Best external drive for backup ?

[stevesideas]

Does anyone have any advice on this ? I currently use a WD book raid drive but my recent projects are massive so I need to get something with at least 5tb.

[leo.surrealismo]

take a look at this nas:
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...quad-ls-qvlr5/

[stevesideas]

Do you have one of these yourself ? Speeds and reliability ok ?

[ior=0]

Are looking for a N.A.S. (Network Access Storage)? Most have raid options and QNAP do a huge range depending on your needs. Reliability and capacity will come down to the HardDrive(s) you stick in.
You could also try something like this if full NAS RAID is not on budget and a good one can be expensive, although the QNAP will give you a wealth of other features such as remote back-up, VPN, FTP, webserver etc etc. QNAP have good support although the s/w can be technical and more for network administrator types than creatives.
Or you could try a HHD dock, so you just buy more harddrives and plug-n-play if you run out of space. you will have to store your HDs somewhere safe though.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zalma...on-for-2x-hdds
This one is USB 3.0 but there are other that are eSATA and non RAID.

[stevesideas]

I purchased a NAS drive for sharing all my textures although I've yet to set this up properly. I also did read recently on these forums that NAS drives are not that great...maybe just different experiences by people...I'll know for sure when I set it up. As for backup I need a fast access drive...not sure if firewire is best in terms of connection. I may try a HDD dock..I think you can get the Buffalo enclosures and then get your own drives and save quite a bit of money.

[plastic_]

In my experience, for storage, the only thing that is fast, cheap and working is a computer with harddrives. All this NAS boxes, especially cheap ones, look great on paper but they are unreliable and _slow_.

[super gnu]

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/shark...a-hdds-(25-35)

i use a similar one to this. once the drive is full, whack a label on it, and stick it in a drawer, or off site. then plug in a new drive. bare bones drives are always the cheapest option .

[simmsimaging]

If you are not overly concerned with speed then Drobo is a good way to go. I think the newer ones are actually a lot fater too, but mine are Drobo2's and they have been bullet proof. I have one on the network via ethernet, so that's literally NAS and the other is hooked up to one machine and acts as a shared drive that all nodes can access. The first is my primary storage/working drive, the latter backs up that one and the nodes.

anyway, it's not the fastest data transfers (but again, these are 4-5 years old now) but they have yet to let me down, and I have put some miles on them (although individual drives have needed replacing over those years, but not many at all)

/b

[stevesideas]

This looks like a really good option. Nice and simple. Thanks

Thanks everyone else for the tips. I think I'll go with the scan Sata dock.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Synology here for years now....works great, just make sure you use server HDDs in it
http://www.synology.com/index.php?lang=default

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ext...w=1280&bih=915

Make sure it has Esata connection and then pick what ever HDD u want from shell :]