Hi-Rely RAIDFrame: External Disk-To-Disk Backup Via eSATA
“Are we ready for high-capacity RAID solutions for our backup needs? Today we’re looking at an external device from Highly Reliable Systems that connects to your machine through a single eSATA interface and supports up to 15 drives in a 3U enclosure.”
As recently noted, I have decided to give Carbonite another shot.
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I am pursuing the strategy of only using it for the more critical files, that I may want to retrieve over the internet. There is no way that you are uploading 3tb of data to them even over a top-level broadband connection (I know now from experience – was just curious to see the speed) let alone getting them back, either, in any sort of timely manner.
So I’ve got just under 16 gigabytes of documents, spreadsheets, source code, etc. up there. A few treasured family pictures, etc. The rest resides on multiple local drives, which are not hooked up when not needed (see top 3 items here). This also allows me to off-site a few spare drives, to a reasonably flood / fire / etc. resistant spot. Again, as anyone who’s ever had a drive fail can avow the data lost is often worth many times the cost of the drive itself.
And my timing was spot-on. (yes, failure bites . . .)
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SMART errors are impending doom. A number of years ago, I got a bad batch of drives and they’ve been slowly dying off, with a horrible clicking noise as the final symptom upon power-up. The manufacturer replaced them under warranty, but they are old 500g drives anyway : not something I care to keep about, if not reliable.
I have simulated a bare metal restore, and then deactivated Carbonite on my desktop, and activated it on my “new” desktop (laptop) and restored data successfully. It does keep a couple of generations of data (two back revisions of that pesky spreadsheet, etc.) but by default it only backs it up once per 24 hour period. You can override this behavior, but only on a per file basis, not globally.
I chose to keep control of my own encryption keys : the .pem keyfile is stored on multiple other drives, and keys as well as on a couple of remote servers. This still presupposes trusting the manufacturer of your crypto, in this case the Carbonite folks. (though in their proverbial shoes, I’d just as soon be able to tell anyone that it’s not physically possible to give them the data, they need to bother that individual customer . . .)
Carbonite has worked well in the couple of weeks I’ve been using it. While they also have a Mac version, I’ve not tested it out.
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All in all, keeping realistic expectations about what you are going to get, I would say this is a good data file backup system for a secondary backup. Just realize it is not designed to do bare metal restores, it is for specific data files that you choose, such as “My Documents” etc. For all of my local home backups, I’m using old sata drives via this esata dock and I also have a couple HD’s off site in town, and a limited amount of data rsync’ed remotely as well.
Once you’ve had data failure that costs a lot in hassle, grief, or dollars, you tend to get better prepared
Time to get the local / on-site backup system upgraded I’ve been relying on the Sabrent USB-DSC5 Serial ATA or IDE 2.5-/3.5-Inch to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter with Power Supply for some time, but of course it is slow and rather manual. It’s a great thing to have on hand for when you need to interface with a bare laptop or desktop drive, but it’s got a number of cables hung all over, and of course it’s only running at USB2 speeds (not so good to back up lots of data)
A small step in the right direction was to go for the following :
This “notebook” will get a full review later, but essentially it is a little bigger than the EEE PC’s I’ve used, yet still pretty portable, and with quite a bit more processor (64 bit) & memory capability (4 gigabytes) on board. I consider that pretty important before loading Windows 7 x64 on board.
The hub because I can always use the additional powered channels, and the flash drives as quick / portable backup devices. I also like to keep a copy of Windows 7 on each, set to install from flash (much faster than DVD install) : 32 bit on one, and 64 bit on another.
Alas, this is going to be a challenging Tech week, I can tell. All I can report for now is that the current revision of Acronis Trueimage Home 2010 (version number 13.0.6053) doesn’t seem to work well with my TrueCrypt’d boot partition setup, under Windows 7 x64 [Version 6.1.7600].
Back to the drawing board – I’d really like to upgrade from DriveImage XML at some point [ahem] but at least it works!
My simple solution, for detachable external storage (i.e. it shouldn’t fry from the same power surge, if not cabled up in any way at the time of the electrical havoc . . .)
Some of these models require a port-multiplier eSata / e-sas type port, but usually include at least a software-raid sort of PciE card with the package – check to make sure, or you’ll only get one drive showing up instead of 4 or more . . .
If I were to go with the more expensive option (still relatively affordable, above – compared to a true NAS, etc.) I might consider some of the 1 terabyte or > “Green” SATA drives. This is due to me wanting to have a good backup locally (c.f. Acronis) as well as remotely (expect an article this coming week on more discoveries here). Yes, having been around the corporate world, I tend to back up like an OCD person washes hands – once you’ve been bitten, you understand the data is worth a lot more than the hardware.
Pretty interesting NAS device, for the starter market (like at home). That’s a lot of features; granted, their bottom level, one drive NAS is $300 but still, it’s always refreshing to see innovation like this. And the ability to hook up other drives externally to it is a plus’ you could get a backup rotation going there.
Sheesh, I remember when my computer didn’t have that much RAM
And naturally, I’m looking forward to USB3 – backwards compatibility is always nice, but we are sure due for some higher throughput, and not everyone has a handy esata port to hook up to one of the drives above. For my local backup solution, I tend to use those handy external cases, like the Macally G-S350SU Hi-Speed eSata/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD.
I’ve gotten a few inquiries about backups and storage since there’s been some focus here, so I’ll share my (not perfect, but seems reasonable) backup plan.
At home, I tend to copy off any new install CD, any new movie I’ve purchased, etc. to my main system, and then place the original on edge on one of the many bookshelves. This means it’ll both be locatable if I need it again, and pretty safe from scratching. Add to that the music collection I’ve carefully digitized to lossless, etc. as well as many high resolution digital pictures, and we have quite a bit of space taken up.
These reside on the primary system internally, across 4 1.5 terabyte drives running in Raid. 2 partitions in the raid manager, 400 gig of striped Raid-0 for speed, and 2.5t of Raid-5 for redundancy. Within Windows 7, the strip is split in half, C and D drives, with D being scratch / temp space. Drive E: is all of the raid5; all are set as primary and GPT partitions under Windows 7.
I backup to external drives, as above, and am paranoid enough about lightning etc. that even with a quality UPS per system I just know it’s hard for electricity to make it across that “air capacitance gap” when the external is unplugged from power and data, at the drive end for my convenience.
Multiple local drives for backup (reused a number of old .75t drives) as well as online backup via service as well as multiple Gladinet targets, for second tier. This keeps me from having to shuttle external disks between locations, in order to keep some of the backups “off site”. It’s not hard to tell who has experienced data loss, is it?
Acronis is very confident in their new product, and I have to agree; it looks even easier to use than before, and they’ve been steadily adding features instead of Bling. It’s always a good sign when they’re willing to let you try it out for free : Acronis True Image Home 2010 Free Trial Download.
For each picture below, clicking it should show an enlarged version in a new window.
I ran through a couple of Beta testing versions before this new launch, and Acronis looks like they made the minor changes needed. I was really glad to see the launch, as I’ve been relying on this for some time since I’m running the production Windows 7 on my (windows) machines.
Acronis says : “With Acronis True Image Home 2010, rest assured that all your important data including images, music, documents and applications are well protected and can easily be recovered in the event of any disaster. Also the newest Acronis True Image Home 2010 is the best solution for moving your system to Windows 7 and storing your backups online.”
The only portion I would add is that the online backup is optional; you can still use the conventional backup mode to practically any device (DVD, network, firewire or usb hard disk, etc.)
Since I prefer to have both a local copy (external hard disk, unplugged from electrical system when not in use) as well as an offsite backup copy (online is increasingly attractive, as long as it’s well encrypted, which True Image 2010 supports) this really fits my needs.
I’m quite happy with the dual destination backup feature as well; it’s refreshing to see this brought from their Enterprise market down to a much less expensive home / home office product.
Thanks for reading this launch information and review of Acronis True Image 2010. I hope you’ll be as satisfied as I am with the newest version of their flagship product. You can download a completely functional evaluation copy for free here, or you can order the full product for $49.99 directly from the picture link below.
More generational copies are better, when it comes to disaster recovery (even at the home machine level).
From: Acronis Central<noreply@acronis.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:07 AM
Subject: The Acronis True Image Home 2010 and Acronis Online Backup Beta program closure notification
To: John
Dear Acronis True Image Home 2010 Beta Participant,
Thank you for taking the time to be a part of the Acronis True Image Home 2010 and the Acronis Online Backup Beta program! We have used all the valuable feedback that you have given us to improve our latest product Acronis True Image Home 2010 which will launch in a few weeks.
We’re sending this email to inform you that the Acronis True Image Home and Acronis Online Backup Betas will end on Sep 7th, 2009.
You will be able to use the beta build of Acronis True Image Home till Oct 1st, 2009, but we encourage you to purchase the final release of the product to take advantage of all the new features.
After Sep 7th, 2009 your Acronis Online Backup accounts will be disabled and you will no longer be able to perform online backups. After Sep 14th, 2009 all your data will be permanently removed from our servers.
To prevent the loss of the backed up data you may need, please retrieve it from our servers before Sep 14th, 2009. We will permanently destroy the data on these servers after Sep 14th, 2009.
To ensure safety of your data, we recommend you to retrieve the data as soon as possible.
Once again, thank you for your patience and active participation in the beta program. We truly appreciate your time and your feedback is helping us make a better product for you!
If anyone has any great links to any detailed comparisons / reviews of online backup packages, I’d appreciate any comments / links to those. Heck, I’ll take direct recommendations.
While there are a bajillion articles / comparisons between the following (and more) :
I am looking for something that dives into the tech specs. http://www.onlinebackupsreview.com/compare.php is an awesome start, but it is geared towards folks like my mom (bless her, she just isn’t ready to do command line craziness; she’s one of possibly the smarter users who just wants her computer to simply work, hah!)
I have tested a few of these, but am looking for no cost per GB, understanding that backups will be relatively slow across an ADSL upload link.
Other desired features : you get to keep your own encryption key, at the risk of losing it, and thus losing access to your remote backup data.
I really wish there were an option between the ≈ $5 per month, and the “you’re about to pay fifty cents per gig” paths. Ahem. Thinking that one of these bright companies could sell a package along the lines of “more technical interface, less painful file selection, slightly faster speeds either way, $10 per month”. No idea how much market is here, but I’d buy that for sure, as I dreamily consider myself a “power user”. And Stuff™.
I’m perfectly willing to consider options other than those companies listed above. I’m one of those users that believes backups need to be done redundantly, even at home. Once you’ve been through the loss of family photos, etc. you usually end up on the “better safe than sorry” end of the equation.
I’ve been relying on the 
for some time, but of course it is slow and rather manual. It’s a great thing to have on hand for when you need to interface with a bare laptop or desktop drive, but it’s got a number of cables hung all over, and of course it’s only running at USB2 speeds (not so good to back up lots of data)
. This is due to me wanting to have a good backup locally (c.f. 
I just know it’s hard for electricity to make it across that “air capacitance gap” when the external is unplugged from power and data, at the drive end for my convenience.
