backups, iscsi and hmmm - need some options...

[nox-uk]

Hi,

My mac Pro has 3x 2TB disks in it currently striped into 1 6TB partition. Yes i know how dangerous this is... It's recently gone over 4TB and doesn't fit on my external backup disk anymore

I've ended up creating a nice little raided backup box on an old PC, happened to have WHS 2011 on the boot disk which was kinda handy Plan was to use CCC to backup to this, but something is very unreliable, and the connection keeps dropping. Both the Mac and PC are reliable other than when using CCC, which seems odd as it was brilliant connected to my external firewire disk.

This external PC now has 4x 2TB disks in it, in a raid 5 array (on areca card) which is enough space to back up my Mac Pro for another year or two, hopefully. I need some different options due to the connection dropping from my Mac to this PC. Is iscsi viable? It's not free anymore on the mac which has made me hesitate in trying it out. (set it up at work) I'm considering the Hackintosh route on this box, for time machine server. I'm looking for a lowish cost option, due to having the hardware technically in place to do this. Freenas maybe?

I guess it's a 'how are you lot backing up' kinda thread...

Nox

 

[Tesselator]

Currently I'm using an internal Time Machine volume with 2 3TB drives in RAID0 - very fast - backing up every 4 hours. And a dual drive cradle dock for my shelved backups.

I'm thinking about getting the HighPoint 4 discrete port USB 3.0 card and cabling those over to 4 USB 3 cradle docks. Or hubbing each discrete 3.0 line for even more.

Those dock things are awesome... I dig 'em.

 

[nox-uk]

that thought has crossed my mind too with the USB 3 disks - but i'm trying to avoid the 4 internal bays as i'm *considering* putting SSD's in there...

CCC is actually behaving itself now, but i'm still seriously thinking about going down the freenas route. At least to see if it picks up the areca card or not.

If it doesn't, i'm thinking it's going to be a hackintosh server, at least it's a fractal design case it's all in...

Nox

 

[Tesselator]

that thought has crossed my mind too with the USB 3 disks - but i'm trying to avoid the 4 internal bays as i'm *considering* putting SSD's in there...

SSDs in that arrangement are even better as the USB3 host card has plenty of power for them - without worry. So there's no need for powering them up with bricks and extra wires like ya might want to with HHDs.

Of course SSDs aren't really big enough to back much up but that particular card does offer 20Gb/s set up that way.