[pullhair] External Hard Drive [/pullhair]

[Dao]

I have seen many degraded arrays fail during a rebuild and then people cry to me they've lost their backup, to which the reply is always that they never actually had a backup.

And that is why they invent Hot Spares and RAID 6 so that the RAID system can rebuild as soon as one drive fails (for hot spare) and RAID 6 (or RAIDZ2 in ZFS) so that data is still good even 2 drives fail at the same time.

No RAID in any configuration replaces the need for backup. If you consider storage in terms of a service, you need to think in terms of Availability (RAID) versus Recoverability (Backups). Two distinct "problems" that are addressed in different ways. I am with Garbz, I've seen hundreds of ways a RAID (of all sorts of configurations) fails to protect data. (Interestingly... a bunch are user mistakes)

If on a budget, I'd put a priority on backups (recoverability) over RAID (availability). A home computer/data rarely needs constant availability but recoverability is always important. (a user can live for days without access to the data but wants their wedding photos recovered).

The question is.... how much is your data worth to you?

hahahah I think you may miss my earlier post.

 

[Dao]

And that is why they invent Hot Spares and RAID 6 so that the RAID system can rebuild as soon as one drive fails (for hot spare) and RAID 6 (or RAIDZ2 in ZFS) so that data is still good even 2 drives fail at the same time.

Yeah RAID6 addresses that in enterprise, but realistically how many people do you know who run a RAID6 array with hot spares? In discussions like this the KISS principle still needs to come into it somewhere

And it still won't prevent user error. Well ZFS may but good luck getting that running on a typical windows box

It's not too bad since beside export it as NFS, it support CIFS as well. In other words, you can MAP the drive. Although I admitted that it is not as easy as 123. But of course, you can try out Nexenta's Nexenstor (Opensolaris based) since user can do everything via the web interface.


As for a simple backup solutions for windows, there are a lot of free utilities that can do the job. I set one up before for a friend in the way that the software will backup the selected folders (various Windows machines) to the remote network storage (Windows box with RAID 1) everyday in his office. And at mid-night Friday, it will backup the important file offsite via the VPN tunnel back to his home computer. All I use was a free backup software that can sync a directory. But I forgot the name of the program

But at least MS has a free file sync program

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

 

[usayit]

hahahah I think you may miss my earlier post.

Yup I did.. :blushing:

 

[Village Idiot]

Maxtor is now Seagate

"Maxtor is now Seagate.

Two great companies. One incredible family of products. Now at Seagate.com.

You want top-of-the-line hard drives — for backup, for portability, for networking. You've got it, now more than ever.

We've combined the best of Seagate and Maxtor to create the ultimate portfolio of hard drives. You'll recognize some old favorites and get to know some new ones. The very best of the very best. That's what's waiting for you — at the new Seagate online store. "

Maxtor is now Seagate

"Maxtor is now Seagate.

I sure hope this doesn't mean lower quality out of Seagate...

Most speculation has been that Seagate bought Maxtor for the profits and chaning the drive manufacturing prosses across the two brands was not part of that plan.