November 16, 2022 at 4:23 pm
Disaster Recovery - Backup (Your Backup (Your Backup))
We all put lots of effort into caring for data for employers but do we think about our own? My recent experience has made me rethink some issues. We typically focus on safety of DATA and probably ovefrlook the safety of DEVICES.
I suffer somewhat from what must be OCD mainly focused on a few main areas, those of ancestry, historic family photos, music, and my financial records. I have digitized ancestral data beginning in the 1400's in eastern Europe, including over 1500 pages of published records. My digital music collection contains over 70,000 tracks. I am digitizing single-copy family photos, 35mm slides, and digital photos that are up to 100 years old and stored away in boxes. The plan is to be able to share thses with other family members. My financial records begin in 1944 with an asset my father started for me, and include investment records from 1974 onward. There are directories of digitized bank statements, investment account statements and trade confirmations, credit card statements, and invoices.
I have spent thousands and thousands of hours on these projects. Our home office is finally down to four computer systems dedicated to these. Understanding that there is risk in any data storage, I maintain, besides these seperate systems, two Network Attached Storage devices with a total of eight drives and 30tb of space. These are for system backups and multiple copies of many thousands of files. Finally in the winter of 2021 I retired over 200 3.5" floppy disks dating from Apple II Plus days, my first home computer.
Rather than implementing RAID technology I choose to maintain multiple copies on JBOD devices formatted in NTFS with versions of appropriate historical ages on seperate drives.
In March of 2022 I implemented the latest NAS that contains 22tb of online storage on four 3.5" SATA disks. Two weeks ago I came into the office and noticed a red light on the 7-month-old NAS with a display saying 'Power Supply Failure'. I can run the manufacturer's management software via the IP address, but the drives will not come on the network. On examining the device log, I find that this is the third such failure.
"No fear", I thought, since I would be able to remove the JBOD drives one by one and put them in a docking station to access my data.
WRONG!
On inserting the first SATA 3.5" disk in the docking, Windows 10 reports the disk, supposedly NTFS, is an unknown type and must be formatted before use. The same happens with all three other drives. 22tb of data gone, system backups, data backups, digital document archives.
PANIC!
On begining research into the problem, I soon find that the decades old well known and respected device manufacturer, when creating their management software, decided to override the standard NTFS format with their own proprietary software which actually modifies the Windows standard JBOD disks while maintaining the appearance of normal Windows directories. And further, it seems that when you insert a disk into the device, it insists on FIRST reformatting the drive.
Visiting the device manufacturer website, I find that my seven-month old NAS system is actually discontinued and no longer supported. Conversations with their tech support is nearly impossible because the techs, supposedly in California, can barely speak English and will not slow down to be understandable. They did manage to conclude to their satisfaction that the failure, while stating it was a 'Power Supply Failure', was actually 'internal' to the device.
On beginning the warranty claim service, the first thing required is documentation of the purchase and warranty registration. Unfortunately, these are stored on the failed device. I was able to obtain the purchase document from the third-party vendor website, and prove their charge to my credit card statement from another website.
Then the manufacturer wants to provide a 'reconditioned' version of unknown age, service hours, and usage. And since it requires disk formatting anyway, I can't just insert my drives and go. When I insisted on a new device, after fifteen days they managed to find a 'new' one somewhere in Europe and will get it for me, but will first have to charge it to my credit card.
When the 'new' device arrives, it is in a rather worn outer carton, with original sealing tape that has been cut and then re-covered with the same. Various original labels have been covered with plain-white permanent-adhesive blank labels. Inside is the 'new' device, simply surrounded with styrofoam without the original OEM printed and bar-coded box. And there is no original documentation. On opening the device, all of the drive bays have marks of repeated insertion and removal of drives.
REDEMPTION!
On a whim, before even powering on the replacement, I plugged the old device directly into an outlet, bypassing the surge protector which also runs my modem-router, the two NAS devices, and two printers.
HOLY COW!
The NAS devices spins up all four drives and comes on the network as always. Now several days later, it is going strong.
So much for technical support and warranties.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
November 17, 2022 at 5:10 pm
Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.
This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.
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