External Hard Drives & Backing up data

[MartinDines]

Hey guys

I'm looking at using external harddrives to store and backup my data. I've done a few google searches and now I'm even more confused about the options avaliable aha

Basically I'd like to store about 1tb of data on an external harddrive.
I'm paranoid about harddrives failing so definitely want to back this up

Would it be possible to run 2 external harddrives, 1 as a 'master' and the other as a carbon copy?

I do not want to have to copy the data twice manually to both harddrives, so I'm looking for some sort of reliable automation to do the backup.

Cheers

[Gandi699]

What you are doing is feasable yes. Look into RAID arrays if its just one machine you are backing up from as it can just clone an entire disk but this might be too advanced for your needs . I personally only use Western Digital drives or Buffalo, everything else is pap.

[MartinDines]

Cheers Gandi, i'll have a look into that, anyone else?

[MunkyBoy]

Why you looking at external?

Stick some big sata drives in your main PC and then run a decent raid array on it.

Raid 1 is the most basic type, it basically will mirror the data to both the drives in the array.

Raid 6 is pretty hardcore, but with multiple discs it can recover itself from two drives failing at once? Would cost more to implement though.

I'd always recommend RAID over a software based solution of just copying the data to an external.

[MartinDines]

Forgot you work in IT man, i'll bell ya cheers

[b0t13]

raid is the better option, 1tb WD external will be fine for your needs tho, cheap and easy.