August 24, 2009 at 9:58 am
I'm seeing some trends here:
1) Failure to do "restore testing". When you have RAID, preferably run consistency checks (if supported), but _always_ test with a "failed" (removed) drive.
2) A generalized lack of integrity testing.
Both of these can be accomplished by the following (tedious) procedure:
0) Verify your backups can restore _first_; on a RAID, this procedure is designed to show you problems in your RAID consistency if they exist.
1) Run Jacksum (with the -m option) or some other subdirectory searching message digest generator/checker on all your data. Store the result file somewhere else.
2) "Fail" a drive (or restore your backup media to another previously blank device, or mount your directly readable backup media)
3) Check all those message digests with Jacksum (-l -c) or the other equivalent.
4) Ideal for RAID: put a blank drive in and let the RAID rebuild, then repeat step 3).
For those backing up to CD or DVD, there are a few pieces of software (DVDisaster, ICE ECC, etc.) that allow the use of some of the DVD's capacity to allow for error detection and recovery due to damage or degradation of the media.
August 24, 2009 at 10:02 am
Or screw up when running the RAID recovery utilities and accidently blow away your data ... it happens(ed) ...
August 24, 2009 at 10:21 am
Looking for an external hard drive this weekend I ran across a home product line called IOSafe. For about $215-$400 for 0.5-1.5 TB they offer a fire proof, water proof external USB device that includes disaster recovery service for 1-5 years. They claim the product is built for fires and floods. Rating is 1/2 hour at 1550 degrees and 3 days immersed in 10 feet of water. It even comes with a bolt hole so you can fasten it to the floor/desk to prevent theft (or kids knocking it over).
Not sure if I need that much protection but that seems like a solid product for ensuring your home data is protected against disasters much like online backups only you get to maintain full control of your backup data.
August 24, 2009 at 10:28 am
Combo solution is where I'm headed ... Online-offsite covers most of your important docs, Home Server backs up the entire system if a rebuild is required. $35/yr for the online. $200 one time for the Home Server. Automated daily backup is necessary for me - anything else is prone to "darn, didn't back it up last week/month"
August 24, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Steve makes a really good point about these internet services potentially going out of business and taking your data with them; it's one of the reasons I have yet to sign up with one. I really like the memopal service, inexpensive and very easy to use, but I'm not at all sure about their sustainability (perhaps a little too cheap).
Trialing memopal and others, I've realized that what I would really like is to use one of these services as the primary storage for most of my docs, accessing via WebDAV, etc, not even keeping a local copy -- the vast majority of this stuff is rarely accessed. But doing this requires that I seriously trust these businesses to stick around....
-f
August 24, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Sir Slicendice (8/24/2009)
Steve makes a really good point about these internet services potentially going out of business and taking your data with them; it's one of the reasons I have yet to sign up with one. I really like the memopal service, inexpensive and very easy to use, but I'm not at all sure about their sustainability (perhaps a little too cheap).Trialing memopal and others, I've realized that what I would really like is to use one of these services as the primary storage for most of my docs, accessing via WebDAV, etc, not even keeping a local copy -- the vast majority of this stuff is rarely accessed. But doing this requires that I seriously trust these businesses to stick around....
-f
Unless i missed it in this thread earlier the topic of security with these off site 3rd party storage providers has not been brought up. Maybe if its your pictures (and there aren't any embarrassing ones) it is not a big deal. But anything from college papers, bank info to any secrets would be open to the admin. I wouldn't care what safeguards they say they have in place, those of us that are administrators know we have the keys to the shop and certainly they have guys with keys too. I would be fearful of putting anything on there that i did not want anyone else to see or steal.
Jimmy
"I'm still learning the things i thought i knew!"August 24, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I use an external usb storage drive to backup all data from my home PC and Laptop. So far this strategy has been working great for me. But sometime in the near future I would consider getting another external Hard drive, backup all data from home PC/Laptop to that new drive and store it in my office locker. 🙂
August 24, 2009 at 2:25 pm
OK, I'm a couple of days behind, but I find all good points from the posters, and maybe I can contribute something useful now.
What seems to work for me that I haven't read here much is a good disk imaging package. For example, I use Norton Ghost to do a full backup monthly and nightly incrementals of each computer, either to a second internal drive in each machine or to my NAS. This really works well because it is an automatic backup that I never have to think about. I've had to restore an image when a hard drive crashed, and I was able to get a system up and going with a new drive in a couple of hours, exactly the way it was the day before when I had last used it. That is a time saver. Also very good for laptops (just don't do it over wireless). Had to restore one of these also, with no problems.
More along the lines you described, I though I would make the NAS (Buffalo unit with RAID 1, two drives, but I'm not relying on the RAID too much) my master data repository (docs, photos, etc.), and then use an online storage service to make the off-site backup of this. Glad to hear that many users have good luck with Mozy and Carbonite, as I was planning to try one of these. Just not there yet. For now, an occasional copy of these files to a portable USB drive which gets locked up at the office seems to do ok. I also try to keep all the important stuff like photos on another hard drive somewhere in house. Too paranoid, I suppose.
RAID can be more complicated to recover, although I have used products from Runtime to do this successfully. I recommend their recovery products, for RAID and regular NTFS drives, as they are easy to use and relatively inexpensive.
Hope this helps.
Steve Brokaw
August 24, 2009 at 2:31 pm
i have always been a fan of Acronis.
August 24, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I am a little new to this community (Hello from England) and was wondering whether we would be interested in a separate thread on the online backup / online drive suppliers.
I would be really interested.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
August 24, 2009 at 4:33 pm
My observations of this thread seem to be that the idea of disaster recovery (backup onsite, online, offiste) is highly supported and in many cases, multiple strategies exist to protect against things like hardware failure and vendor failure as well as natural disasters. The original question about RAID ties more to highly available systems and seems to have mixed responses in the home. My guess would be that those users that have HA systems are using them for career purposes, not just for home use.
My $0.02.
August 25, 2009 at 9:12 am
Sir Slicendice (8/21/2009)
I've been running a WHS server for several years now (did the beta then bought the product at RTM); it's on an older Dell desktop that I added 16 1TB drives to via 2 controllers each with 2 eSATA ports (using Addonics port multipliers to connect the drives).The WHS backs up the various PC's in my house (4-8 depending), and acts as a file server, print server, and media server to a slew of devices. It's really excellent, and I have had very few issues with it at all - it just runs and does it's thing.
The strategy WHS uses to provide reliable storage is very interesting, sort of an app-level (folder/file-level) RAID-1 approach. NTFS reparse points are key to the strategy and it is both simple to manage and very effective. A key benefit versus RAID is that with all the drives managed as a large storage pool, the system can be fully immune to multiple drive failures (and if not fully immune, you will only lose a relatively small amount of data on successive drive failures).
Performance of WHS has been excellent as well; my system (with two gig-E network ports) can serve lots of clients at once, including sourcing multiple mpeg-4 video streams. The storage approach in WHS makes the most of slow disks/controllers, and uses idle time to do the leveling/replication.
But regardless how effective WHS is, it's no substitute for an off-premises backup solution! I've been doing the take-a-disk-to-work thing (Vantec EZ-Swap cartridges rock), but that's getting old so I'm looking for a net backup solution for WHS itself.
In short, it's been a great system for me....
great summary. I'm in similar boat, beta'd the product, got it when it went retail. Im my case I scratch built a system for it designed to be low power (using AMD Turon chip) in a very quiet case.
Very important to note as pointed out above that WHS does not use formal RAID of any sort.. the redundancy is far more dynamic, an designed very much around an approach that allows you to 'just throw a few spare drives at it, without having to have them matched or anything. It's very easy to tell the system you want to remove an older smaller drive, either before or after adding a newer larger one.
It also works very well. When replacing a drive in my wife's laptop we just did a backup (which went fast since most of the files were already backed up) powered it down, slapped in the new drive, booted off the restore CD, and in about a half hour the system was fully restored to it's prior state, but on the new larger drive. Most painless upgrade of that sort I've ever done..
WHS is great stuff. The only thing that amazes me is that MS didn't provide their own off-site SAS solution to complement it. Given WHS's approach to backups you would think they could have scaled that up to the next level to allow very effecient 'over the network' backup of the WHS itself to a remote service. It seems to me that MS missed a very golden opportunity here.
SO yeah two thumbs up for WHS as a simple no fuss solution to backing up all your systems at home. But you will need an offsite backup of the WHS itself in the envent of something like fire, flood, lightning, tornado etc that might take out the entire homeserver box.
August 25, 2009 at 9:34 am
When you do hardware raid it's just that thou. If the raid card fails, it is not good. I've seen it happen. Also raid cards are only so fast. That's why ZFS is so much more nice to use.
August 27, 2009 at 6:08 am
Well, I have WHS up and running over the weekend. Works well, although I think I'm going to move it to another machine.
The machine I have is loud and I'm sure it's gobbling up alot of power with all the fans and such. thinking I'm going to go shopping for a quiet green machine....
August 27, 2009 at 6:27 am
I guess I don't quite get it - is WHS software, hardware, or both? I thought I saw a cost of $200 for WHS. What does the last poster mean by "move it to a new server"? That makes me think it's software only, but I had the impression that when you buy WHS you get a box with two 1TB drives or something in it???
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