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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:32:33 +0100, clipka wrote:
> Jim Henderson schrieb:
>
>> 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.
>
> Yes. About the odds of your computer dying from a nearby lightning
> strike, drowning in water, or being consumed in a fire.
I've had a computer struck by lightning. Thing is, anything plugged in
is likely to be affected by a lightning strike.
> Which /may/ be exactly one of the types of incidents one may want to
> protect against...
In which case you do the backup, break the mirror, and shut down the
extra drive, disconnecting it from the power and the system.
>> But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems
>> using rsync.
>
> Sounds more like it.
It's another option.
Jim
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:11:32 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:42:27 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Hmm... well, no contest there. I guess there can be other factors
> involved besides on / off frequency then? My personal experience with
> server-grade hardware I've worked with differs though. It does seem (at
> least in my personal experience) that turning HDD's on and off less
> makes them last longer. But as you say, anecdotal. :)
Yeah, that's the problem with anecdotal evidence, of course. Server
grade hardware that I've worked with has varied - I had a Compaq
Prosignia 4/66 with a RAID controller in it, and it had heat problems - I
occasionally would lose two drives in the array. The system was used in
my home, so I didn't have the kind of cooling you'd have in a computer
room.
>>> 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).
>
> I've written a simple cronjob which uses bash scripting and some
> command-line PHP to automatically tar/7zip our primary server's vital
> sites and databases once every 24 hours, and then FTPs that over to our
> over server in a different datacenter automatically. Works fine too. The
> data centers are about 10km away from each other.
I operate a website for our local community council, and while the system
is hosted by a local ISP, I take a nightly backup as well - using sshfs
for the files and a cron job to dump the database.
> That way we can lose only one day's worth of changes, which (cause we're
> small!) usually isn't much. But I can see the point of some kind of
> "live" solution if you do a TB a day or whatever.
Yep.
Jim
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:14 +0100, clipka wrote:
> Jim Henderson schrieb:
>
>> 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.
>
> I wouldn't be too much surprised if HDD manufacturers would know ways
> how to optimize drives for one usage pattern or the other, so that maybe
> indeed powering up and down might kill a server HDD quickly, while 24x7
> usage might shorten the life of an office computer / consumer HDD.
That seems to be reaching to me.
Jim
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:42:03 +0000, Stephen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:42:48 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
>>
>>
>> Of course the first showed no signs of slowing down either - right up
>> to the minute that it croaked.
>>
>> Jim
>
> The way of the world*
>
>
> * By William Congreve - premiered 1700
:-)
Jim
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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
> Read a while ago that the RAF had to pay compensation to almost a hundred
> car owners - one of their air-defense "steerable-array" radars went haywire
> and scanned over a road - they burned out almost every vehicle's ignition
> and fuel injection microprocessors with the radar beam!
Ouch!
That reminds me of the tale told by an old acquaintance of mine, who had
served on some air-defense radar installation, of how they'd keep an
older fellow soldier at bay when he got all enraged and charging for the
hilltop bunker they were sitting in.
You know, the old guy had a pacemaker... so pace he did make when he saw
those radar antennae slowly closing in on his direction...
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:14:40 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> See my other reply too... granted, but you refer to an "enclosure" - is
> that a mobile drive? E. g. one which you pull out of its enclosure at
> work, then you put it in an enclosure at home if you need something off
> it?
No, it's an external USB storage device with 2 (I presume) IDE hard
drives in it.
> *brrr* - I shiver at the thought of a mobile HDD as a backup device...
>
> How do you feel about the statement that the fact that if a drive is
> mobile, inherently it will never last as long as a "traditional"
> statically mounted drive that just sites in a cradle internally in a
> climate controlled server rack / box?
Given that this mobile drive lasted longer than a stationary drive that
was the same make/model, my anecdotal evidence wouldn't support that
assertion.
That said, I do not abuse the drive that I move from one place to another
- and the drive isn't intended as a "backup" per se - it's intended more
to be a local copy of data I may need when working from home (which is
90% of the time). The data itself is backed up by our IT staff.
Jim
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>> Personally, I'd probably use SSD for my system partition (for the
>> faster booting) and use cheap spinning disk for my POV-Ray renders. ;-)
>
> How much storage capacity do you need for a Linux system partition?
>
> They fit /entire/ Linux installations on a single CD, so...
Ah yes, but under Windoze all programs insist on being installed on C: ;-)
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On 11/08/09 20:09, Tim Cook wrote:
> 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.
I had an enclosure die on me. As have many of my friends.** No more
enclosures for me.
** Lose enclosures. My friends didn't die...
--
Engineers: often wrong, seldom in doubt.
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On 11/09/09 03:24, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 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.
Sounds insanely expensive to me. Even for a USB flash drive...
--
Engineers: often wrong, seldom in doubt.
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:49:57 -0600, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 11/09/09 03:24, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Sounds insanely expensive to me. Even for a USB flash drive...
Yeah, now if I had written TB instead of GB (which is what I meant to
write), that changes the dynamic a little bit. ;-)
Jim
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