raid and hard drive configuration

[songokussm]

I?m curious, as to how the experts here would handle my current raid setup.
my server configuration-
-high point 2320
-4x300gb in raid 5 (wdc RE)
-4x300gb in raid 5 (wdc RE)

to sum it up, 8 hard drives. all 300gb, all Western digital's Raid edition, in two raid 5 arrays. All the information is very important. Mostly family videos taken from vhs and remastered on my computer. AS in I don?t have a second copy.

should I leave it or change it? Am i just being to paranoid with having two raid 5 arrays?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: songokussm
I?m curious, as to how the experts here would handle my current raid setup.
my server configuration-
-high point 2320
-4x300gb in raid 5 (wdc RE)
-4x300gb in raid 5 (wdc RE)

to sum it up, 8 hard drives. all 300gb, all Western digital's Raid edition, in two raid 5 arrays. All the information is very important. Mostly family videos taken from vhs and remastered on my computer. AS in I don?t have a second copy.

should I leave it or change it? Am i just being to paranoid with having two raid 5 arrays?

No such thing as being paranoid when you have data that you value. I have experienced a RAID 5 array go down, so I would advise putting all 8 drives in a RAID 6 array, if the controller is capable. That will give you 1.8TB to work with, and provides two levels of redundancy--two drives can fail simulatenously, and you are still operational.

EDIT: How much space is required by the data at this point in time? With a RAID 6 array, you could easily implement 5 or 6 drives now, and then add more to the array later (although I would hate to see the array initialization time on that... hehe)

 

[Matthias99]

If you're really paranoid, you would make some offsite backups every now and then. It's too easy for your whole system to be taken down by something like a lightning hit frying the PSU, or some sort of disaster (fire, flood, etc.) totaling your home.

Or your motherboard/controller card going bad and writing corrupt data all over the disk array (happened to me... chipset fan failure, the northbridge on an old MB cooked itself and started randomly corrupting stuff! Not fun.)

 

[songokussm]

raid 6 = been on my wish list. droping 700 on a raid 6 controller is really steap. promise has an 8 port version, but only 8 ports

offsite backups are not an option. were talking GBs of data. For example the folder with my eldest daughters soccer games is pushing 68GB. my net isnt nearly fast enough.

my system is protected by cyber power's 1500va ups. I love this little guy. Also my OCZ 700w psu has some technogily in it where it will fry itself before any power hits my system.

array usage is as follows-
array one - 832 used 61.1 free 893 total
array two - 880 used 12.6 free 893 total

 

[RebateMonger]

As Maththias99 noted, there's lots of ways to lose all your data on a RAID 1, 5, or 6 array. I'd never trust anything REALLY important to any RAID array alone.

If the data is important, make ongoing backups on an external hard drive(s). Keep the backups drive(s) offsite. Meaning somebody else's house, or at work. Mathias99 doubtless meant that and not using an Internet backup. A Terabyte of Internet backup is pretty pricey most anywhere.

There's no need to redo your RAID array. Concentrate on backing it up.

 

[songokussm]

snds good. thanks.

I priced some dvd+r(s). $80 for 400. thats 400 x 4gb = alot of storage The only negitive is that dvds can break easily.

 

[n0cmonkey]

backup backup backup

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: songokussm
snds good. thanks.

I priced some dvd+r(s). $80 for 400. thats 400 x 4gb = alot of storage The only negitive is that dvds can break easily.

Get some DVDs and jewel cases and stick them in a cupboard somewhere safe .

 

[Seekermeister]

If you really want to protect the DVD backups, put them in a safety deposit box. They are not going to break, unless they are abused. If you don't touch them, except in a computer disaster, they should be fine.

EDIT: At the price that you mentioned, I would expect that those DVDs are of a low quality. If your data is worth protecting, then it is worth using a quality media, such as Taiyo Yuden. The last time that I looked, they cost about 39 cents apiece for 16x disks. Check here:

supermediastore

finish the link with a .com suffix. For some reason, it will not accept a link.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If you're really paranoid, you would make some offsite backups every now and then.

bingo. unfortunately, remote storage is spensive

I would say skip DVDs and just use external HDD's. Or if you're REALLY paranoid, do both.

 

[Seekermeister]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If you're really paranoid, you would make some offsite backups every now and then.

bingo. unfortunately, remote storage is spensive

I would say skip DVDs and just use external HDD's. Or if you're REALLY paranoid, do both.

The last time that I knew, it cost me $25 a year for a safety deposit box. Considering the cost of buying an external harddrive and it's reliability, a safety deposit box is cheap. No matter how many harddrives that you have, they won't provide protection in a disaster, such as a fire, flood, tornado, etc.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If you're really paranoid, you would make some offsite backups every now and then.

bingo. unfortunately, remote storage is spensive

I would say skip DVDs and just use external HDD's. Or if you're REALLY paranoid, do both.

As other people pointed out, I meant more along the lines of "DVDs/DLT tapes/external HDs in a safe deposit box", not "contract out with Iron Mountain to fully back up your data every week."

Yes, burning 2TB of data onto DVDs takes a while (but you're talking ~50 DVDs... definitely possible). External hard drives are more convenient for really big datasets, though I'm not sure I would trust them for very long-term archival. DLT tape drives are great for archival, but the drives themselves are fairly pricey. With your amount of data, Internet-based backup is probably not an option on a consumer broadband connection.

If this data is truly irreplaceable, a RAID array is not enough of a guarantee. I know the tendency is to think "it won't happen to me"... but it will happen to someone, and that someone might be you. RAID does not replace backups.

 

[songokussm]

exactly my thoughts.

hard-drives have movable parts that can break
dvd's in a safe place take what 1000 years to go bad....and they are cheap.
the brand of the media was ridata or ritech which i think is the same company. is Taiyo Yuden that much better?

 

[Seekermeister]

The best media is made in Japan. The only brand that I know is made exclusively in Japan is Taiyo Yuden. In fact, the vender that I link above, guarantees that. Some brands come from different sources and it may not be apparent, until you open the package and use a media identifier.

 

[Matthias99]

dvd's in a safe place take what 1000 years to go bad....and they are cheap.

Well... I wouldn't trust them for *that* long. I mean, media manufacturers claimed CD-Rs were good for 50+ years... and then it turns out that the organic dyes used in some early CD-Rs broke down and started becoming unreadable after less than 10. Whoops! DVD-R/RW discs haven't been in widespread use long enough to know how well they will *really* hold up.

I think DVD-based backups are good for at least 5-10 years, and there's a good chance they will go significantly longer. But I wouldn't bet my life on them lasting 50+ years. If you want archival backups that will be good for a *long* time, use magnetic DLT tape. Or else reburn your data onto new media every 5-10 years (which also would give you a chance to condense onto newer, higher-density media).

 

[Seekermeister]

Even if the DVDs only lasted 10 years, that is far longer than most harddrives would last. However, if the DVDs were stored in the darkness and constant temperature of a safety deposit box, I'm certain that they would last a lot longer. Exactly what breaks down the dyes in CDs? Temperature, light or what?

 

[Seekermeister]

I found an article regarding this, which is fairly interesting. Apparently RW disks are not as stable as R disk. So for archival purposes, a R disk should last from 25-100 years, if kept in a controlled environment:

http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub121/sec4.html

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
Exactly what breaks down the dyes in CDs? Temperature, light or what?

I'm not sure what is was exactly. I thought it was just that the chemicals they used were not stable over time (or, rather, not as stable as the manufacturers thought they were). Wikipedia's CD-R article suggests several possible problems:

At present, stated CD-R lifetimes are only estimates based on accelerated aging tests as the technology has not been in existence long enough to verify the upper range. With proper care it is thought that CD-Rs should be readable one thousand times or more and have a shelf life of several hundred years. Unfortunately, some common practices can reduce shelf life to only one or two years. Therefore, it is important to handle and store CD-Rs properly if it is necessary to read them more than a year or so later.

Burned CD-Rs suffer from material degradation, just like most writable media. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such CD-R and CD-RW have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

As well as degradation of the dye, failure of a CD-R can be due to the reflective surface. While silver is cheaper and more widely used, it is more prone to oxidation resulting in a non-reflecting surface. Gold on the other hand, although more expensive and hard to find on a CD-R, is an inactive material and so, gold based CD-R's do not suffer from this problem.

Permanent markers are commonly used to mark the label side of CD-Rs and DVDs. This practice has been discouraged because it is believed xylene and toluene, common substances in permanent marker ink, can cause surface deterioration. Additionally, volatile organic compounds may be released which will remain inside the enclosed atmosphere of a CD-R's storage box, causing harm.

One last factor that affects the quality of a CD-R and influences its lifespan is the lacquer that is used to seal the CD-R and protect the dye and the reflective material from the influence of external materials (air, water, alcohol, etc).

These folks seem to think the whole thing is overblown and it's not really a problem anymore (and that much of the fervor was due to US News and World Report muckraking for a story). However, I'm pretty sure this is an industry group, so their impartiality is somewhat in question.

The problems I've heard of were related to either very early recordable CDs (the materials have changed substantially since then), and/or very cheap ones (which may be cutting costs; for instance, using metal layers more prone to oxidation), and/or poorly-stored ones (which can have scarily short lifespans). Modern, good-quality CD/DVD discs, if stored in controlled conditions, should be good for a pretty long time (at least 10 years, maybe much longer).

However... this is all based on accelerated-lifespan testing, so there's no way to be absolutely certain. Magnetic tape, on the other hand, has actually been in use in one form or another for 50+ years, and so much more is known about its lifespan and aging characteristics.

 

[Seekermeister]

In any case, I think that disks that are properly stored for archival purposes, and not handled often, like some program disks, should last a lot longer than the hardware that they were created on. From what I've read, the shelflife would rival or surpass tapes. I've had so many broken tapes, that I wouldn't trust them, even if the data remains intact, if the tape doesn't, it's a moot point.

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't trust burned DVD or CDR as my ONLY copy of important data. I've seen too many burned disks go bad over the years. Then again, I don't trust ANY media as my ONLY copy of important data.

The computer industry has used tapes as the backup standard for decades. But hard drives are gaining a much larger role in backups than ever before. CDs and DVDs aren't useful for most business backups because of the limited storage capacity and the labor-intensive backup process.

 

[Seekermeister]

I certainly can't afford one, but I wonder what the shelflife of a Blu-Ray disk is? At 25GBs, it certainly has value for archiving.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If you're really paranoid, you would make some offsite backups every now and then.

bingo. unfortunately, remote storage is spensive

I would say skip DVDs and just use external HDD's. Or if you're REALLY paranoid, do both.

The last time that I knew, it cost me $25 a year for a safety deposit box. Considering the cost of buying an external harddrive and it's reliability, a safety deposit box is cheap. No matter how many harddrives that you have, they won't provide protection in a disaster, such as a fire, flood, tornado, etc.

when I said remote storage, I meant remote online storage, sorry. I like to have something that is easily updated. I'm far too lazy to keep something in a safety deposit box updated.

 

[Seekermeister]

randomlinh,

If all that you are interested in is backing up your OS, then incremental backups is fine, but that is not what the OP was asking about. An archive of files do not have to be updated in this fashion, only added to as necessary. That does not require that much energy or time. Of course, it would be more complicated if that archive included financial records which would be ongoing.

 

[songokussm]

i love things that dont require nrg

 

[songokussm]

just an update. i had a drive failure on thursday. randomly i had another drive to slap in. The controller wouldnt rebuild the array and i couldnt figure out why. it was a 400gb so size shouldnt be the problem. also my controller locked the array from any and all activity, so no getting my data back. therefore raid 6 is a must in a the future.

now how i recovered the data.
i though the 3 remaining and working drives on my mobo's standard sata ports.
i used a runtimes software called "raid recontructior" to get the corect configureation of my raid drives.
then inputed that information in a program called "File Scavenger" and had it recover the information to my space 'other array' and my extra 400gb.
went flawlessly.