backing up large volume of data

The external hard drives some of my customers have used were poorly made and the biggest problem has not been the drives but the controllers and the power supplies.  Poorly regulated supplies cause the controller chips to burn out.

The other problem with 'external drives' is that they tend to be mishandled.  You don't have to drop them, just knock them over and a lot will fail.  Anything that stands up gets knocked down.

I don't know what they are using.  I would say a unit with a good power supply and a shape that lets it Not be knocked over is what you would want.

We use tapes that have a 800Gb capacity (LTO Ultrium 3). Tapes and tapedrives are still supported and available. Common back-up software also support tape drives.

you must use DLT backup tapes. 1 or 2 TB data backup very small time. And tapes 20-30 years life.

You can still get tape drives, the newer LTO5 drives can store 1.5TB natively

Cloud backups aren't going to be that much more expensive than buying all the hardware/software you will need for a backup solution such as this, and you won't have to be responsible for any maintenance either. drivehq.com (there are many others too) is offering a 50%-off special right now and you won't have to buy any hardware, it might be a better/cheaper option.

I just set a small business up on this last month, and they couldn't be happier with their backup solution for about 200GB of data.

The biggest problem with on-line backup is the time it takes to back-up the data 250Gb is going to take some time - even at high bandwidths if you have to do this in one hit every day (the use of incremetal/differential backups could reduce time considerably)

Tape drives are available (as others have said), personally I think a life of 20 years for a tape is more than a little optomistic - in any case technology will have mooved on considerably by then and the hardware will probably be obsolite before the tape wears out.

Good quality - perhaps more rugged - drives are an effective solution - and they are relativly cheap - very respectable 500Gb drives can be has for £100 - or a lot less if you go for alternatives - that seems very cost effective to me if you compare it with the value of the data.

Thank you all for the replies, far out i didnt realise who expensive the tape hardware is to install. I dont think that is an option. But i have given them a few to start with.

I have sent an email to the drivehq company as there enterprise version does not provide a price. so will wait and see what they say.

At the moment they are using 3.5" WD external drives, i have also advised them to perhaps try seagate 2.5goflex drives, also while on seagates website i just found the NAS solution. Perhaps they might consider this as well.

But thank you all for your quick posts, will let you know what they decide and how it all goes

With regard to the concern about taking too much time, I know at least with the driveHQ backup utility, the very first initial backup can take a lot of time. But every subsequent backup then checks and skips over files that haven't been modified since the last backup, and it takes considerably less time.

Also, a small personal tip if you're working with driveHQ, call and try to speak to Rosanna, and tell them you know someone who set up "FutureMedicineToday" in Boulder, CO and that I recommended them to you. She's great and I worked extensively with her, and she might hook you up with a discount. :) No guarantees on that one, but a small shot in the dark.

230GB in 1 hour is only 64MB/sec,

An easy speed for a LTO-4 or 5, (all things being equal) probably easily achievable for a SAS connected disk, may not be on for a USB attached disk (don't be fooled by bus speed)

Using the cloud is fashionable, and easy, but do your due diligence on your disaster scenarios and work out what will happen if your ISP (and the cloud provider) cannot provide you with connectivity/speed/reliability at the critical times that you need it, especially for a restore!!!

Thank you all for your comments, after all the comments and bit moresearch we have decided that cloud backup is not the way forward at this stage, simply due to the amount of data that needs to be backed up. I sent them a big long email with the different methods of backing up such as LTO4-5 SAS backup, cloud backup and external hard drive backup. They have now asked what my suggestion is regarding backup. without having cost in mind is tape better then the SAS backups and also is SAS still a reliable media for backing up.

Thank you
Matt

My client decided to go with the NAS backup solution. with a seagate 2.5" external drive for offsite backups weekly