I'm about to build a NAS and sort out a backup strategy for my i5 Laptop and refurbished 6yr old Dell Deskie. For the NAS, I could go for 2 x 1TB drives, or 4 x 500GB drives, or other permutations, but am unfamiliar with disk lifespans, etc, other than having read elsewhere on this forum about RE disk versions and 3year warranties, etc. Suggestions here please would be much appreciated before I splash the cash on the black box and internals. What I think I need to do is this - but you might think of a better way forward? Again, advice most welcome.
My fast & snappy Lappie gets used for business stuff, photos/Photoshop processing and club website stuff. It's on Win 7. Not licensed for Office2007. It won't allow me to backup system files or doc files to itself, using its standard backup utility software. That wants me to send anything to an external HDD (don't have/don't want).
My Dell deskie has its original 180 GB HDD and a brand new 500GB HDD to fill and new 2GB RAM (max acceptable) expected tonight ! That runs on XP-SP3 with Office 2007, Win Media Player/iTunes, and will run EAC/cdparanoia for high res music ripping off my CD collection (a big project about to take off, for networked HiFi audio purposes - I do like custom playlists...) I'll future-proof this PC by adding in something from The Dark Side - Fed15, perhaps (or a Gnome3 variant - a separate project for me to worry about later).
I use XP's backup weekly for its system files to a separate partition on the HDD. Since the lappie wants to send its backups elsewhere, then the deskie second HDD would appear to be a logical destination?
So, these machines are basically partitioned thus:
Lappie (320GB HDD)
C: Win 7 system
D: Photos library - new and editted/work in progress Hi/Lo res
E: Business stuff
Deskie - Original 180GB HDD (master)
C: XP-SP3 updated
D: spare, for a Linux OS? (but currently XP-Backup)
E: mp3/iTunes library
F: Photos - Hi res finals (and as slideshower)
G: My Docs
Deskies new (secondary) 500GB HDD is planned to be thus:
H: XPs pagefile.sys
I: XP backup (weekly bkf file)
J: Lappie Win7 backup (weekly bkf)
K: Linux backup, for as and when... (weekly?)
L: Master Music Library for hi-res FLAC rips (needs to be about 250 GB)
M: mp3/iTunes library backup (either bkf or mirror)
N, O, P & Q could be partitions for weekly backups of Photos & Docs from both the Lappie & Deskie
R = reserved spare (linux doc files?)
What I'm not sure about here is whether different partitions on any HDD can be formatted individually to suit Win/NTFS and Linux formats?
For the NAS, I reckon I'd set it up thus:
Part 1: Duplicate/expanding copy of FLAC library, to stream out to a Squeezebox / HiFi network streamer.
2: Squeezebox Server system files
3: (Monthly?) Backups of the various XP / win 7 / Linux OS backups
4: (Weekly?) Backups of the backups of Docs/mp3s/Photos
My logic is that if either the Lappie or 180GB HDD drives fail, then the 500GB secondary captures them. If the 500GB goes, then that's either on the NAS or the master HDDs. For the NAS, I'd like to keep Partitions 1&2 on one drive, mirrorred by RAID . So that leaves Partitions 3&4 mirrorred, either with 1&2 or as a separate pair?
I'm also wondering about shifting Office2007 onto the lappie - I haven't yet tried but believe you can run XP stuff virtually within Win 7? Don't like OpenOffice as much and it's not fully compatible with some business stuff. Either that, or run old Office files within Linux. Must keep my Excel spreadsheets alive!
So, what do think? Is there a better way?
And finally, should my backup utility reside and be driven by the NAS, or does that work from source-side sending to the NAS? I'm thinking Wake-On-LAN prompts would be economic?