Cheapest redundant (RAID 1) storage... micro SD?

[alexthealex]

I will propose something possibly stupid but hear me out:

A NAS is clearly the way to go for home redundant storage, but the entry for a RAID NAS is about 300$ (disks included). NAS doesn't really make sense with disks under 1TB.  But what if you need way less space than 1TB. A RAID controller add-in card? Still about 50-100$ + disks ≈ 200$. Again it doesn't make sense if you need less than about 500GB redundant storage...

What if you only need to keep safe 50-100GB and you don't care about speed because it's mostly docx, pdf and pptx... and you don't care about durability because you only write and read a couple GB per month. But you really want it to be safe... Could you:

- use a simple USB SD card reader (5$) (these have a slot for micro SD and a slot for big SD, so you can plug in a micro SD directly and another one in the big slot by using an adapter which is free with micro SD purchase)

- get 2x 128 GB micro SD (40$) (SanDisk Extreme or Samsung EVO...)

Then set up one of these:

a) Windows RAID 1 on the 2 SD cards + robocopy as a scheduled task to backup your data from your fast PC boot drive to the RAID micro SD array (every day or so)

b) Use robocopy as a scheduled task to copy directly to both cards (every day) to avoid Windows RAID and set scheduled tasks for the 2 SDs at different times to increase writing speed to micro SD

 

There...

≈ 50$;

128GB;

3x redundant (2x micro SD + boot drive);

fully automatic daily data replication;

fast enough for text documents (+ you don't write to it directly as you edit docs on your boot drive anyway so speed doesn't matter);

durable enough for text documents;

compact;

simple to set up.

 

Could this be the cheapest redundant storage for low volume data? (the best competitor IMO would be 100GB cloud storage for 20-24€/year)

(+ of course you also do manual off-site backups every few months)

[SorryBella]

You cant set windows RAID on pluggable storage devices, and imo for a good reason. 

[BondiBlue]

13 minutes ago, a0l0e0x000 said:

A NAS is clearly the way to go for home redundant storage, but the entry for a RAID NAS is about 300$ (disks included). 

Not if you're willing to use older hardware. The computer I use as a NAS was free, and 2TB drives aren't expensive these days. For $100 I could have 2TB of redundant storage that is far more reliable than SD cards. 

 

I wouldn't depend on SD cards for any sort of long term storage. That's not a good strategy for data storage. 

[alexthealex]

6 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Not if you're willing to use older hardware. The computer I use as a NAS was free, and 2TB drives aren't expensive these days. For $100 I could have 2TB of redundant storage that is far more reliable than SD cards. 

Are you sure? Wouldn't a flash drive that you barely write to last longer than a hdd that spins 24/7 regardless of how often you write to it?

+ improvised PC NAS is the opposite of being compact (it would be way faster of course though)... and still 2x the price.

+++ if one only needs to safely store text documents 2 TB is pointless

[BondiBlue]

Just now, a0l0e0x000 said:

Are you sure? Wouldn't a flash drive that you barely write to last longer than a hdd that spins 24/7 regardless of how often you write to it?

I have 20+ year old hard drives that have been on for a very long time that still work just fine. I can't say the same about SD cards or flash drives. Besides, a hard drive in a NAS doesn't have to run 24/7. You can configure them to spin down when idle. I don't do that with mine (I have things running that need access to the NAS at random times), but it's certainly possible. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, a0l0e0x000 said:

Are you sure? Wouldn't a flash drive that you barely write to last longer than a hdd that spins 24/7 regardless of how often you write to it?

Those cheap flash drives and sd cards aren't super reliable, and I have had plenty of failures.

 

 

You want backups here, not raid. Id just use something like backblaze or anouther cloud backup. Or backup your pc to a external hdd. Making a raid of sd cards makes no sense here.

 

19 minutes ago, a0l0e0x000 said:

simple to set up.

Doing something like google drive or backblaze is much simpler to use, and much more relaible.

 

If you want a local backup, id just use a external hdd.

[alexthealex]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you want a local backup, id just use a external hdd.

Of course, as I said, external hdd has to be done every few months anyway... this is about not losing that 1 month of non-backupped data that is on your boot drive

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, a0l0e0x000 said:

Of course, as I said, external hdd has to be done every few months anyway... this is about not losing that 1 month of non-backupped data that is on your boot drive

Just leave that hdd plugged in and run backups every night. Then you can have daily backups of your data. And swap them out for a offsite drive every few monts for a offsite copy. 

 

But really cloud makes a ton of sense here.

[alexthealex]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just leave that hdd plugged in and run backups every night. Then you can have daily backups of your data. And swap them out for a offsite drive every few monts for a offsite copy. 

 

But really cloud makes a ton of sense here.

So it pretty much comes down to using micro SD vs hdd for daily backups... however as you may know the cheapest sensible hdd is about 70$. The cheapest micro SD however that would fit this use-case is ≈20$. So you can have triple redundancy instead of double for about 2/3 of the price of that hdd.

Or you can even have double redundancy in a laptop where hdd is pointless since you can't keep it connected 24/7.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, a0l0e0x000 said:

So it pretty much comes down to using micro SD vs hdd for daily backups... however as you may know the cheapest sensible hdd is about 70$. The cheapest micro SD however that would fit this use-case is ≈20$. So you can have triple redundancy instead of double for about 2/3 of the price of that hdd.

You can normally get hdds for about 50 bucks for a cheap external. 

 

And why not use a flash drive? Then you don't need a usb adapter, and there physically bigger which makes it harder to lose. Seems to be a better solution here.

[alexthealex]

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can normally get hdds for about 50 bucks for a cheap external. 

 

And why not use a flash drive? Then you don't need a usb adapter, and there physically bigger which makes it harder to lose. Seems to be a better solution here.

I guess, but the idea was to have 2 separate disks and only use 1 port on your PC. + USB drives shouldn't be much more durable and they aren't much cheaper and they aren't as versatile if you repurpose them later (for phone or laptop use)

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, a0l0e0x000 said:

I guess, but the idea was to have 2 separate disks and only use 1 port on your PC. + USB drives shouldn't be much more durable and they aren't much cheaper and they aren't as versatile if you repurpose them later (for phone or laptop use)

I don't see the point of having 2 backup devices plugged in at once. If you want a second backup, Id just go  for. cloud bckup solution. If you have a mirrored drive you cn still lose the data due to many possbile issues, and setting up sd card raid is a pain.

 

But external hdd makes much more sense normally. And HDDs should last much longer powered off too.