Backup to external hard drive

[maxse]

Finalizing my backup strategy and have a question. 

 

Is this even possible? How can I back up a share that’s 30tb to external hard drives that are 10tb each?

 

basically the source is larger than the destination.. content constantly gets added to the server so once a week I would manually  connect the hard drive and the program should know which files have already been backed up and exist on the previous external drives already, and just back up to the new stuff to the new hard drive...

 

also so I would like to somehow encrypt this external drive. Can it be done through unassigned devices and have the same key phrase as the rest of the unraid array?

 

Things I’ve researched don’t seem to talk about what happens when the source is larger than the backup destination hard drives...

 

I have my content organized in shares. It would be messy if I just did the individual disk to disk transfer I think. Especially since unraid automatically distributed different files across disks I will have to do a lot of searching. And certain shares I don’t need to backup...

 

thanks guys

[John_M]

How about backing up subfolders of the share instead of the whole share? That way you could put large subfolders, such as Movies, on one disk and groups of smaller ones, such as Music, Photos and Documents on another.

[maxse]

Movies is greater than 10tb

[John_M]

Subdivide it into horror and comedy, then. It was only an example that I gave you.

[trurl]

And if you don't have subfolders there are other ways. Alphabetically, for example.

 

[bcbgboy13]

Something unexpected that you have to be prepared for but IMHO the modern external hard drives (at least the cheap ones) are not designed well in regard to thermal dissipation.

 

They were horrible when they used USB2 interface. These days they are using USB3 interface which is much faster and perhaps adequate if you are going to dump a DVD or a BR disk, but if you are going to fill them at once and run the backup for 5-10 or even more hours I suspect you will overheat the drive inside.

 

And after that I do not know how good your backup will be and how long this HD will last???

 

If you want to have a long lasting external hard drive I suggest a little bit DIY (but you will discard the potential warranty)

 

Buy a new external HD and shuck it out (lots of guides on YT). Take the internal hard drive, attach it to the Unraid server and preclear it once or twice to be sure that the drive is good. Make sure to have some cooling if the drive is outside the case, so it does not run above 40-45 degC!!!

 

Take a drill and drill multiple 5-10 mm holes in the plastic enclosure. Use a sandpaper on the inside, then wash the shells and let them dry.

Buy a quiet 120 or even 140 mm fan (this one may be a bit larger than the enclosure itself but who cares if it will protrude 5-10 mm on the side or at the top...)

Glue the fan to one side of the shell, then cut the wires and solder then carefully to the power jack on the small PCB (yellow cable is the 12V, the black one is the ground).

Assemble everything back, using the already precleared drive and you will end up with a mean back-up drive that can handle everything and for as long as it is powered.

 

If you use it only for occasional backup - it is good to have it powered every few months and do some reading/writing in order to move the heads and to lubricate the internals...!!!

 

PS.  I suggest you start with Seagate enclosure, as they are drive insensitive and will work with every hard drive there is it. The WD ones will work only with WD drives unless you do some other mods (cutting two pins from a small EEPROM chip)

 

Good Luck