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For the last 10 years or so, I've had the wonderful duty of taking a set of backups offsite each night and bringing another set back in the morning. I started using a waterproof insulated lunchbox and used that for a year or two, but it was too soft to protect against drops and it looked like crap. For the past 8 years I've been using a laptop case, which protects against drops and weather, but it's too large and I end up using it as a purse(I'm a guy so thats generally a bad thing) and it's style is outdated.

What does everyone else use? An offsite service is out of the question, our data must be maintained in the building or in my possession. I need something that can hold two DLT's and two 3.5" Hard drives and another item about 5x5x1.5. I don't really want a standard brief or attache case, I would like something small and lightweight and lockable would be nice. It would be great if i didn't have to carry a 10 pound laptop case(before i fill it with crap) or brief case. Most brief cases are ~ 18x14x4.5 when 12x12x3 would be ideal for my use. Am I asking for too much?

How about a Pelican case?
Something like: (I picked it at almost random)
http://www.pelican.com/cases_detail.php?Case=1075

in a lot of their cases you can shape the foam to the cargo.

Thats actually a pretty good idea. I was too busy looking at brief cases to think of a Pelican case.. I thing the 1085 hardback may do it, and it's under $100. - thanks..

DLHM wrote:

Thats actually a pretty good idea. I was too busy looking at brief cases to think of a Pelican case.. I thing the 1085 hardback may do it, and it's under $100. - thanks..

You welcome.
We use them for shipping slate tablet computers here and they work amazing.

I have two Pelican cases. One for hard drives, and another for transporting USB sound interfaces, cables, hubs, MIDI keyboard/drumtriggers, etc. Both have double padlock holes.

The small case I use for hard drives holds two 3.5" drives side-by-side, and if necessary, I could carve out two or four narrow slots for storage of backup SSDs edgewise.

But I need to start including backups for my laptop, NAS, and future server(s) (to be built later this summer), so the small case is not going to cut it for much longer. I'll have to get a bigger one that will be able to support as many as four 3.5's and four to six 2.5's, plus boot-DVDs or thumbdrives with recovery software.

That's another key: Don't forget to size your disaster recovery case appropriately to include room for boot media; and maybe even two copies at that. And regularly use that boot media to be sure it still works (especially if one of them is on optical media).

Someday I will get an airline-sized Pelican case sized for airline overhead compartments and capable of carrying camera and music controllers, etc. My needs are just weird enough that I probably can't use the foam-insert cases; will probably have to go with a reconfigurable soft-divider version.