Chapter 4. Choose Your Hardware

I remember vividly the days of backing up my hard disk onto a tall stack of floppies. Back when a 40 MB drive was standard, I would have been thrilled to think I could put 16 or more copies of my disk on a single CD-R. A few years later, conventional wisdom held that DAT (digital audio tape) drives were the way to go for many power users. Now, however, with hard disk sizes routinely reaching 3 TB, we have to reconsider old notions about backup hardware and media. You probably have a lot of data to copy, and the amount will only increase. But you don’t want to spend a fortune on your backup system, and you don’t want backups to take all day. What to do?

In the pages that follow, I tell you which backup destinations you should consider, and which you should avoid:

• Hard Drives: External hard drives are ideal for both duplicates and versioned backups (next page).

• RAIDs and RAID-Like Tech: Hard drive arrays have benefits, but may not be as useful as their manufacturers want you to believe. (The Drobo, which I discuss, is a special—and better—case.)

• Optical Media: Although floppy disks are dead, optical (CD and DVD) drives are still common, and since you may have these already, you’ll want to consider whether to use them for versioned backups.

• Network Storage Devices: Gadgets that combine a hard drive with a network interface (including Apple’s Time Capsule) are often sold as backup solutions.

• Local Network Servers and remote Internet Backup Services: Another computer on your local network—or across the world—could be a backup destination.

• Hardware You (Probably) Shouldn’t Consider and Why: Among the choices I can’t recommend for most people are tape drives, flash drives, and Iomega’s Zip, Jaz, and REV drives.

I wrap up the chapter with Joe’s Hardware Recommendations.