Advice on external BackUp Solutions

I have my Aperture Library internal and use an external FW800 drive as a vault.
I am switching all my drive to sata due to some recent FW issues.
So I work with video and shoot photos for fun. My library has grown and I want to create a steady workflow for backup. I was intrested in getting Raid-1 as my vaults. Any thoughts on using this drive as an external sata vault.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESRSM500G32/
I was going to conitnue to work with an internal library and use two of these drives as external vaults which in theroy would be four total?
Thanks for any feedback or advice.

just a thought, there may or may not be issues with this idea.
how about using a vault for one of the backups, or just backing up the Aperture library file, containing all of your managed images. onto one of the external HDD's.
next, simply make a copy of the currect Aperture library with a new name, open that new copy library in Aperture, then move the entire library to being referenced on the other external drive.
or better yet, if you can take the space hit of having this on both external drives, having the full aperture library file on each, as well as the referenced library. and have double backups on each RAID setup.
with these two type of backups, you will be able to restore the entire library, if that is a good solution at the time, or if you are in a hurry for a specific project, you can simply find that project in the referenced files.
I don't think that would be a super difficult process to have a really efficient backup system, it will take awhile, double the time of a single backup, but will give you all the options you may want.
honestly, if it were me, I would just backup the Aperture library file periodically to each Raid volume, as Library files can still be opened up right in finder, using the Show Contents comand, and maybe even Vaults can as well? I wouldn't be suprised if they could. need to do a little more research on that, if a vault file can be opened just like a library file, then you really shouldn't have to worry about restoring the whole vault if you were in a hurry and just find the photos you need at the time. and eventually do a full restore.

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    As for backing up the servers themselves, they will not be storing much of anything and most everything will be pointed to the raid volume (Hence the 80GB drives). Because of this, the data on the servers themselves will not change THAT much compared to the raid volume which will change drastically every day so full backups of the servers is fine. Perhaps just setting psyncX (assuming it works in 10.5) to backup the 80GB boot volume for each server would be best? I could just set psyncX to backup each server boot volume to the same external drive the raid volume is backing up to and then each friday just copy the data from the on site drive to the external, killing two birds with one stone. (Tape would make this all easier but it isn't gonna happen in this case sigh).
    I worry about the cyrus / mail issues I'm reading about on servers running time machine though.

  • Mac OS X Server Backup solutions?

    Hi all, I have built up my network with 3 Leopard servers running on Mac Pro's and 8 mac clients (one mobile)
    Between all of them there is about 12TB's of storage space (about 2TB being used at present)
    it really is time to now invest in a complete backup solution and we won't a format that can be taken offsite (Tape sounds the best)
    I really have hardly any experience in this area and need to get some advice.
    I have an ATTO Ultra320 card in one of the Mac Pro's so need to figure out which tape drive (or drives) which software and the best way to implement it.
    All the clients are on OD so not overly bothered about backing them up, just the 3 main servers really.
    Any help would be really appreciated, thanks.

    Here's some grist for the thought mill...
    The use of "Removable" here likely (probably?) means "remote", which itself (and depending on the bandwidth of the network connection or access to couriers or such) may or may not actually be a removable disk or removable tape storage, or disk or tape libraries.
    What's the volume of the actual data? What's the rate of change of the data? There are two parts to the calculation for the creation and operation of the archive, the initial archive and the occasional (weekly, monthly, before an upgrade) full archive, and then the incremental (hourly, daily, weekly) archives. This assumes the usual two-level archive processing; an occasional full and a more frequent incremental.
    You need to figure out how big these activities are, and what your backup window is. These details then drive the available hardware and media options and then the device selection.
    Then determine (or guesstimate) the growth rate of the data. That tells you what your approach can support now, and how quickly your backup window (if you have one) might be closing. And (if you're using smaller media) when you might need to go to a larger-capacity media or to multi-volume archives. Right now, you can probably get most everything onto a 1 TB or 1.5 TB spindle, for instance.
    You'll also need to sort out the local and continuously-active processing activities, and how to get copies of those. The sqldump tool, for instance, can be the path to get a recoverable installation. And that processing tends to be part of getting a recoverable archive.
    There are cloud services around for storage and (if your change rate is less than the bandwidth "slop" available within your current network pipe) to a remote site that you manage or contract with; to a storage site or to warm site you work with, or out to an Amazon S3 or other competing storage pool. (There are various options for archiving out into Amazon S3, for instance. And Time Capsule and Time Machine is seriously slick.)
    Never assume that RAID is an archival strategy. It's not. RAID is useless against application corruptions, blown software upgrades, user errors, client and server and storage theft, and malicious-user activities. Nor against roof-mounted heat exchanger system that sprout leaks that then pour red-colored coolant into the server racks. RAID protects against disk spindle failures and (for some specific configurations) against certain other "upstream" storage controller failures.
    When you get all done, make sure you can recover and restart using your archives. Periodically test the recoverability of the archives.

  • Single best external storage solution for Mac Pro & MacBook Pro ...?

    Hello,
    I'm still waiting for the Mac Pro delivery I have around me something like four external hard drives from different vendors and different sizes and all containing important data ... it is really a mess, cables, lack of redundancy, etc.
    I wanted to replace all these once and for all by a single elegant long-lasting and reliable solution to combine with my new Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. The best I could find was OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 8.0TB containing four internal HDD in double RAID with multiple possible setups: RAID 0 and RAID 1, RAID 10 configurations:
    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T8.0S/
    Looks like an excellent choice for the only one external storage solution! does anyone has experience with this model? are there better contenders?
    Many thanks in advance,
    Best regards,
    Giovanni

    Giovanni,
    I have the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (6 TB) external HD array in a Raid 5 configuration (as received from OWC). I have found it to be excellent when connected to my Mac Pro using a PCI SATA card and the SATA output on the Elite-AL Pro Qx2. The speed of the system under Raid 5 easily supports all but uncompressed high definition video, and the system came with Prosoft's Data Backup software which does an excellent job of backing up other external drives installed on my Mac Pro.
    I highly recommend the Qx2 and think you will find it is a good single source solution to providing you with reliable and safe storage for your data. With Raid 5 if one of the HD's in the Qx2 fails, you simply remove it and allow the system to rebuild the data when you insert a new HD. Thus unless two HD's fail simultaneously (high unlikely) you are protected against data loss. Note also that your Mac Pro does not have to be left on while the Qx2 is rebuilding.
    Tom

  • Rsync or other backup solution- single source multiple target?

    Seems from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ly-774225/ that I can't do what I want, but I thought I'd ask as well.
    My laptop hard disc is going to be backed up to two external hard discs (regular script). What I do right now is run two separate rsync commands, but of course this means that the data (all 300+ GB of it, currently) needs to be read twice. Seems it'd be much more efficient if the data were read once and then written to both external hard discs.
    It doesn't seem from the above link and other google resources that this is possible. Can anyone suggest an alternative short of scripting a file-by-file cache?
    Last edited by ngoonee (2013-10-31 01:33:22)

    cfr wrote:
    Doesn't this partially undermine the point of doing two backups? I realise one is off site and that they are on separate devices which rules out some sources of corruption/loss but if you run the backup as you wish and something bad happens to the source during the backup, you are likely to end up with three corrupted copies rather than only two.
    I don't manage to do this as I only have one complete backup but I thought that best practice involved not touching one backup while the other backup was being created (or restored or...). That way, you always have one "known good" backup whatever happens.
    EDIT: not "whatever happens" but "whichever of any of a larger number of possible catastrophes occurs". Obviously, the third copy could be on a device that dies or explodes or gets drowned by a peeved goldfish at just that moment when mice eat your source during a backup, thus corrupting your other two copies. But you can only plan so far...
    This isn't my complete backup solution. I have two hard discs in one location (what I'm asking about here) and another one at a different location. The reason I have two is simply because I have a spare which doesn't have any other use, and it may as well be put to use in this way.
    Besides, if something happens to the source, using --backup-dir means I'll still have the last known good copy anyway (not taking into account the backup which is at the different location.

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