We are planning on going to a hard drive based backup system at work. We are a non-profit on a tight budget (I can spend about $1500 on this total), so a enterprise level disk-to-disk system isn't feasible. The current plan is to scrap the 160GB DLT backup system, and back up to SATA desktop hard drives instead. A 1TB hard drive is about $80 ($70 today at newegg by the way), so the cost per GB is pretty cheap. They would also not require a tape drive in the event of an actual disaster. A SATA hard drive could go in just about any computer to start the recovery.<br>
<br>Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what to use to be able to easily swap out the hard drives on a daily basis since we are on a 2 week rotation. I'm considering an external eSATA hard drive dock like this:<br><a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121046">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121046</a><br>
or one of the many 5.25 inch internal bays with caddies. The disadvantage there is buying 10 caddies on top of the drive bay. I also once found an internal 5.25 bay that didn't take caddies (just stick a bare drive in), but heck if I can find it now.<br>
<br>I'm thinking about getting a few padded carrying cases to take the drives off site. and keep the anti-static bags the drives come in.<br><br>Any suggestions, do's & don't's would be appreciated.<br>
<br clear="all">Tim Champion<br><a href="mailto:timchampion@gmail.com">timchampion@gmail.com</a><br>