Thermaltake BlacX - hot swap drives for $40

ChrisPerry · #1 07-09-2008, 07:29 PM

I've been looking for a backup solution and was forced into doing something NOW rather than next week as my backup drive is 90% full and my RAW drive is 95% full....

I found thermaltake's BlacX - a USB or USB/eSATA interface external box. Stupidly simple install - no drivers or software. It takes a regular SATA drive and you can hot swap the drives.

This is the plan: I got 2 750Gb drives and will alternate weekly backups on them, with the odd drive being kept offsite. Cheap, simple and expandable.

curtd · #2 08-17-2008, 11:33 AM

Hey Chris, I'm in the same 90% full situation and like your idea of the removable drives alternated with one kept offsite.

Can you tell me the list of brand/model numbers you bought and how it's working?

Peace, Curt

ChrisPerry · #3 11-26-2008, 05:24 PM

I got a couple of 750 gb Seagates and here are the 'issues' I've had of late.

On my old machine I use a backup program to backup daily and when my email crashed and burned about 2 weeks back i tried to restore hte PST file. Outlook will not read it. No clue why. Not good.

My main backup (weekly) has been via Cobian - it's a freeware type of deal like Firefox. It copies - no issues with bad restores...except for some reason the folders for the incremental backups of that machine are empty. Again, that's not acceptable. Not sure the reason for this.

The main machine that has the blackX attached to it's USB port and using Cobian does indeed backup. It's copies and can be read, or accessed as it, just fine.
BUT there are two issues.

One is I did a complete backup and then weekly incrementals. Each week the incremental gets bigger and the old files are never deleted - so the disk filled up.

Fine, I can work with that ( not that I think I should have to). THe real issue is Drive A had the complete, and then I alternated A and B for incrementals.
Had I had a failure I'd need drive A's complete and then the most recent incremental. That could suck.

Not sure what to do about that for the future. The two 750s are going into a new box as mirrored data drives. I got a 1Tb WD Green ($99 from newegg) for the BlackX/backup duties. It's not offsite but I do now have a studio on my property that is in a seperate building and is conditioend space so I will begin to move this drive over there and back I think, and perhaps do monthly completes and weekly incrementals...

Issue is on complete's is the amount of data. I have just over 400Gb of image files from this year alone. That's a lot of data to do a complete backup of every week IMO.