Backup,Backup,Backup!!!

giga

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Just a reminder to ALL that things electronics can go out quickly. This is a WD 1TB installed Oct 2012. Worked perfectly for years with no issue. Last week it died, no work was being done in the case, Just smoke started to come out of the case and GONE!

driveonfire.png
 

LWGShane

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Best Solution: Cloud + External Drive Backups.
 

Troberg

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Looks pretty much like my typical experience with WD. I've had maybe 30 of them, I don't think I still run any of them. WD fail a lot, and often with drama...
 

schemer

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I remember when I had a similar but probably worse experience. I had 3 1TB WD drives in my XP pc and one day started getting some weird problems so I ran defrag and it was having problems so I ran CHKDSK and it found some bad sectors and fixed them. It went downhill fast from there. I had backups on one of the other 2 drives so I was ok, I thought. A second drive failed with the same issues and like a dummy, I unplugged the wrong drive and formatted the backup drive in the pc. :confused: I used an external usb to sata adapter and saved most all of my data from the original "C" drive, plus I had some backups elsewhere on my networked pc's so I ended up ok but wasted about 2 weeks getting it all back to normal working hard at it for about 12 hours a day. :mad: After I salvaged the data from the original drive with the external adapter, the drive died completely. Lesson here is if it happens with bad sectors, back up what you can immediately while there is still a chance. Now I am constantly backing everything up *every day*!
schemer
 

schemer

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Looks pretty much like my typical experience with WD. I've had maybe 30 of them, I don't think I still run any of them. WD fail a lot, and often with drama...

What drives do you favor and use now?
 

schemer

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Yeah, I read that link recently as I was going to build a NAS server and my choice of drives was going to be the HGST's. They are a division of Western Digital funny enough. Maybe the quality minded people quit and started the new division. :p I decided against building a NAS server for now as its not cheap and a whole new learning curve where if you do not know what you are doing, you can lose all of those backups with one wrong move. I will stay with my current methods.
Thanks,
schemer
 

RandomCoder

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Yeah you could end up like me... around 4 years ago I built my server using some new and a couple of nearly new drives. I set it up as RAID 5 knowing that if one drive fails then I can simply replace that drive with a new one and rebuild the lost data. Sounds great! But I've since learnt that the rebuild process can often end up wiping out one of the other drives (it's a long winded process that hammers the other already aged drives).
So my dilemma recently is that the SMART status of the drives is saying that they are old aged and the power on time for some drives has clocked up over 5 years! Rather than risk a drive failing followed by a second drive failure and the loss everything, I've opted to buy a 5TB extremal drive and copy everything across to it. It took 22 hours :D
but at least my data is safe. My next project is to upgrade to RAID 6!
 

Troberg

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What drives do you favor and use now?

Mostly the 5400 RPM Seagates designed for NAS. The slower drives last longer in my experience, and run cooler, and in a NAS or file server, speed isn't that important.

For my workstations/laptops, I go with Seagate SSHD, although I plan to get/build a small laptop with SSD for car/airplane/train use (the moving parts really take a beating if used in a moving environment).

Lesson here is if it happens with bad sectors, back up what you can immediately while there is still a chance.

Yes, backup first, fix later. Also, from painful experience, back up important stuff first, then the rest, then fix.
 

schemer

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Yeah you could end up like me... around 4 years ago I built my server using some new and a couple of nearly new drives. I set it up as RAID 5 knowing that if one drive fails then I can simply replace that drive with a new one and rebuild the lost data. Sounds great! But I've since learnt that the rebuild process can often end up wiping out one of the other drives (it's a long winded process that hammers the other already aged drives).
So my dilemma recently is that the SMART status of the drives is saying that they are old aged and the power on time for some drives has clocked up over 5 years! Rather than risk a drive failing followed by a second drive failure and the loss everything, I've opted to buy a 5TB extremal drive and copy everything across to it. It took 22 hours :D
but at least my data is safe. My next project is to upgrade to RAID 6!

I am going the non-RAID route. JBOD for me. I can add another drive when I want to and backup between the drives for redundancy. I don't mind RAID but it requires more $$ for less available storage. My 2 cents worth. :)
schemer
 

schemer

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Mostly the 5400 RPM Seagates designed for NAS. The slower drives last longer in my experience, and run cooler, and in a NAS or file server, speed isn't that important.

For my workstations/laptops, I go with Seagate SSHD, although I plan to get/build a small laptop with SSD for car/airplane/train use (the moving parts really take a beating if used in a moving environment).



Yes, backup first, fix later. Also, from painful experience, back up important stuff first, then the rest, then fix.

Good info. I read some good stuff on the Seagate's too. All of them are good when they are not failing though. I am going to go with the JBOD box with RAID as a choice, but will run it with JBOD setup for starters. I will put NAS drives in but one or 2 at a time till I reach the 5 drive capacity for most likely 20TB. :p
Thanks,
schemer
 

Troberg

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I would advice against JBOD. I did run that once (although Novell, which was the OS on the server I ran it on, called it disk spanning), and you increase the risk of massive data loss a lot, especially if you have many disks. I lost one disk in an 8 disk span, and lost all data from all 8 disks. Sure, occasional bits of data could be recovered, but there were too many holes for it to be useful. Luckily, that was at work, so I had tape backups. Took a couple of days to get a new disk and restore it, though.

Now, I use a Synology DS1324+ NAS, and I really love that little guy. I use their own RAID, which gives me two disks redundancy, and the option to add disks later, even disks of different size and utilize all the size on the new disk (as long as they are larger). So, I now run with 8 disks, 2 of them are "wasted" space for redundancy, and three disks have to fail before I lose a single bit. I intend to get 4 more disks within a couple of weeks, which would give me 40 TB storage, where any 2 disks can fail without data loss. With an external disk cabinet, I can add another 12 disks if I wanted to (although I'll probably just get another 12 bay NAS instead, to reduce single points of failure).

If I wanted even more security, they have the option of adding "hot spares", which are plugged in disks which just sit there and wait until something fails, then are swapped in instead of the failed drive. That way, for it to lose data, three disks will have to fail in a timespan shorter than it takes to rebuild the first.

The thing is, 2 disks out of 12, or even 2 out of 24, is quite a low overhead for that much extra safety. In my opinion, it's very well spent money.
 

sorex

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I've opted to buy a 5TB extremal drive and copy everything across to it. It took 22 hours

I hope you bought atleast 2 of those :)

It's not the first time that a main disk fails and that the external also doesn't function anymore (or was stolen).

I backup data (data & outlook pst) from desktop -> multiple (alternating) external USB drives daily with syncback.

The projects I work on is in a dropbox folder so that gets copied around to 4 different machines and is accessible via the web aswell,
I think that's a perfect solution if you don't have dozens of terrabytes of data (I don't download movies etc so my data is limited)

I know if I mess up that it gets copied around but I make backups inthere aswell (for B4x daily with file>export zip)
 

schemer

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I would advice against JBOD. I did run that once (although Novell, which was the OS on the server I ran it on, called it disk spanning), and you increase the risk of massive data loss a lot, especially if you have many disks. I lost one disk in an 8 disk span, and lost all data from all 8 disks. Sure, occasional bits of data could be recovered, but there were too many holes for it to be useful. Luckily, that was at work, so I had tape backups. Took a couple of days to get a new disk and restore it, though.

Now, I use a Synology DS1324+ NAS, and I really love that little guy. I use their own RAID, which gives me two disks redundancy, and the option to add disks later, even disks of different size and utilize all the size on the new disk (as long as they are larger). So, I now run with 8 disks, 2 of them are "wasted" space for redundancy, and three disks have to fail before I lose a single bit. I intend to get 4 more disks within a couple of weeks, which would give me 40 TB storage, where any 2 disks can fail without data loss. With an external disk cabinet, I can add another 12 disks if I wanted to (although I'll probably just get another 12 bay NAS instead, to reduce single points of failure).

If I wanted even more security, they have the option of adding "hot spares", which are plugged in disks which just sit there and wait until something fails, then are swapped in instead of the failed drive. That way, for it to lose data, three disks will have to fail in a timespan shorter than it takes to rebuild the first.

The thing is, 2 disks out of 12, or even 2 out of 24, is quite a low overhead for that much extra safety. In my opinion, it's very well spent money.


I was planning on using the JBOD as independent hard drives, not spanned. Then it is as simple as copying drive A to drive B etc to make my own redundancy. :) The box I am going to buy also supports RAID if I decide to go that route so I have that part covered. I tried to look up the Synology DS1324+ NAS and could not really find any info on it. Is there a typo or is it an older unit? Your setup sounds great though and 2 drives for redundancy (so called wasted drives) are worth the money I agree. I just am not ready for NAS yet as I have too many irons in the fire at the present and foreseeable future.
Thanks,
schemer
 
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Troberg

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I got the numbers wrong, it should be DS2413+. It has, however, been superceded by the DS2415+, but the differences are minor.
 

schemer

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I got the numbers wrong, it should be DS2413+. It has, however, been superceded by the DS2415+, but the differences are minor.

Look like some nice units. :) But I would have to be really good ($$) all year to even get those for Xmas. And that is an empty box. I like them though. The one I am looking to buy is not networked. Just USB 3.0, eSata, or Firewire. But it can be set up to run RAID. The box is less than $250 and I can add a drive one at a time when I feel I need to or when they are on sale if I go with JBOD. I will go simple for now and when I save more money I may switch to something like you have. I really don't have that much data though, but video's (3D stuff) can use up some space.
Thanks,
schemer
 

Troberg

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They are very nice. However, if the price is too steep, they have smaller units as well. Not as many disks, but the same software.
 

schemer

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They are very nice. However, if the price is too steep, they have smaller units as well. Not as many disks, but the same software.
Thanks Troberg. I am still going the simple route for now but will use this info at a later date when I am ready to go that route. :) But just so you know, I am jealous! :D
schemer

p.s. Maybe when I get my app done and am rolling in the dough...
 

schemer

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Well for now I ordered this:
Enclosure 5 BAY

And a couple of these with a couple more to be ordered next month, and the last one after that sometime for a full box of 5 drives @ 4TB each for 20TB. That ought to work for a few years. :)
HGST 4TB drives

schemer

p.s. I actually found the drives cheaper somewhere else and ordered all 5 of them. ;) The MTBF (mean time between failure) is 2 million hours. That equals 228.31 years! So even if they just last for the 5 year warranty, I should be good as with that kind of rating they can't all fail at once.... I hope.:D
 
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