Please suggest a reliable external storage.

[Atomhot]

Drobo? $350 ( 4 slots ) or $1400 ( 8 slots ); for empty boxes no less.


Bang for the buck, you're better off getting two separate 1TB usb disks ( seagate or WD ) for $250 and manually syncing between them for a 'backup'.


Flirt as you may with idea of RAID ( e.g. drobo ), RAID alone isn't a backup. RAID levels above 0 will survive a drive failure, but if you accidentally delete
a file from a RAID volume it's gone short of an un-delete miracle. There are
several software solutions that will mimic independent copies of files ( e.g. Time Machine, rsync, LVM, ZFS, Veritas ), but they all have an Achilles' heel.


Personally, I use rolling snapshots on a ZFS/OpenSolaris box for local archives of video and raw images. I do have a small pelican case with encrypted drives @ a friends house, and I also mail encrypted disks to relatives for the real important bits.

[Fouad]

Thank you all for your very useful comments and suggestions. I now have a good place to start.