RAID the answer?

[drezha]

This weekend I had a major problem... I managed to delete my backup of my documents.

Usually no trouble but I'd just formatted the PC. Thus I lost everything. Long story short, I cant get the docs back (so this years uni work gone and all 20Gb of my music) as it was an Ext3 formatted disk and I made a boo boo about backing up to DVD (last time was about month and half before this accident)

Anyhow, my webserver does have some room for expansion. Basically I was thinking of backing up my docs to it (benefit I can also access it from uni via my FTP server)

BUT

to keep it low power, I was gonna add either Compact flash (via IDE/CF adapters) or USB keys (both in around 4Gb flavours as it's only docs not music I'll backup)
Now I know flash memory is prone to being restricted in the number of writes so I was looking at possibly backing up to a RAID array.

Now is RAID a good option? From looks, I'd be after RAID 1. And with RAID can I only select 2 drives to be a copy of each other? I don't want the main CF card (and the current hda) to be part of the RAID array.


Basically I need to sit down and completely rethink my backup strategy. It was to backup to my portable HD anything that is in my docs and delete from the backup anything that wasn't (hence how I deleted it all...I ran the wrong script) and once a week backup to DVD.
Unfortunatly, the DVD thing feel behind so I need to get back in the habit of doing that but can anyone suggest something?

I was thinking of daily backups to the webserver where it's RAID'd and nothing is deleted at all. Then backup what ever's on my Docs to my portable HD (so they're syncd) and then a DVD to top it off each week. Is that good enough?

[vaughan]

Critical stuff I backup to multiple HDDs on different computers as well as to an offline backup like CD, DVD or USB flash drive. I just transfer over the network to the other HDDs, one day I'll write an Xcopy batch file, like I did back in DOS 5 days

[Beerknurd]

I saw in a newspaper add that there are 16GB thumb drives for a litte over $100 USD. I may pick one up, for important data backup...

[NeoGen]

I went RAID for some time already, as I was beggining to worry about data disaster... ironically it was only after I set up a RAID 1 system with a couple of 160Gb hard drives that the disaster happened. The RAID controller went berzerk and the hard drives got corrupted, trashing the data.

Guess I was unlucky there, because after that I set up a RAID 1 system again with a different controller card and have it now working flawlessly.

If I was you I would try to find the simplest solution... documents and stuff on a machine that could be accessed remotely in some way (ftp?) (and that machine should be the one with RAID), and a second copy on a portable hard drive for you to take with you everywhere, just in case you need the docs and you happen to be on a place with no net access. Backup to DVD once a month should be enough, as the odds of data loss on both the online storage (RAID powered) and your portable hard drive at the same time would be very very slim.

[drezha]

Yeah I was gonna try and KISS (Keep it simple stupid) and not RAID the disks, just mount them both at boot time and use scripts and cron to keep the drives the same (say a script that compares the two drives every hour and copies if needed) as I wont be using it loads to warrant RAID I feel.

Think if I was to buy another IDE/CF adapter and use a CF card and a USB stick, that would cover me as one would be hot swappable and the other not.

Then regular backups to DVD and portable HD should suffice I think.

Was just thinking RAID as it would possibly tell me when a hard drives likely to fail.

[PoorBoy]

Critical stuff I backup to multiple HDDs on different computers as well as to an offline backup like CD, DVD or USB flash drive. I just transfer over the network to the other HDDs, one day I'll write an Xcopy batch file, like I did back in DOS 5 days

Same here Vaughan, I've done that for years after losing some important stuff some years ago due to a hard drive failure. It taught me a lessen and ever since I just copy anything thats important to me to multiple PC's and hard drives.

I tried Raid once and simply found it to be to much of a hassle to deal with in the BIOS and when reinstalling an OS. I even took it out of 1 PC that had it & I know a lot of other people that have done the same thing.

I think if I only had 1 PC I would still do the same thing, just have 2 or 3 hard drives in it and copy the data between them. You can always re-install the OS on the main drive if something happens to it & even if you couldn't get the PC to run again you could pull the other drives out and put them in another PC to get to your data if need be ...

[Brucifer]

Your backup solution is impacted by the amount of money you care to spend. I take a nice and simple way for the bulk of my stuff, and that is just to run a chrontab tar job on the stuff I want saved, and then compress that and save it on multiple drives for ready access. For the critical stuff I burn off a hard copy to CD/DVD for offsite storage. For stuff that is worked on every day by multiple people that would be expensive or impossible to reproduce I use a raid setup, and also a backup utility running snapshots throughout the day. The philosophy being that I can always replace a drive in the raid, but in case the raid system craps out then there's always the snapshots. Now if it's really critical stuff then you'd better be running redundant raid systems with multiple controllers. Or else build a spare data-center in another state............................

[Lagu]

I use to backup my personal files such word and Excel to a 1,44 MB diskette and also to a USB-memory togheter with photon, Boinc, PDF-files and all files as I have downloaded.

Use a 1,44 MB diskette and it cant be so bad because I newer use it too much. A new and when I have use 10 diskettes I begin on nr 1 again. If number 5 fails backup I have another to use. It is very cheap use diskettes. I have a lot of them and on all my computers I have a diskette unit. If I will back up a 34 bytes file it is simple use a diskette and move it to another computer.

I have never tried burn a CD and use it for backup. Some of us kneow the feelings when ve have been avare how our files have been removed of mistake or when the disk have crached.