[olug] To RAID or not to RAID

[Obi-Wan]

On 09/22/2014 04:17 PM, Christopher R. White wrote:
> I have over 500 gb of dvd rips, 10+ years of photos, thousands of hours of
> music and more, nearly 1 TB total.  I'd really hate to lose it all!
>
> I lost my media once to a faulty drive, never again!!!

If you're worried about losing your data, you need to focus on off-site 
backups, not on redundant spindles inside the computer. Redundancy 
protects you from hardware failure, but not from theft, flood, or fire.  
For the tiny amount of data you've got (only 1TB), you can extract that 
from a backup drive in just a couple hours.

Redundancy is more of an uptime issue.  If you can't afford to be down 
for long, get redundant -- but get an off-site backup first!

> Now to replace the old tape drive with one of these and setup a backup job
> to run nightly -
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998020&Tpk=N82E16817998020
> and maybe also a pair of 2 TB HDDs to go with it  ^_-

I use a pair of Vantec dual-bay USB3 enclosures for off-site backups.  
They work really well.
http://tech.prairierim.com/2012/11/new-computer-backup-hardware.html

And in case you're wondering, I own(ed) all of the drives in that 
lead-off picture.

-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com <mailto:obiwan at jedi.com> 
www.Jedi.com <http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/