You can never have too many backups. A customer had been having some computer issues and as a consequence had lost some important data. We decided to set up a RAID system so that the risk of data loss through hardware failure was minimised. There are obviously a few different options when it comes to backing up, online or ‘cloud’ services such as Google drive, Microsoft skydrive and dropbox offer online backup and sharing facilities that can be very useful. They do, however, rely on your internet speed and you are entrusting a 3rd party with your data. If you are using large files, such as uncompressed video or audio files, then a RAID system can offer a level of safety whilst allowing you to backup and access your data reasonably fast. I have used a number of NAS RAID units and the Synology units have always been very impressive. They are reasonably priced whilst offering a good range of features and have proved extremely reliable.

The customer’s system was used mainly for admin and storing images and audio. We built a new computer to replace the failing desktop and set up a Synology DS212J with 2 x Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1 TB hard drives configured in a basic RAID 1 array. The customer could then access their data from a number of different computers in the building and also log in remotely via a secure HTTPS connection.

Drives fitted

Installing the drives

NAS with drives

Intel Pentium G2120 Tower

Synology DS212J NAS