Darren New wrote:

> Tim Cook wrote:
>> Will be *most* put out if the drive itself is dead,
> 
> Eventually you'll learn to buy two. :-)

Well said - guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of
data?

I've lost count how many times I've had to fall back to backups. Saved my
ass quite a few times...! 

Greatest one was when I was working in a dispatching center for fire /
emergency. We had tens of thousands of patient and incident records on file
(in a custom developed Unix-based system) and up to five years or more
after the fact, firemen and paramedics could be called to testify in a
court about a shooting / rape / assault / fatal house fire, etc. Then they
would want records - accurate records - of times, who attended, what was
logged, etc. Failure to produce such could land you in contempt of court.

No less than FIVE times during my seven year career there, -I- could have
conceivably gone to jail for NOT having the records the court demanded - if
I had NOT made backups...!

But then, then volumes weren't at your level. Good luck in getting the drive
working!
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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> My half-full terabyte external hard drive seems to have died.  I opened 
> the case and there doesn't seem to be anything visibly wrong with the 
> drive, and it was working just fine earlier today (even ran a checkdisk to 
> be sure)...it just doesn't spin up when powered on.  Hopefully it's just 
> the enclosure.  Have ordered a new one, which will arrive in two or so 
> days.

What connector does the actual drive have?  Can you plug that directly into 
a desktop PC?

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Stefan Viljoen wrote:

> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?

There is - but not for sane prices, no.

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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:16:44 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> 
>> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?
> 
> There is - but not for sane prices, no.

A 1.5 GB SATA Seagate Barracuda drive costs a mere $95 from newegg.

I guess that arguably is an insane price - insanely cheap.

Jim

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>>> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?
>> There is - but not for sane prices, no.
> 
> A 1.5 GB SATA Seagate Barracuda drive costs a mere $95 from newegg.
> 
> I guess that arguably is an insane price - insanely cheap.

I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is 
that such a sensible idea?

(Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD verses 
tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears it out 
faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's true...)

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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:27:31 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>>> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?
>>> There is - but not for sane prices, no.
>> 
>> A 1.5 GB SATA Seagate Barracuda drive costs a mere $95 from newegg.
>> 
>> I guess that arguably is an insane price - insanely cheap.
> 
> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is
> that such a sensible idea?

Mirroring (or duplexing) provides a pretty good degree of data protection 
because the odds of both drives dying at the same time are pretty small.

It's been used for a very long time.

But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems 
using rsync.

> (Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD verses
> tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears it out
> faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's true...)

Well, I didn't say anything about shutting the drive down.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:27:31 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 
>>>>> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?
>>>> There is - but not for sane prices, no.
>>> 
>>> A 1.5 GB SATA Seagate Barracuda drive costs a mere $95 from newegg.
>>> 
>>> I guess that arguably is an insane price - insanely cheap.
>> 
>> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is
>> that such a sensible idea?

I do this daily, the thing is it is spinning disks on separate servers, from
different manufacturers, on different operating systems, each of the disks
being of different age since purchase... I'm sure you see how spreading the
risk applies, and thus increasing the percentage change of a backup
surviving.
 
> But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems
> using rsync.

Me too - works well.
 
>> (Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD verses
>> tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears it out
>> faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's true...)
> 
> Well, I didn't say anything about shutting the drive down.

I've seen this phenomenon on older drives. Had a HDD in a system here that
was left on for years, probably been turned off 20 or 30 times in its
useful life. The fortieth or forty-fifth time the server was turned off,
the HDD died - after running reliably (while not being turned off, ever)
for 5 or 6 years. Ok, old hardware and an old drive, but just goes to show.
Keep 'em spinning is better than spin-up / spin-down on a daily basis.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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>> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is
>> that such a sensible idea?
> 
> Mirroring (or duplexing) provides a pretty good degree of data protection 
> because the odds of both drives dying at the same time are pretty small.
> 
> It's been used for a very long time.

This is not the same as a backup.

RAID will protect you from physical failure of a single drive. It will 
not protect you if you accidentally delete a file, or if some virus 
infects your PC and deletes your stuff, or if the filesystem becomes 
corrupted somehow, or...

> But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems 
> using rsync.

Now that's more like it.

> Well, I didn't say anything about shutting the drive down.

An often-encountered backup strategy is to copy everything onto an 
external USB HD and then put that somewhere. I'm not sure that all this 
turning the drive on and off won't just wear it out faster.

PS. I've yet to find a consumer RAID controller which actually works 
properly. They all seem to be hopelessly unreliable. And most of them 
are software RAID anyway; the controller is a normal IDE or SATA 
controller, and the Windows driver does all the actual RAID functions in 
software. It seems that only the £££ server-grade controllers actually 
do the job properly.

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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:42:48 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:

>>> (Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD
>>> verses tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears
>>> it out faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's
>>> true...)
>> 
>> Well, I didn't say anything about shutting the drive down.
> 
> I've seen this phenomenon on older drives. Had a HDD in a system here
> that was left on for years, probably been turned off 20 or 30 times in
> its useful life. The fortieth or forty-fifth time the server was turned
> off, the HDD died - after running reliably (while not being turned off,
> ever) for 5 or 6 years. Ok, old hardware and an old drive, but just goes
> to show. Keep 'em spinning is better than spin-up / spin-down on a daily
> basis.

I don't know, I've got a drive that I take to the office with me about 
every 2 weeks.  It sits at home off usually (unless I need something off 
of it).  It's actually 2 500 GB drives in an enclosure that Maxtor sold 
about 4 years ago now.

I bought two of 'em.

One stayed plugged in 24x7 for 3 years and then it croaked - most likely 
a head crash.  The other has had periodic use for 5 years and shows no 
signs of slowing down.

Of course the first showed no signs of slowing down either - right up to 
the minute that it croaked.

Jim

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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:42:27 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is
>>> that such a sensible idea?
>> 
>> Mirroring (or duplexing) provides a pretty good degree of data
>> protection because the odds of both drives dying at the same time are
>> pretty small.
>> 
>> It's been used for a very long time.
> 
> This is not the same as a backup.
> 
> RAID will protect you from physical failure of a single drive. It will
> not protect you if you accidentally delete a file, or if some virus
> infects your PC and deletes your stuff, or if the filesystem becomes
> corrupted somehow, or...

It depends a lot on what you're trying to protect yourself from.  There's 
nothing, though, that says you can't create a mirrored set, let the 
drives mirror, and then "break the mirror" and take one drive offline.  
I've known people who have done that and used that for disaster recovery 
when upgrading systems.

>> But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems
>> using rsync.
> 
> Now that's more like it.
> 
>> Well, I didn't say anything about shutting the drive down.
> 
> An often-encountered backup strategy is to copy everything onto an
> external USB HD and then put that somewhere. I'm not sure that all this
> turning the drive on and off won't just wear it out faster.

See my anecdotal evidence in reply to Stefan.  Two identical units, one 
powered on and off regularly, one that was left on 24x7.  Guess which one 
failed?  Not the one that has been turned on and off regularly for 5 
years now.  The one that was plugged in and running for 3 years solid.

> PS. I've yet to find a consumer RAID controller which actually works
> properly. They all seem to be hopelessly unreliable. And most of them
> are software RAID anyway; the controller is a normal IDE or SATA
> controller, and the Windows driver does all the actual RAID functions in
> software. It seems that only the £££ server-grade controllers actually
> do the job properly.

Software raid exists for some platforms - and for mirroring for backup 
purposes, that's really all you need.  Heck, you could do it over iSCSI 
with a fast enough connection (I've seen that done as well).

Jim

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