep them off site.

 

Not much. Mainly photos and documents. the 60gb ssd should be large enough if I was to use it. The 9tb is primarily ripped blu ray images and music, and as much as it would suck to lose them, they don't hold as much value as my personal pictures.

[mcs]

Critical items (photos, home video, tax reports, etc) are backed up to multiple USB disks a couple of which are kept off site.

 

Favourite DVDs and Music are also mirrored on USB disk, to save reripping if unRAID box dies. Reripping and/or insurance looks after the rest.

 

[Rajahal]

I use the free home version of Crashplan to back up my most important stuff.  Build a small crashplan network between all your computers and those of your friends and family and you are set.  I love that I can just reformat on a whim without having to worry about backing anything up.  Oh, and my gmail account backs up all my phone stuff (contacts, etc.) and my bookmarks (via chrome's sync options).

[Superorb]

Oh, and my gmail account backs up all my phone stuff (contacts, etc.) and my bookmarks (via chrome's sync options).

 

Android phone? That was my biggest worry about getting a non-GSM phone was losing contacts, but if it's this easy I'd be all for a non-GSM phone since I rarely go overseas.

[candre23]

Not much. Mainly photos and documents. the 60gb ssd should be large enough if I was to use it.

For a relatively small amount of data like that, an online backup solution is probably best.  Something like carbonite or backblaze runs about $50 per year and is well worth it.  The backups are automated, so you can't simply forget to run them on a regular basis.  And most importantly, since it's off-site, your data is still safe even if your house burns to the ground (knock on wood).

 

There was a fire in my building a few years back, and while my computer wasn't destroyed, my downstairs neighbors lost everything.  Since then I've been using off-site backups to protect a few GB worth of stuff I couldn't bear losing.  I highly recommend doing the same.

 

 

PS - If you ever want to see how these "unlimited storage" services build a really big file server, backblaze gives you the plans, parts list, and even CAD files for their 45-drive 4U behemoths.  It's a damn cool read: http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/