New Backup Strategies 18Nov16

I've used iDrive (300G) on on our Win7 server to backup key files from all our devices and especially our images. I've never backed up the 1TB of music really. iDrive was $60/year - equivalent to AmazonDrive's unlimited annual fee. So, I set out to find a backup scheme that would store on the AMZ cloud drive instead (so I could use the additional AMZ capacity for Plex media and be able to stream from the cloud rather than my Blodgett-based server). Arq5 did the trick but testing showed upload was very slow and after 3 days of backups over evenings I was only 1/5th done with the first 400GB. I abandoned Arq5. I then tried Macrium Reflect with an eSata cabinet of four removable Hitachi Ultrastar 2TB drives (these are the old IBM drives - I bought two new ones @ $50 each). During tests I could do full backups of 1.5TB data in ~2hrs; this setup screamed along at >800Gbps at times. I chose local backups and dropped iDrive. For offsite storage of backups I simply do a complete backup to a removable drive and take that drive to Silverthorne. Simplicity reigns and now everything is fully backed up