What type of storage

I am quickly out growing my storage.

Do those of you that store files and play them back through a DAC use large storage with back up of equal size or a Raid system. I am at 5+TB on a unit that has 7.2 TB of storage and I have no backup at this time.

What do you recommend?

Thanks
Brad

This is what I did: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS1515+

5 bay NAS. Loaded with 3TB drives. and of course, because RAID is not a failsafe, I back everything up to a Western Digital USB Hard drive.. just in case.

Brad225 said:

and I have no backup at this time.

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Seriously dangerous. There'll be a lot of work for you at the drop of a hat! Bang and it's gone. Get it backed up today.

What do you recommend?

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I have a 6TB RAID system running on the same Debian server I use as the music server, and it's dual purpose for all our digital photos and other priceless sutff (currently using just under 3TB or so), but RAID IS NOT BACKUP.

I don't know how many times I need to say this to make it clear and save you a lot of hard work.

The server runs a basic script to back up to two different hard drives (that's right - two backups), and I store one off-site (essential).

Some of the things that might make you very sorry if you are using RAID as backup:

* A flood
* Thieft
* A power surge
* Fire
* A hard knock when both disks are reading
* A failing power supply
* Software corruption
* Human error (you accidentally delete a directory)
* Viruses and malware
* The list goes on - is it clear enough yet?

You can thank me later when I've saved you re-ripping your entire collection.

TomDac said:

This is what I did: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS1515+

5 bay NAS. Loaded with 3TB drives. and of course, because RAID is not a failsafe, I back everything up to a Western Digital USB Hard drive.. just in case.

Click to expand...

Similar to my solution, but I reused an old dual core Athlon PC. Loaded it up with 3TB WD red drives, and used NAS4free ( http://www.nas4free.org/ ), a free NAS program based on FreeBSD. You put it on a USB stick, and it boots from that. Total cost was just what the drives cost, and some of my time. It works excellently, and currently has a 238 day uptime (about 8 months) without a reboot. It will pretty much max out the gigabit ethernet on file transfers, extremely quick. Very pleased with how the project turned out.

How does RAID 1 for example not include a backup?

sb6 said:

How does RAID 1 for example not include a backup?

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Read my post above.

http://www.martinloganowners.com/fo...ype-of-storage&p=175073&viewfull=1#post175073

One example - how are you going to restore your RAID-1 "backup" after a power surge takes out both drives at once? Or after you have accidentally deleted a big directory. Good luck.

Or after a bit of ransomware rips through your network and encrypts all your music?

Need I go on?

Or the most common reason of all - software corruption dismantles your entire RAID set. How often have you seen a corrupted file? How are two copies of the corrupted file going to help you?

Backup......yep, that's a good backup alright.

RAID-1 assists with availability by ensuring fault tolerance against a failed drive. Nothing more.

Touch wood - I've never had to use my backup. But I'm damn glad it's there - including the off-site copy for unthinkable events like thieft, fire and flood.

Depends what value you place on your data I guess, doesn't it?

amey01 said:

Read my post above.

http://www.martinloganowners.com/fo...ype-of-storage&p=175073&viewfull=1#post175073

One example - how are you going to restore your RAID-1 "backup" after a power surge takes out both drives at once? Or after you have accidentally deleted a big directory. Good luck.

Or after a bit of ransomware rips through your network and encrypts all your music?

Need I go on?

Or the most common reason of all - software corruption dismantles your entire RAID set. How often have you seen a corrupted file? How are two copies of the corrupted file going to help you?

Backup......yep, that's a good backup alright.

RAID-1 assists with availability by ensuring fault tolerance against a failed drive. Nothing more.

Touch wood - I've never had to use my backup. But I'm damn glad it's there - including the off-site copy for unthinkable events like thieft, fire and flood.

Depends what value you place on your data I guess, doesn't it?

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Wrong.

RAID1 is a form of backup. To what level of backup you feel you require/is in your budget is another story.
I would wager >90% of consumers don't invest in off-site data recovery so while your solution offers very good security, almost no one will use it. You're an extreme case. But don't say RAID 1 isn't per se, "backup". It just doesn't meet your more extreme standards.

I would call RAID1 hardware failover protection. It only protects you if one drive fails, so it is good on servers that need to have 99.9% up time, but hardware redundancy is not a backup.

My backup plan:

All file changes to my work drive are synch'd with a backup drive every hour.
My work drive and boot drive are backed up to a pair external drives that are rotated with another pair of external drives in a fireproof safe in my basement.

Most of my critical work is stored locally on my work drive and offsite when I check my files into a version control system.

Physically walking hard drives offsite is not typical, but offsite backups by Internet are becoming much more common place these days.

I also have a completely separate backup computer in the basement that is not plugged into the wall.



Here is a better explanation of the difference between a backup and redundancy.

"Redundancy and backup are the two popular types of data protection. They are not the same, however, and it's important to understand the differences between the two."

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/digital-storage-basics-part-3-backup-vs-redundancy/

I'm with Adam.

I have two backups to USB hard drives, which I update ~monthly and then place in a big old fireproof safe. Any disaster which could take out that safe would mean either that I've got vastly larger worries than the loss of my data or that I was obliterated along with the safe.

TomDac said:

This is what I did: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS1515+

5 bay NAS. Loaded with 3TB drives. and of course, because RAID is not a failsafe, I back everything up to a Western Digital USB Hard drive.. just in case.

Click to expand...

The Synology looks like a like something even I can figure out, it looks like a winner. I will probably use my current external drive for backup. Hopefully Seagate will have another drive that I can daisy chain it to for greater capacity.


Thanks for the all the suggestions. Though I didn't specifically say it at the beginning it was my attention to have backup for what ever storage method I use.

Brad225 said:

Though I didn't specifically say it at the beginning it was my attention to have backup for what ever storage method I use.

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That's your decision, but if you don't want to lose the whole lot in a flash (or a slip of the "DEL" key) then you most definitely must have a backup.

The synology stuff is pretty easy to use.

sb6 said:

Wrong.

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Call me wrong then - perception is reality (for you only though).

But to spuriously tell the forum that RAID is backup is a little irresponsible, when it is categorically not.

In fact - working in IT, I've seen data failures caused by RAID. An example would be a failing disk (which has a very high chance of corrupting the data on it). RAID-1 is perfectly placed to just copy that corrupted data right over to your "good" drive. Great backup plan that is.

It just doesn't meet your more extreme standards.

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I take an external hard disk to my office once a month or so. I really wouldn't call that "extreme".

amey01 said:

That's your decision, but if you don't want to lose the whole lot in a flash (or a slip of the "DEL" key) then you most definitely must have a backup.

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I agree, having everything backed up and kept somewhere else is a must.

TomDac said:

The synology stuff is pretty easy to use.

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The price is much better than I thought it would be.

Lots of IT experience here also (20+ years) and must agree with Adam that using a RAID setup should NOT be viewed as a backup. From a business perspective, RAID was primarily developed to allow your system to continue to run if a single drive failed. Swapping out the bad drive without having to bring the business to a halt is the real value of RAID - and the users are unaware that anything has happened at all to the system. I've experienced this first hand and it worked like a charm.

In real life, I've never experienced multiple drive failure in a RAID array, but it could happen and is more likely to happen with a home NAS array that isn't in a controlled environment like a business would have (cold and clean computer room).

After hundreds of hours spent ripping your music and/or movie collection, do you really want to take a chance that you'll never have a catastrophic failure of your array?? Muphy's law says that if it can happen, it WILL happen... I never want to rip my CD's again.. twice was enough!! So I backup my NAS and keep it offsite, just to be safe.

Tom, with the Synology NAS does the back up happen through the it or the computer? When my 8TB Seagate Drive hits its max can just add a second one? The Seagate only has 1 USB connection.

My NAS has 4 USB ports on the back of it and I control the backups thru the NAS interface.

TomDac said:

After hundreds of hours spent ripping your music and/or movie collection, do you really want to take a chance that you'll never have a catastrophic failure of your array?? Muphy's law says that if it can happen, it WILL happen... I never want to rip my CD's again.. twice was enough!! So I backup my NAS and keep it offsite, just to be safe.

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OMG No...........

Currently my Music is on two computers, but I am getting tempted to add a full backup to my fireproof safe collection

RCHeliGuy said:

OMG No...........

Currently my Music is on two computers, but I am getting tempted to add a full backup to my fireproof safe collection

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Now you're talkin'!