Breaking RAID 1 daily to put 1 disk in a fireproof safe

[ABS-Jason]

Hi all,

I have a business requirement where I need to put a copy of our data into a fireproof safe each night.

Currently er are using an external Stardom device (older, 250GB in RAID 1) and each day a staff member will rotate out one disk and place it in the safe while the storage device rebuilds the RAID 1 with the newly inserted disk during the day (completes well before the next backup starts). I know that this is hard on the the disks, however with 3 in the rotation it only goes through the rebuild 1-2 times each week.

The server is a Windows Server 2008 R2 and with new equipment, the nightly backup will go from ~ 180GB to near 500GB with a growth of about 300GB annually.

I'm thinking I either pick up 3-4 Seagate GoFlex 2TB USB 3.0 drives and robocopy /MIR the data each night then rotate through the drives during the week or purchasing a decent NAS device where I can remove/swap out a disk each day (~$1000-$1500 range).

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks.

 

[sminlal]

Is it possible to isolate the "new" data so that you don't have to copy it ALL over every day? For example, if you have individual transaction files that get created every day, then some sort of file synchronization utility would be a lot quicker because it would only have to copy the new/changed files.

 

[ABS-Jason]

The "Robocopy /MIR " traverses the selected directory and makes the necessary changes (deletes/adds), so it works that way in some form. The changes may come from multiple sources throughout the day.

 

[FireWire2]

I offer my customers this USB2.0, USB3.0 and eSATA RAID enclosure for the exact solution that you'd mention.

 

[sminlal]

I'd personally stick with a simple external USB 3.0 drive for simplicity. That has fewer things to go wrong than copying to an external RAID enclosure and then breaking the mirror in that enclosure to take a drive offsite or put it into a safe.

 

[jaquith]

For that little of data I agree and recommend an external HDD and perform the backup update just before leaving then place it in the safe.

Example: iomega Professional 1TB eSATA/USB 2.0 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822186152 ; includes Retrospect