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jkimzlg

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NAS storage for Law office - Mirrored drive

hello, my friend has a Law Office and he has about 1 terabyte worth of data.  He needs a backup system and I was thinking of implementing a Raid 1 mirrored configuration.  I was planning on getting two 4TB 7200 RPM (Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0023 4TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SAS 6Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive) drives and just putting it in either a Windows 7 or Win2k8r2 machine.  Should I go with a NAS box?

Any suggestions or comments on whether this is a good plan or not?  He does not want to do Carbonite as he has already tried that in the past.
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David
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No, that is an awful solution.   He needs to first use a pair of local HDDs mirrored for his live data, and then he needs an ARCHIVING solution for offsite backups.

Have him subscribe to a cloud-based backup firm that uses the internet. That way even in the case of a disaster situation, he will be able to access his data 24x7.
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jkimzlg

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ok, so RAID 1 is not a backup solution.  I guess he can continue to use  something like carbonite.  you say to "use a pair of local HDDs mirrored."  in what OS?  or do I get some type of NAS solution?
Just keep in mind the 3-2-1 rule: you need 3 copies of the data, on 2 different media types and at least one copy should be kept offsite.

Since you have 1TB of data, keeping it on DVDs is impractical, so the "2" part is more difficult to achieve, unless you go for tape backup, which can be more trouble than you want.

You absolutely can go with a NAS and a cloud solution, or with 2 rsynced NAS boxes that are in different locations (preferably different cities).

What dlethe meant is that you should mirror your live data, because of the redundancy and speed benefits. Mirroring your NAS does not yield enough benefits to be worth the expense.

HTH,
Dan
First he needs RAID1 with his current data. 100% of disks fail, eventually.  One hour of his billable time will cover the expense.   If he has multiple systems sharing storage, then get a NAS appliance that supports RAID1.  I doubt you could find one that didn't do that.

But he must also have an offsite archiving solution.  Even with a RAID1 NAS solution that is in a bullet, fireproof case where the hardware never fails, he is one stupid human error from blowing it away.
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so can I get two 4TB 7200 RPM drives and put it in a NAS?
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David
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