External Hard Drive - Disaster.... any ideas?

Excellent and obvious way to do this!
Thanks, I'll look into it!

Barberskum wrote:

I wonder is there an easy solution to this data storage problem,
many of us imagers seem to suffer from it.

I bought a Netgear ReadyNas box some time back. It connects to your network and is available to all networked PC's/Laptops. The one I bought will hold four hard disks (I currently have 4 * 500 Gb installed). The disks are configured as X-RAID (pretty identical to RAID 5) - I can lose one disk completely without losing any data - I have two spares at the ready - it supports hot-swapping. With three USB ports, you can even attach an external hard-disk and back-up the NAS device. There's a bunch more stuff it'll do too.

I bought the NAS box and the disks separately. With the disks factory installed, it seemed really expensive. I saved a good few bob buying the disks myself.

Of key importance, the purchase included a very comprehensive backup software utility (Retrospect). When I say comprehensive, it is very complex but riddled with lots of help plus access to a web forum for tech support.

On top of this, my main PC holds six hard disks - four as configured as RAID 1+0 (controlled by the Intel Chipset on the motherboard) and there are two spares - fully connected and powered. If one disk fails, the spare kicks in. If a second fails, the second spare kicks in. With no spares, I can lose two hard disks and not lose any data.

My backup strategy is:
1. Backup all networked machines to the NAS device every week
2. Backup the NAS device to an external hard-disk every month
3. Put the NAS backups in my steel garden shed when the disks are full

There are few scenarios I can think of that would result in complete data loss.

dmcdona wrote:
There are few scenarios I can think of that would result in complete data loss.[/quote]
Meteor impact on your house maybe?
:laugh:
Jeez man,
when can you call down to set all this up for me!!!
It's exactly what I need.

Hopefully not the one named after me anyhow

What led to me buying all this stuff? A two grand bill from a data recovery agency. Yes, two GRAND... That was a very painful lesson. I learned it and it ain't gonna happen again. Luckily enough, they recovered absolutely everything but I have to say it was really hard giving them my credit card...

Using your web site is a good idea for folders of images etc. But I have a ton of stuff "configured" and I really don't know where the config files are. The backup software will re-create all hard-disk files as they were pre-crash. So you just restore, let it run and hey presto - sit back down at your keyboard as if nothing happened.

One other thing - both the PC Raid and the NAS box will tell you if disks are becoming impaired so you can even head off a crash before it happens.

Steve,

I had a similar issue last year, although I didn;t have any rattling noise which sounds ominous. My problem turned out to be firmware corruption. I took out the drive attached it directly to my PC. Turns out it used a unix format so I was able to use A linux CD to retreive the data off it. In the end I managed to reflash the hardware and the drive still works today.

Take out the hard disk and ID if it's the disk itself rattling or something else. If the disk is ok then there is a good chance it is fully functional.

Frank: I use an online backup service called carbonite., It costs 45 lids a year but that includes unlimited online backups for two PC's and all files are double encrypted for peace of mind. For me 45lids is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Hi Folk

Many thanks for all your helpful suggestions and of course sympathy. It looks like a mechanical failure (the worst). Hopefully there is some "light at the end of the tunnel". Having the benefit of working for an IT company some of the "Hardware Techies" reckon they can sort it out (no guarantees though)..... so fingers crossed.

Anyway... valuable (and expensive) lesson learned..... so I have just ordered a 2 TB NAS Server (with RAID) for future backup strategies.


Oh the pain ....... oh the pain....

Again many thanks for all the useful info, much appreciated.