Backup your files! !

My main backup is a Netgear STORA. It has 2 bays for 2 drives. Setup as a RAID1, the 2nd drive mirrors the first drive. The hardware will detect a drive failure and email your email list of the warning. You then have time to replace the failed drive with a new one **hot swappable** (must be the same or more capacity). The mirror is rebuilt and you can continue on without worry. It's portable enough to grab and go in case of an emergency, and also has network capabilities. All data can also be accessed online from any computer with user authentication.

Main point here, you have a chance to avoid disaster, the other features are gravy.

My Bluray backups are backups of the backups.

I recall reading a discussion about consumer vs commercial hard drives. One particular person was saying that he had a drive fail in a RAID5 array. He popped in a new drive, and as the array was rebuilding, drive #2 failed. He subsequently discovered that all drives were the same manufacturer & model. Not sure if mixed manufacturers in an array would help or not. Just remember that if it's plugged in, it's vulnerable to the same fire/lightning strike as the primary.

It's best to keep some of your backups off-site. Depending on the type of disaster you're trying to avoid, the further away they are, the better. If your backup drive is sitting next to your computer, it can be stolen at the same time.

Oh! and CHECK YOUR BACKUPS from time to time. I remember another story about some company that never checked their backups, and discovered that at some point in the past, their tapes could no longer hold data properly. When you've lost your data, it's a bad time to discover your backups don't work.
 
Raid technology was developed for the online world. You could keep you online system up and running while the defective drive was replaced and synchronized. The downside is that the missing data had to be reconstructed using a math formula and that would in turn slow the system down. BUT - you could still be online.

Mirroring was a better method, but more expensive, you had to double your DASD storage.

Most business would also have other methods of backup, tape, removable hard drives, even a separate, but equal system, located in a different location.

Never rely on a single backup - that can go bad. Keep old backups - archived data. It is possible you could have a problem and it will not show up for weeks or even months.

In my years I have seen lots of failures. everything from bad tapes, to operator error. to flooded computer rooms, to safes that fell through the floor and were destroyed ..
 
I recall reading a discussion about consumer vs commercial hard drives. One particular person was saying that he had a drive fail in a RAID5 array. He popped in a new drive, and as the array was rebuilding, drive #2 failed. He subsequently discovered that all drives were the same manufacturer & model. Not sure if mixed manufacturers in an array would help or not. Just remember that if it's plugged in, it's vulnerable to the same fire/lightning strike as the primary.

It's best to keep some of your backups off-site. Depending on the type of disaster you're trying to avoid, the further away they are, the better. If your backup drive is sitting next to your computer, it can be stolen at the same time.

Oh! and CHECK YOUR BACKUPS from time to time. I remember another story about some company that never checked their backups, and discovered that at some point in the past, their tapes could no longer hold data properly. When you've lost your data, it's a bad time to discover your backups don't work.

The situation you read is very rare; and sounds more like a drive manufacturing defect. I've worked for many companies on their backend including Arrays and even worked for a hard drive distribution company specializing in RAID arrays. You can mix up the drives in most systems. Some may require drives with specific firmware versions, in which case, they might not have a choice. Reducing the creation of the RAID container slightly below the available drive space will open up your drive choices. Many drives end up being discontinued and a users will have to find other drives as backup replacement drives. Arrays also have the options to hold reserve drives in unused slots to automatically take over in the event of a drive failure. So there are many options, but they all come at a cost.

The Stora drive I have runs through my network. I have multiple routers in the home linked together wirelessly via WDS. This allows me to hide the drive anywhere that an AC power source is available. This helps to prevent theft. Running the router and Stora's power off of a UPS protects it from power surges/failures. Because the Stora is basically a LAN connection and AC connection, it is easily unplugged and portable enough to take with me in the event I need to evacuate the home. Not bad for a $169 solution.

:grin2:
 
A dual drive RAID is only as good as the power it is connected to and the ESD that protects it. A local lightning hit can take out the whole unit (and other things in your house).


On DVD backups, it is not just the brand you buy, the type exact model. DVD-RAM is inherently unstable and not good for a long term backup. From memory, the same is true of dual layer DVD disks as it is difficult to protect them.

The best backup DVD are ones like the Verbatim Gold Archival disks. They have a better coating on them for scratches and the internal reflective layer is of a stacked construction with corrosion protection. Verbatim claims 100 years properly stored, which most of us can't, but even 25-50 years is tolerable and should carry us to cheap and extensive cloud storage (and reasonable bandwidth costs).

I am sort of disappointed for locking into a cable modem broadband package for the next year that only has 2mbps upload. That symmetric DSL with 20mbps in both directions is looking really good about now :-(

Which does remind me, it is time for a backup. I categorize my data into bins, i.e.

- Timely and Very Important (Current work product, accounting data, etc): Backed up near daily to on-line storage. It really is not that much data.
- Very important not timely (Archived work product, some photos, etc.): Backed up bi-weekly, locally and online - Still reasonable amounts of data and the incremental for online is minimal
- Important and not timely (The rest of the photos, music that took tons of hours to rip and encode, etc.): Backup external drive, and BD - every few months and always two copies
- Not that important or timely (Software downloads, etc. - generally stuff I could alway get somewhere else, but nice to have locally): Only on external hard drive

Sounds complicated, but really it is not. 4 top level directories basically handle everything.

Last but not least, REMEMBER to back up your user profile on Windows (or whatever you Mac people do). That can take a long time to recover.

Semiman
 
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The Stora drive I have runs through my network. I have multiple routers in the home linked together wirelessly via WDS. This allows me to hide the drive anywhere that an AC power source is available. This helps to prevent theft. Running the router and Stora's power off of a UPS protects it from power surges/failures. Because the Stora is basically a LAN connection and AC connection, it is easily unplugged and portable enough to take with me in the event I need to evacuate the home. Not bad for a $169 solution.

:grin2:
So the Stora drive, the UPS, and the WiFi router linked to these two cost $169 all together? Or did you have this extra UPS and WiFi router setting around with nothing hooked up to them before you got the Stora drive?

Yes, I'm nit-picking, but this solution isn't likely to cost anyone else only $169.

And while I appreciate the portability of your solution, what happens if your home is destroyed while you're gone? I recommend an entirely off-site solution for this reason.

Again... we have seen a variety of methods discussed here, and each person needs to assess their own level of risk, and perform a cost/benefit analysis for handling those risks. No matter how much I may like the method I'm using, it may not be a good fit for anyone else in particular, and the same goes for each and every method we've been discussing. I'm throwing in my $.02 worth, but that really is about all it's worth, and I know it. :)
 
So the Stora drive, the UPS, and the WiFi router linked to these two cost $169 all together? Or did you have this extra UPS and WiFi router setting around with nothing hooked up to them before you got the Stora drive?

Yes, I'm nit-picking, but this solution isn't likely to cost anyone else only $169.

And while I appreciate the portability of your solution, what happens if your home is destroyed while you're gone? I recommend an entirely off-site solution for this reason.

Again... we have seen a variety of methods discussed here, and each person needs to assess their own level of risk, and perform a cost/benefit analysis for handling those risks. No matter how much I may like the method I'm using, it may not be a good fit for anyone else in particular, and the same goes for each and every method we've been discussing. I'm throwing in my $.02 worth, but that really is about all it's worth, and I know it. :)

The Stora was $169....the rest is normal IT technology I have for all my equipment. You are right to nit-pick, if you could get all that for $169, more people would look into it. Obviously, it's not that cheap. Everything has a cost.

Bluray backups are in a separate storage facility.
 
The Stora drive I have runs through my network. I have multiple routers in the home linked together wirelessly via WDS. This allows me to hide the drive anywhere that an AC power source is available. This helps to prevent theft. Running the router and Stora's power off of a UPS protects it from power surges/failures. Because the Stora is basically a LAN connection and AC connection, it is easily unplugged and portable enough to take with me in the event I need to evacuate the home. Not bad for a $169 solution.

:grin2:


Excellent point about the theft. I currently have a NAS storage device hidden in my house for just such a reason, theft.

In the past, I had a USB backup device in the my desk behind a drawer with just a USB cable through a small hole in the back of the desk. My home was broken into and computer equipment stolen, not the backup drive. The cable would have been just one of many in a mess behind the desk.

Semiman
 
I had two external mirrored hard drives fail AT THE SAME TIME and lost most of my work data. Fortunately for me I had given backup CDs to coworkers to use. Never thought I'd have to borrow them back! I got most of my important stuff back! Lucky me....
 
I had two external mirrored hard drives fail AT THE SAME TIME and lost most of my work data. Fortunately for me I had given backup CDs to coworkers to use. Never thought I'd have to borrow them back! I got most of my important stuff back! Lucky me....

That is very unfortunate. In my 15 years in the industry, I have never seen a mirrored set die together; with the exception of a power surge or controller failure.
 
As someone who currently does tech support for a living, you don't have to remind me this. So many people have lost files because they're too lazy to save them to the server. That said, I'm still pretty bad at doing it. I have almost everything backed up on DVDs and multiple hard drives, but I don't do it regularly enough. It's usually about twice a year. I don't have a lot of new stuff these days, though. I do save all of my job work on our servers like I'm supposed to.

We even keep users' computers for a month after upgrading them. But no one ever realizes they didn't back something up until I'm already running DBAN on the hard drive.
 
Several years ago I had a raid mirrored drive that got corrupted, and the raid backup drive dutifully made an exact copy of the corruption, trashing the files on both drives. :ironic: That's the last time I've used raid.

I've also lost some files on a thumb drive when the controller chip failed. The data is probably still on the drive; someday I might get around to swapping the controller chip to see if it's recoverable. Fortunately I kept multiple copies of most of the stuff on that drive so the damage was minimal.

These days I occasionally make a full backup on DVDs and I generally make multiple copies of important files in different places. I don't use cloud backup services though; I don't want my data stored on someone else's servers even if it's encrypted.
 
Several years ago I had a raid mirrored drive that got corrupted, and the raid backup drive dutifully made an exact copy of the corruption, trashing the files on both drives. :ironic: That's the last time I've used raid.

Yes. It does the same for viruses too. It pays to have a second (3rd, 4th, etc) copy stored elsewhere (paranoids have a better chance of winning this game).

Since this thread is still active, I'll add this article I recently ran across. There were a few suggestions for internet storage earlier in this thread, which has it's own problems. This is an interesting article.

When is your data not your data? When it's in the cloud
By Bill Snyder
Created 2013-03-07 04:00AM

Think the data you upload to a cloud storage site is private [1]? Not necessarily.
[...]
What's more, laws pertaining to cloud storage are so new and so vague that it isn't even clear the data you upload to a storage site is still yours. It sounds crazy, but that's exactly the logic the U.S. government used when it shut down MegaUpload's service [6] and denied innocent users access to their own property, according to a court brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation [7].

http://www.infoworld.com/print/213988
 
I have Drobo 4-bay with 4ea 3TB hdd's inside... 8TB of available space with HDD single redundancy backup on the go... keep pretty much everything on it sorted in folders (movies, music, software, pics) and using it all the time... so far never had HDD failure (knock on wood)... it's hooked up to my local wireless network so access to files is easy from any device, including TV...

Also have a smaller carton box that I made with some bare WD 1TB 2.5" HDD's in plastic holders so whatever is important on DROBO, I make backup onto one of these small HDD's... Usually do a backup of newer files from Drobo every month or so, whenever I feel bored...

So constant and easy access to pretty much everything w/o worry to ever lose anything worth having... if something is lost and I never notice, then it's for the good...
 
Several years ago I had a raid mirrored drive that got corrupted, and the raid backup drive dutifully made an exact copy of the corruption, trashing the files on both drives. :ironic: That's the last time I've used raid.
YES. RAID is often mistaken for a kind of backup, but it is a redundancy to protect against downtime due to disk failure, and does less to protect your data than a secondary hard drive with backup copies would.

While hard drives are the most common components to fail, your data can be corrupted or totally lost through other mechanisms. They might not occur quite as often these days, with good journaled file-systems, programs using ACID-compliant storage mechanisms, permissions limits, and so on, but data loss by other means than HDD failure is still common enough not to trust RAID as a backup.

In businesses, it is often important to not have unplanned downtime, so RAID makes sense, in addition to backup. For a scenario that doesn't require a corporate environment, consider a small lawyer's office. A hard drive failure could cost them a day's work, which also costs everyone they are working with. Their documents directories and mailboxes not only need backup, but can also benefit from RAID, so that a HDD failure (a common occurrence) will not slow them down.
 
YES. RAID is often mistaken for a kind of backup, but it is a redundancy to protect against downtime due to disk failure, and does less to protect your data than a secondary hard drive with backup copies would.

While hard drives are the most common components to fail, your data can be corrupted or totally lost through other mechanisms. They might not occur quite as often these days, with good journaled file-systems, programs using ACID-compliant storage mechanisms, permissions limits, and so on, but data loss by other means than HDD failure is still common enough not to trust RAID as a backup.

In businesses, it is often important to not have unplanned downtime, so RAID makes sense, in addition to backup. For a scenario that doesn't require a corporate environment, consider a small lawyer's office. A hard drive failure could cost them a day's work, which also costs everyone they are working with. Their documents directories and mailboxes not only need backup, but can also benefit from RAID, so that a HDD failure (a common occurrence) will not slow them down.

Raid IS a backup setup and depends on which RAID is used... RAID 1 is disk for disk mirror but RAID 5, for example, does offer some redundancy so if you have failed HDD, you pull that one out and replace with healthy... all data that was on it is restored as parts were kept on other 2,3,4,etc HDDs...

The problem with modern HDDs and their issues with backup hardware using RAID or JBOD is that both enclosure has integrated bad sector tracking and fixing redundancy but HDD's have the same simple problem solving flashware in their electronics... so when HDD encounters a bad sector, it automatically tries to replace it with few from spare part of it but guess what, the enclosure/RAID system is trying to do the same thing and sometimes things doesn't work out as planned...

The somewhat newer line of WD Red HDD's are lacking ability to auto-fix themselves thus making them better for RAID and JBOD systems vs. Green, Blue and even Black (talking about WD here only but each manufacturer has it's counterproduct)...

The only safe solution to backup is to have them on 2, 3 and even more different locations... CLOUD, external HDDs that don't get online, DVDs if around the area with lot of electromagnetic activity and such... I've heard of pro photographers loosing MONTHS/YEARS of their work because RAID or JBOD failed... but smart ones make more backups and never risk losing the most important stuff... EVERYTHING is prone for failure with time... the more backups you have, the safer you are (just like, the more flashlight you have in your pocket, the bigger chance that you'll never be left in the dark)... :)
 
Raid IS a backup setup and depends on which RAID is used...
No, RAID is not a backup. RAID is a redundant array of disks, to protect against catastrophic disk failures only. A backup is a copy of your data, that can be protected against errors occurring in the time after the backup was made. A RAID will duplicate failures other than catastrophic disk, and/or will not protect against them, such as silent corruption.

Much data can be thrown away, but for data that can't be, the distinction is not trivial.

PhotonWrangler ended up OK, because of having a backup.

Here's a really good one:
http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-backup/3697#3697
Q: Why is RAID not a backup?

A: Because the whole purpose of a RAID is to make sure that nothing in the world can interrupt that accidental rm -rf / (or DELTREE /X C:\), not even yanking the power chord in panic.
In fact, if this subject is new to you, having stumbled upon this thread, do read the RAID wikipedia article, and the Serverfault link.

In fact, the page links to a case of it more or less happening, too:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/02/1546214/why-mirroring-is-not-a-backup-solution

Also, in fitting irony, it links to a page that currently 404s:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...s-not-backup-and-backup-is-not-archiving.aspx

Another link of interest (I was amazed this event actually happened, TBH):
http://www.overclock.net/t/1254683/why-raid-is-not-a-backup-solution

A separate copy on another HDD, USB stick, or DVD, is far more secure against errors that can occur in the near future. RAID provides redundancy for your hardware, but does very little to protect your data. Against most kinds of failures for your data, it does absolutely nothing.
 
No, RAID is not a backup. RAID is a redundant array of disks, to protect against catastrophic disk failures only. A backup is a copy of your data, that can be protected against errors occurring in the time after the backup was made. A RAID will duplicate failures other than catastrophic disk, and/or will not protect against them, such as silent corruption.

Much data can be thrown away, but for data that can't be, the distinction is not trivial.

PhotonWrangler ended up OK, because of having a backup.

Here's a really good one:
http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-backup/3697#3697
In fact, if this subject is new to you, having stumbled upon this thread, do read the RAID wikipedia article, and the Serverfault link.

In fact, the page links to a case of it more or less happening, too:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/02/1546214/why-mirroring-is-not-a-backup-solution

Also, in fitting irony, it links to a page that currently 404s:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...s-not-backup-and-backup-is-not-archiving.aspx

Another link of interest (I was amazed this event actually happened, TBH):
http://www.overclock.net/t/1254683/why-raid-is-not-a-backup-solution

A separate copy on another HDD, USB stick, or DVD, is far more secure against errors that can occur in the near future. RAID provides redundancy for your hardware, but does very little to protect your data. Against most kinds of failures for your data, it does absolutely nothing.

All right... you win... I'm old school and I am not part of google-fu generation who quickly reads about stuff then go to forums and be knowledgeable...

You make a conclusion whether I understand the matter and importance of backup in post #33... until then, you be an expert, I'll go back to flashlight part of this forum...
 
All right... you win... I'm old school and I am not part of google-fu generation who quickly reads about stuff then go to forums and be knowledgeable...
I "win" because I've been there, and dealt with these problems first-hand, including after people have lost data to RAIDs, thinking it was as good as a backup, or was a backup. I'm just way less insightful and witty than what I can easily link to. I have far more experience in this area than I do flashlights.

You make a conclusion whether I understand the matter and importance of backup in post #33... until then, you be an expert, I'll go back to flashlight part of this forum...
I ll make the conclusion that you made an incorrect statement which could, if believed, have disastrous consequences, in post #35. It is not an uncommon misconception, and I have been there, unable to put the pieces back together, because RAID was trusted as a backup solution.
 
I use Carbonite. Automated, customizable, different levels of service available, SSL-encrypted, and has already saved my bacon (and that of several of my family members), so it's proven.

I really recommend off-site backup like this, no matter whether you choose a paid service, like this one or the one mentioned above (although I have no personal experience with that one), or whether you choose to handle the file transfers yourself. Either way, the off-site backup method protects you against the loss of your files even if your entire home is destroyed (fire, flood, earthquake, mudslide, ...) or your electronics gear gets fried by lightning, or even if it gets stolen.

Keep in mind that it's your data, so it's your choice. It's also your responsibility.

I use carbonite for exactly the same reasons, and I have done a recovery with it as well. That is when I really wished I had a faster internet connection. Now if I could figure out how to make it work in linux, that would be really handy. I wonder if it would work under wine ?

Edit - The answer to "will it work under WINE" appears to be - no it won't.

There appears to be a similar service for Linux called spider oak, for about 2X the price.
 
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