Fri 26 Aug 2005
Gizmodo has a great rant this morning on why backup should be idiot-proof. Synopsis:
- RAID is a proven technology
- people would gladly pay a few extra bones to never have to worry about losing data
- why is this not a standard option in consumer boxes?
Guilt strikes as I realize that my backup plan consists of burning CDs of our baby pictures every few months — when I remember to do it. I need to suck it up and go pick up a Firewire hard disk.
Back into my shell I go for a while, but I promise I have a few posts cooking.
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A RAID drive backup is not a back up, it is merely protection against an isolated hard drive failure. A RAID drive won’t get yesterdays or last weeks files back.
Raid does not protect against all single point of failure failures. Nobabily, failures in a hardware raid controller card or in power supplies can cause data loss.
On another note, hardware raid, raid in the controller, has a problem. If your controller ever fails, you’d better have another compatible, working, controller.
See also:
The link should habe been http://www.remotedatabackups.com/why/backup-raid-drive.cfm
Oye, makes me think it’s about time I backed up some of my important files.
Here via Michele’s.
Have a great weekend
However you go about it, backing up is a good idea. Take it from someone who killed a computer without backing it up. The computer is fixed, but everything that was on it is gone.
Thanks for visiting me via Michele!
m3: Good points, but the article’s author is talking specifically about protecting against HD failure, since that’s what happened to him in the article. Some type of RAID setup would go a long way toward solving this problem. You pull out the busted unit, keep on ticking, and go get a new one to put in it. Sure, there are still single points of failure, but this would cure a large percentage of Average Joe’s data loss ills. Regular backups are really a different issue.
I have a rule of thumb for home disk drives, that I buy the thing available for around £280. Thats above the average buyer’s spend and nowadays gets half a Terabyte. 18 moths ago it woild get 160Gb.
I’ve also looked at a home NAS, which is also around £260 for 300Gb.
Its getting scary just how much stoarage can be online in a simple home setup.