Not quite on topic, but perhaps germane.....

I'm dealing with a similar issue: two computers and wanting to share and backup data. However, I'm using ethernet for DSL, printer and the two computers through a Linksys workgroup switch. This makes NAS (Network accessed storage) a logical choice. As I've researched, a NAS storage appliance with a single hard drive would work. However, to "future-proof" the job, I'm looking at a NAS enclosure with RAID and a couple of hard drives. RAID allows the NAS hard drives to coordinate in a number of different ways, including total redundancy.

You might want to take a look at this:

http://thinclientforum.com/nas.htm

Right now, I'm running two Raid-1 arrays of 1 terabyte each on a single thin client. The drives run at 3.0 gbps (SATA) and the thin client has a gigabit NIC, making the whole thing fly on my LAN. Total cost for the four eSATA drives was around $500, the thin client another $250 and $180 for eSATA PCIe card. The system also runs my FTP server, so I can access everything on the two 1-terabyte RAID arrays remotely on the internet, as well as through standard Windows file sharing. I could also have set the system in other configurations, e.g. 4 terabytes of striped storage, etc. However, I wanted the extra security of having all my data fully mirrored, so I configured it as 2 terabytes in two separate RAID 1 arrays.

$900 for a versatile, fully-programmable, fully-configurable RAID array ain't bad.

PT.....thanks for the post. I'm starting to grok this. You have two NAS enclosures with a couple of 1TB hard drives in each (arrays). A thin client controls these arrays and also works as a FTP server so you can access data on the internets.

Maybe this Visionman unit does the same thing?

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I'm looking at this D-Link enclosure and would add a couple $70 hard drives. Looks like it would have FTP also.

That D-link unit is Sata 2, not Sata 3. 3 is 3.0gbps.

JP

Nope. It's SATA2, though from the mediocre to poor reviews, I'd still avoid it.

SATA1 = SATA I = SATA/150 = SATA 1.5Gb/s = 150 MB/s transfer speed
SATA2 = SATA II = SATA/300 = SATA 3.0Gb/s = 300 MB/s transfer speed
SATA3 = SATA III = SATA/600 = SATA 6.0Gb/s = a proposed standard with no currently produced hard drives (at least from major manufactureres WD, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung)

FWIW, here's one more approach . . . .

I back up three computers. My home desktop, my travel/client-site laptop, and Mrs. Cache's laptop.

I have two Western Digital Passport drives and have installed the freeware version of "SyncBack" from w w w . 2 b r i g h t s p a r k s . c o m on each system.

SyncBack does an intelligent backup . . . it only copies those files that need to be copied which means that your USB 1.x will be less of a problem. You can configure it to backup (one way) or "synchronize" (two way).

Why two external drives? Offsite storage! Don't think any of the other posters mentioned this -- depending on the nature of the data that you're worrying about, it may be appropriate to include "offsite" in your back up scheme. The WD Passports are small enough to fit in your safe deposit box (or your office desk or where ever). You do your backup, remove the drive; take it to your offsite location and exchange it for the "other" one.

That's an interesting idea. I'm certainly going to continue to use my eGo to synchronize my US and Euro laptops.

I should relate our experiences. We've just been away for 3 months. We have 3 backups - a spare PC with a large hard drive which acts as our file server and is also the backup for our hard drives, an external Lacie hard drive which was stored in a bank vault, and DVD backups. Critical items are also stored with other people off-site, both on optical media and on other PCs.

When we returned the file server refused to boot up and we had to install the hard drive in another PC - it took several hours of work over 2 days to finally get it to boot up. We went to the bank vault and collected the hard drive there, and it doesn't start up. (Google suggests that this is now a known problem with this particular Lacie external hard drive, and it seems that no-one has recovered data from one).

It was a bit worrying for a while and we are now looking for a better option.

Audrey

On my desk I have 3 Iomega USB external drives (80GB; 250GB and 500GB) which I switch back and forth among several computers. I have not encountered reliability issues. I do have an intermittent problem when the 500GB drive (which I know for sure not the disk's problem) is connected to Vista. Vista (sometimes) does not see it at all But it is seen at all times by my XP. Go figure. I do like Iomega products which go on sale from time to time. Buy it then.

I am thinking of getting their RAID when I need to expand storage (due to growing volumes of RAW & JPG files)

I like the eGo I have (250G) a lot, which is why I started looking at their external drives. I run XP on all 3 machines and have never had any problem with it's being seen (I have that problem occasionally with a Kingston 8G flash drive).

The only problem I've had with the Iomega drive is that once or twice I couldn't get it to shut down w/o shutting down the laptop. At least one time I think it was because I had been deleting some files on the eGo and they'd been sent to the PC's recycle bin. I've since adjusted my settings for the E-drive, so hope not to have that problem in the future.

I'll look for a sale. I saw a good price for an Iomega drive on Amazon, but it was described as formatted for a Mac. I want one that's preformatted for NTFS.

My experience has been that Iomega drives are most reliable. Lacie, Simpletech, some of the others, seem to be more into aesthetics than reliability.

Hard disks need to be run frequently, but three months of non-use should not have been a problem. When I've had disks that won't start up in the past, repeated power cycling has occasionally gotten them to work.