Ugly Hedgehog - Photography Forum
Home Active Topics Newest Pictures Search Login Register ☰
Main Photography Discussion
Raid Storage
Page <<first <prev 6 of 6
Feb 26, 2020 21:20:06   #
smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY
 
Gene51 wrote:
The purpose of RAID is NOT backup. The primary goal of RAID is to provide Fault Tolerance and a)redundancy (mirroring), and b)increased performance (striping a single logical drive volume across multiple physical drives), by designating one or more parity drives to striped components. The whole point is to minimize downtime and keep data accessible. This is not a backup strategy, but a part of one.

In a quality external RAID box, not only are there redundant drives, but the box will also have redundant power supplies, I/O ports, etc to insure against data loss. When multiple I/0 ethernet ports are provided, the custom is to do port aggregation - where multiple ports are ganged together to provide a wider data path and faster I/O. All of these things, are hot swappable ie you don't have to shut down the appliance to replace failed components. Mirroring is an extremely inefficient use of multiple drives - but it is pretty safe. I use RAID 1+0 which is mirroring AND striping, for faster read-writes.

The scalability of RAID makes it ideal when you need to add capacity. You don't even have to shut down the system or copy things from one drive to another to increase capacity in a properly implemented array.
The purpose of RAID is NOT backup. The primary goa... (show quote)



Reply
Feb 26, 2020 21:29:59   #
chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand
 
smussler wrote:

I myself, like Cloud storage - like Microsoft's OneDrive. $1.99 a month for 50gb.


I myself hate the idea of cloud storage. Based on your figures OneDrive would cost me $378 a MONTH.

Reply
Feb 26, 2020 21:32:35   #
smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY
 
nadelewitz wrote:
Please read what I said.

I am not basing what I said on just MY experience.

I didn't say it is a UNIVERSAL truth. I said that I have seen people saying that they COULD read RAID drives outside the RAID array.

If you do a modicum of research on the Web, you will see MANY references to the fact that IN GENERAL, RAID drives SHOULD NOT be thought of as readable away from the controller that created them, with possibly some exceptions. This is because RAID controllers, IN GENERAL, create drives with proprietary formats that are not readable other than by the controller that created them.

You do not have to take MY word for it. And you don't have to "tell" me what NTFS is, thank you. And anyone who thinks their RAID drives are supposed to be and will be readable separately from the RAID array should TEST that premise themselves before assuming their individual RAID drives are usable backups.
Please read what I said. br br I am not basing wh... (show quote)


Also, if you should remove all the drives, and put them back in a mixed up order, you're screwed. I experienced a RAID controller failure. Nightmare. Backup to the rescue, after the controller was replaced.

Reply
 
 
Feb 26, 2020 22:12:05   #
cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA
 
SuperflyTNT wrote:
And all of those are keepers?


Absolutely not, but who has the extra time needed to go through files. Storage is cheap and time is valuable, too valuable to waste on non productive tasks. Best of luck.

Reply
Feb 26, 2020 22:54:46   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
chrissybabe wrote:
I myself hate the idea of cloud storage. Based on your figures OneDrive would cost me $378 a MONTH.


Amazon S3 infrequent access is $10/TB/month and Glacier is $4/TB/month. I think it is more robust (more geographical copies) than Backblaze, but I believe Backblaze has a fixed price for fairly unlimited data (I don’t use them, but many members do)

Reply
Feb 26, 2020 23:22:49   #
chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand
 
TriX wrote:
Amazon S3 infrequent access is $10/TB/month and Glacier is $4/TB/month. I think it is more robust (more geographical copies) than Backblaze, but I believe Backblaze has a fixed price for fairly unlimited data (I don’t use them, but many members do)

My reply that you quoted was actually wrong. It should have been $456/mth - I recalculated. Using Amazon S3 it would be $120/mth and Glacier $48/mth. I prefer to do my own. I was party to a remote storage facility here in NZ that was written off during the earthquake. I think they had another facility in another city but when you get 20,000 people all wanting to restore 'immediately' via an almost nonexistent network onto nonexistent computers (until the supply chain could ramp up). I prefer to roll my own. It was a wake-up call to a lot of people especially a lot of accountants who lost access to their data AND their computers for weeks. I managed to 'free-up' my own accountants PCs (he had his data but nothing to run it on) and he operated from home for the next year because most buildings were damaged also.
What caused a lot of this is not being allowed back into the 10th floor (eg) of a large building because it had been declared unsafe.
Do not underestimate the chaos caused by a very major disaster and how it will affect you.

Reply
Feb 27, 2020 02:40:11   #
11bravo
 
cjc2 wrote:
Absolutely not, but who has the extra time needed to go through files. Storage is cheap and time is valuable, too valuable to waste on non productive tasks. Best of luck.



Likewise, I easily have 100+ TB's of storage, some "on-line" (desktop has 12 HDD's), but most "archived" off-line in 5 bay storage boxes, plus 1 20-bay box. My life is too short to prune HDD'S. Easier to just buy another.

I use Wincatalog (www.wincatalog.com) to keep track of all my files, including physical location of disks. Great program, well engineered, well supported. One license good for all your computers. Reasonably priced and up to you if you want to purchase an update (updates discounted).

I do miss my Windows Home Server v1. Easy to create a pool of dissimilar HDD's. And within the pool, you could select directories to be mirrored on a different physical drive. WHS took care of all the details of physical drive allocation. The really nice thing was that every drive was readable "standalone", just with an additional top-level directory. Would also backup all your computers on your network. When retired, mine had 45 TB's in 23 HDD'S. Shame Microsoft discontinued the line.

Reply
 
 
Feb 27, 2020 08:36:40   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
nadelewitz wrote:
Wrong. A drive out of a RAID 1 mirror array WILL ALSO BE UNREADABLE, as would a drive from any other RAID array type created by the same controller.


Yep, was bitten by that once when a RAID controller crapped out in a server. New controller could not see the drive array till it was re-initialized and reformatted. Luckily tape backups restored all the data. Was using RAID 5 at the time.

Reply
Mar 14, 2020 12:39:12   #
StevenBrownPhoto Loc: Excelsior, MN
 
dsmeltz wrote:
I would rather not have to pay $100 bucks or more a year for something I can do myself and control locally.

$100 per year is cheap. The cost of setting up a storage/backup solution can easily top $1,000. Ten years later the tech you own is obsolete and you are replacing it at some cost-maybe more, maybe less. If a drive fails along the way? No thanks, not for me.

Reply
Page <<first <prev 6 of 6
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.
Main Photography Discussion
Home | Latest Digest | Back to Top | All Sections
Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms of use | DMCA
UglyHedgehog.com - Forum
Copyright 2011-2024 Ugly Hedgehog, Inc.