Everything was fine or so I thought until the box broke down and corrupted all disks. Drobo took about 1 month to supply another box but could not help with lost data. So everything was lost, music, photos, few letters and spreadsheets everything.

After spending much time searching the web I decised the route to go was online or offsite. But at the same time still wanted to use my drobo box (because it is nice new and shiney and surely lightening cannot strike twice).

I ended up using a bit of software from onlinedatastore which allows me to automatically backup to my drobo and offsite at the same time. The only downside is I no longer have much data left to backup.

The moral of the story is do not rely on a single device to store your data regardless of how bomb proof you think it is.

My home backup plan is this: 1 old pc with 2 hdds, running FREENAS from a USB key. I backup all my important data to the server daily (using Allway Sync). This gets written to hdd1 on the server, then i have the server setup to rsync locally from hdd1 to hdd2 each night. The reason i went with scheduled local rsync instead of simple RAID1 is that this way the server is able to turn off the hdds, while they’re not in use (could be a limitation of FREENAS, maybe a Linux based server can turn off the hdds, even if they’re in RAID1). This saves some electricity + it should have a positive effect on the hdd life, since they’re not constantly on and spinning. Having a local backup on 2 hdds should keep my stuff safe from possible hardware failure. However… There’s always local physical risks that this method won’t guard against – like fire, burglars, etc. That’s why I backup the most important stuff to Mozy (mostly work stuff – spreadsheets and office documents). So i agree, it’s best to use local + online backups, however not a single local backup, but at least a “dual” one.

Thanks!