I was at the point where I needed to reload my software development system OS. Since this was a major undertaking, I decided to use new hard drives and keep the old drives unchanged as insurance. I also decided to evaluate how I was backing up my system. I needed to move away from manual backups and found I had two main goals for backing up: 1. automate the process to ensure backups occurred on a regular schedule; 2. back up my OS so I could get my system going quick in the event of a major malfunction.
I decided to install three drives in my development system: drive C is the system volume; drive D is the data volume including My Documents; and drive E is my backup volume. My DNS 321 is set up with two ST31000333AS 1TB as RAID 1 and acts as the redundant backup. Norton Ghost 14 is my backup software and I have it set up to perform daily image backups to my drive E and the DNS 321 simultaneously. I've been running this way for quite some time and cannot be more pleased. I've had to restore individual files several times and found the process easy and pleasant.
With the cost of hard drives evolving to $100/TB, using a NAS as backup media makes sense. The DNS 321 was a good choice and I'm very happy with the outcome. I do offer this advice:
1. Be sure your network is in good shape. Faulty cabling or a chatty network card can make your life miserable.
2. Test your backups. This really means, test the restore. If you are doing image backups of your OS, do a restore of the OS. You may need an additional hard drive for the test, but that is a lot cheaper than finding out you can't restore your vital information.
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Topic: DNS 321: Great Backup Tool (Read 3739 times)