I am a firm believer in multiple backups of my computer data for several reasons:
1) As an editor, my livelihood/business relies on computers
2) As an avid photographer, ever since I went completely digital many years ago, I've accumulated over 350GB of digital photo files
For years I've had dual HDs in my main computers, and some time ago added an external hot-swappable USB2 HD cradle which works great.
But I've been hearing a lot about NAS (network attached storage) and about a week ago I picked up a D-Link DNS-323 NAS device from NCIX, along with a couple of Seagate 1.5TB hard drives. Total damage? C$299 before tax, so cheap for the additional backup peace of mind. I set it up as RAID 1, which means that the two 1.5TB drives in the D-Link mirror each other.
The salesperson at NCIX warned me that the DNS-323 would run only as fast as my network, but I didn't think much of it. I should have!
Backing up those 350GB of photo files took more than 30 hours over my 100Mbit LAN (local area network)! Mind you now that the initial backup has been done, updates will go much more quickly. Still, I now do have my sights set on a gigabit router/switch :-).
The other great thing about a NAS device is that any of the computers on my LAN can back up files to it.
The unit itself is compact, about the size of two fat paperback novels, but it does require an external power brick. I haven't set up or tested some other cool functions such as remote FTP access, or serving up music files across the network.
Posted by Paul at June 29, 2010 08:23 PM