Thoughts on backup of drives?

[tmcbride67]

Hi,

 

I'm setting up a new home server and I just downloaded the DrivePool and Scanner apps to test out.  I am trying to figure out the best setup to maximize my storage space but also have solid "real" backups and not just duplicated files.  Duplication of files is great but isn't a real backup, since if I accidentally delete a file the duplicate is also automatically deleted.  Duplication also doesn't allow for file versioning.

 

I have six 8TB drives and I was thinking of creating two 24TB drive pools: a "Data" pool for live storage and a "Backup" pool to store backups of everything on the Data pool.  I was also thinking of using the free version of CrashPlan to handle the backups.

 

My question is this, would it be better to have CrashPlan back up the individual drives in the Data pool, or just have it back up the the entire shared Data pool as a whole?

 

My thinking was that if I backed up the individual drives separately, if one of the drives in the Data pool failed, I could just replace it with a new drive and restore the backup of the old drive onto it to reconstitute the Data pool.  However, not knowing all the technical details on how DrivePool works, I wasn't sure if that would actually work?

 

Any thoughts or comments on this?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The two pools idea is a good one, and may be the best solution.

 

 

As for backing up the data, something like Free File Sync, Good Sync, Allways sync, or the like may be a better idea. Copy the data from the main pool to the backup pool, and make sure it doesn't "copy deletions" (eg, doesn't remove files that you have deleted).  The issue here becomes versioning.  That's a lot more complicated

[jmone]

I run two pools on separate PC's in different parts of the house (to also help with Fire, Theft etc).  I use Free File Sync to "preview" changes between the pools before I commit the sync (to catch any unwanted deletes, changes etc getting into the backup pool).  It is worth every cent to have a 2nd pool as with 50TB of into I do not want to have to re-rip all my content if something happens (which I have to once before prior to this setup and it took many weeks!).