Dear experts:

I am looking to backup a server and 2 notebooks totaling to around 700
GB of data. It is for a home network so price is an issue, although I am
willing to chip in a little for some safety.

Now I was thinking of attaching an external USB/Firewire driver to the
server for backup. I would then use something like
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ to backup the notebooks and the server.
I am not about the concept in detail yet. Of course it would also be
nice to have 2 of the external drives and the swap them so that at least
one of them is not connected to the server, but I don't know of any
automated backup-solution that supports that.

Anyway, my problem really is noise. The PC is going to be hosted in our
livingroom, and I want it to be dead-quiet. I plan to get a very silent
server (e.g. http://www.deltatronic.de/) and would like the driver to be
quite too, of course. Now as far as I researched the situation, external
USB/Firewire drivers do not respect any of the "go to low power mode"
commands that a PC can send (on Linux with hdparm or sdparm for
example). Since the drivers will only be in use very little time (I
suppose I will backup once ever 2 or 3 days), most of the time they will
be idle and in this case I would like them to be dead silent. Both the
fan and the drive should stop spinning.

Does anybody know of a good solution for my problem?

many thanks in advance,
Andreas

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Hi Andreas,

> Anyway, my problem really is noise....

I do not know exactly how this is done, but could you set up the external
drive(s) in your study or basement, and connect wirelessly? You could have
the router connected to your external drive(s) and just a wireless card
(with its little antenna) sticking out of the back of the living room PC.
There would therefore be no other equipment in the living room and no
additional noise. You could schedule backups for the middle of the night
when the extra "whirring" of the drive would not bother you.

Wireless components are so inexpensive these days, this might be an option.
One additional, but small, advantage would be if your living room was
burglarized and the PC stolen, all your data would be backed up in the
basement where the thieves might not find it.

Regards,
Gene


"Andreas Leitner" <aleitner@raboof.at> wrote in message
news:1141379394.9590.16.camel@localhost.localdomain...
> Dear experts:
>
> I am looking to backup a server and 2 notebooks totaling to around 700
> GB of data. It is for a home network so price is an issue, although I am
> willing to chip in a little for some safety.
>
> Now I was thinking of attaching an external USB/Firewire driver to the
> server for backup. I would then use something like
> http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ to backup the notebooks and the server.
> I am not about the concept in detail yet. Of course it would also be
> nice to have 2 of the external drives and the swap them so that at least
> one of them is not connected to the server, but I don't know of any
> automated backup-solution that supports that.
>
> Anyway, my problem really is noise. The PC is going to be hosted in our
> livingroom, and I want it to be dead-quiet. I plan to get a very silent
> server (e.g. http://www.deltatronic.de/) and would like the driver to be
> quite too, of course. Now as far as I researched the situation, external
> USB/Firewire drivers do not respect any of the "go to low power mode"
> commands that a PC can send (on Linux with hdparm or sdparm for
> example). Since the drivers will only be in use very little time (I
> suppose I will backup once ever 2 or 3 days), most of the time they will
> be idle and in this case I would like them to be dead silent. Both the
> fan and the drive should stop spinning.
>
> Does anybody know of a good solution for my problem?
>
> many thanks in advance,
> Andreas
>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 16:32 +0000, Gene wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
>
> I do not know exactly how this is done, but could you set up the external
> drive(s) in your study or basement, and connect wirelessly? You could have
> the router connected to your external drive(s) and just a wireless card
> (with its little antenna) sticking out of the back of the living room PC.
> There would therefore be no other equipment in the living room and no
> additional noise. You could schedule backups for the middle of the night
> when the extra "whirring" of the drive would not bother you.
>
> Wireless components are so inexpensive these days, this might be an option
.
> One additional, but small, advantage would be if your living room was
> burglarized and the PC stolen, all your data would be backed up in the
> basement where the thieves might not find it.

This is a very interesting suggestion. And I like the idea with the
extra-burglar safety (;

However, I don't think it will work in my setting. As the basement is
too far away (too many walls) and besides I don't have an electricity
plug in the basement (there are some I suppose, but they belong to the
owner of the house, not me - I live in an appartment).

Andreas

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]