Media files growing exponentially, HDMI video and RCA stereo, two systems

[phofman]

Originally Posted by KMossman

That is totally backwards. You need a backup strategy to implement backups, otherwise you are just jerking around.

Honestly, I do not know where you are heading. You started with

I do not see the need for back-up - IF the correct RAID mode is selected.

and now you have come to insisting on developing specific backup strategy prior to doing anything. Do you actually want to offer any specific technical solution?


My suggestion for the OP: If you can afford to have one of your machines running 24/7, just add a drive to your PC, get an external USB/eSATA drive for backups (e.g. cobian backup for windows) and be done with it.

If you want to buy a NAS, get an inexpensive but reliable low-power PC (x86) with multiple SATA ports instead, have someone install linux on it (e.g. OpenMediaVault), backup the data to external eSATA drive once a week using e.g. rdiff-backup. Once your drive is full, you can at any time add a new drive (one or two) and start using raid, or replace the internal drive with a larger one (no reinstall required, of course).

That is what I would do.

[KMossman]

Originally Posted by phofman

1 - Honestly, I do not know where you are heading. You started with .............

2 - get an external USB/eSATA drive for backups (e.g. cobian backup for windows) and be done with it.

1 - Abundantly clear to me when read in context.

2 - backup a couple terabytes over USB?

[phofman]

Originally Posted by KMossman

2 - backup a couple terabytes over USB?

There are countless multiple TB USB3 external drives. Also USB2 will work, just will take a bit longer. On the other hand if the copying occurs on the filesystem level the drive does many more seeks and the overall speed drops significantly anyway.

BTW that is why we create the offline copy at block level - raid synchronization which runs at full drive speed. Our backup server has over the years accumulated a few hundred million files (mostly hardlinks) currently on 4.2TB array. Weekly synchronization of that to two RAID0'ed eSATA drives takes about 5 hours, thank to the write-intent bitmap of linux mdadm. HW is HP ML115, the lowest entry level available.

[billyk]

Originally Posted by KMossman

2 - backup a couple terabytes over USB?

Yes and why not?
It's cheap, 3.0 is pretty quick. I had a drive die a few weeks ago, took 22 hours to replicate it. Even so I only had to start it. It is the initial copy that may take a while but after that even moving a few Gb around doesn't take that long.

[MLStrand56]

Check out the Silverstone Grandia GD08 HTPC case.
SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.- GD08
This case can hold 8 x 3.5" HD's + 2 x 2.5" HD's + 2 x Optical Drives (Blu-ray & DVD).
With the correct mobo or 2 RAID 5 cards, this can can hold up to 24TB (8 x 3TB) of media or 16TB (8 x 2TB) of media. Throw a couple of SSD's in the 2.5" bays & have a FAST Monster media server. You could even use one RAID 5 network for Audio & the other RAID 5 network for video. This case can even accomadate a Huge dual-slot video card.

This is the HTPC case I'm ordering with my income tax refund.

MLStrand56

[phofman]

It is a very nice case indeed. Yet I would not want to have so many spindles rotating just beneath my TV. IMO such storage belongs to a service room where it can be cooled properly without noise constraints.

[otto88]

That GD08 could be overkill, or classy future proofing

Price of c $145 doesn't seem excessive for the case equivalent of a top Swiss Army knife in a solid velvet glove.