$1500 for a scrape? Wow, I paid about a tenth of that, and thought I was getting hosed. Perhaps a more expensive scrape would hae recovered more.
Yep, I couldn't believe it myself. The drive wasn't even that big....maybe 300 GB. It was a government computer, so perhaps the "scrape" was much more intensive or the damage was more significant than what you had. This was also a few years ago.
As for automatic backup? The only reason I can think of why it would not be good is pilot error. If I mistakenly delete a file, a RAID system will dutifully duplicate that deletion, and do it instantly. And there is no way to get it back. I know, nobody ever deletes a file without meaning to - certainly I never have!!! With a manual backup, or scheduled automatic backup, you get a second chance.
That's a definite disadvantage against a RAID setup. RAIDs ONLY prevent against disk failure, and nothing else. But they protect your entire system disk as a volume, including all your applications and settings, so downtime can literally be 10 minutes if you have a failure. But if a virus infects all your Word docs, they are infected on both disks. If you delete a file, it's gone. You can get around both problems on non-RAID drive backup setups by keeping multiple versions or doing incremental backups - these sorts of backups can be done with software utilities that operate in the background, and function much like Carbonite and Mozy's client applications.
With this sort of backup, the breadth of your "safety net" is limited only by the size of the backup drive. If you do daily backups of 100GB and your backup drive is 1 TB, you can store at least around 10 days of history. So if on day 7 you realize that you accidentally deleted a file or realize you got infected with a virus, you can still find your files intact on your drive for 3 more days. In reality, depending on how you configure things, it's often much more than 10 days of safety net because you don't change every file every day, so it will take longer to fill up that 1 TB drive.
And unlike RAID, a portable drive gives you the option of offsite storage. Maybe your neighbor will let you keep it in his garage. Or maybe just a small fireproof safe ...
This is true. You could even store it in a Pelican case in your backyard. But I can virtually guarantee you that if you choose this route, you will eventually become lazy. I did.
And when you need a backup, you will lose alot more data. Is that important? Well, only you can decide that.
The network drive I have is more than just a drive enclosure. It is basically a mini-computer, so it has alot more functionality than just a USB drive. In addition to automatically making an automatic backup locally, it does the automatic remote backup on my brother's unit at his house. But if you didn't want to go through configuring a backup at your brother's house, it also is easy to configure it to automatically do remote backups on third party servers, just as Amazon's S3.
Dave
