[Solidify]

For those of you that have massive movies libraries (or even TV Series libraries), do you back up your content? I'm talking about the people that have upwards of 10TB of media content streaming or stored on their HTPCs. Don't you find its expensive to keep everything backed up. Even with the cheap price of mechanical drives, it's still a lot of money. For example, if you have 10TB of media for your HTPC spread accross several HDDs, you would need to buy 10TB's worth of backup drives.

[jammyb]

Yup it's costly. But I buy 2 drives at a time. So it doesn't mean I have to keep buying.

One is a backup/mirror of the other.

If one dies. The backup/mirror is put in to replace it.

Then another single drive I have as a spare is the backup until either the warranty replacement comes [which becomes the main drive over the backup one] or I purchase another drive [but only one so that I have pairs]

The backups are kept in rubber sleeves and off site. Backups are performed monthly but haven't been done this year yet as haven't the time and the Files most dear to me [photos and videos] are also cloud stored on Box and Dropbox and that's automatic.

Am considering doinking the music on the server as use spotify!

[tential]

You can use UNRaid. That uses 1 parity drive. If any of your drives die you can recover it using the parity drive. Of course, if two drives die you're screwed.

That said, I still don't use an UNRaid server. I need to purchase a machine for it asap.

[jammyb]

I must've missed the news when RAID was classified a "backup"

Fuck that!

RAID is for file serving and speed. Not for backing up.

You fuck your array, you [can and usually] lose the lot. Your controller goes down, you lose the lot [unless you have a spare controller thst is exactly the same as the old one]

Building arrays with TB's of data takes days and days too.

Keep it simple.


Edit - just to add. I purchase a "pair" on average every 9-12 months. So not a major cost IMO. But I'm imminently due to buy my next pair lol.

[tential]

I must've missed the news when RAID was classified a "backup"

Fuck that!

Ha I guess I should clarify that it depends on what you consider "backup".
I guess it's more of a method of Data protection. UNRAID protects you from a drive failing. That's what I'm worrying about. I don't really need a hard backup of every file. I need protection against a drive failing and being able to recover that information. That's what UNRAID allows you to do.

No matter what you do protecting your data is going to cost you money. It's how important that data is to you. When 6TB drives come to normal prices, it'll cost me $300 to store my whole collection and $300 to back up the whole thing. Vs it costing $450 to store my collection right now and $450 to back it up. So time also helps as new/larger drives come out backing up/storing data becomes cheaper.

[natethomas]

I only back up stuff that's important to me - family photos, videos, documents, etc. Everything else goes on JBOD. I figuring losing a bunch of media isn't the greatest loss in the world.

[tjcinnamon]

RAID is for speed and uptime. The only RAID I'd classify as any type of backup would be RAID6. Then any two drives can die and you're still covered. However, periodic backup of JBOD is going to be the best. Any time arrays breakdown it's a massive cluster f to fix.

[teeedubb]

I just use drive pooling (aufs) so if one drive dies I only lose whats on it. All my important stuff is on multiple drives/pcs. I have also setup smartmontools to monitor SMART info of the drives and to email me when one fails the SMART test.

[tential]

RAID is for speed and uptime. The only RAID I'd classify as any type of backup would be RAID6. Then any two drives can die and you're still covered. However, periodic backup of JBOD is going to be the best. Any time arrays breakdown it's a massive cluster f to fix.

I think someone misunderstood what I said. I never said using RAID. I said using unRAID, as a tool to protect against drive failure.

What is unRAID®?

unRAID is software for storing and managing digital files on a mass-storage server. In more technical terms, unRAID® is an embedded Network Attached Storage (NAS) server operating system. It was specifically designed for digital media storage (e.g., videos, photos, music, & movies). It allows you to build an array of hard drives and share the data from those drives across the local network (typically within a house or business). Importantly, it protects all the data on the drives if one should fail (see how it works here).

jammyb didn't read what I wrote and just assumed I was talking about normal RAID.

But yes, you could also actually use RAID 5 if you want to protect yourself against a single drive failure. RAID isn't just for speed.

A RAID 5 comprises block-level striping with distributed parity. Unlike in RAID 4, parity information is distributed among the drives. It requires that all drives but one be present to operate. Upon failure of a single drive, subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that no data is lost. RAID 5 requires at least three disks.[9]

[FishOil]

I must've missed the news when RAID was classified a "backup"

Fuck that!

RAID is for file serving and speed. Not for backing up.

You fuck your array, you [can and usually] lose the lot. Your controller goes down, you lose the lot [unless you have a spare controller thst is exactly the same as the old one]

Building arrays with TB's of data takes days and days too.

Keep it simple.


Edit - just to add. I purchase a "pair" on average every 9-12 months. So not a major cost IMO. But I'm imminently due to buy my next pair lol.

Who runs hardware RAID anymore? Mess up the array? Controller go down? Dude you are living in the past.

BTW, its hard to take anything you say seriously with all the fuck fuck fuck.

[bluray]

BTW, its hard to take anything you say seriously with all the fuck fuck fuck.

I'm guessing that he is rated "R" guy. For sure, his language is not for PG-13 reader....

I hope that the person he is trying to help is not underage.....

[WayneFlix]

Roughly $1500 for 32 Terabytes of space. That includes taxes and shipping. Cost is ever decreasing as well.

[tential]

I must've missed the news when RAID was classified a "backup"

Fuck that!

RAID is for file serving and speed. Not for backing up.

You fuck your array, you [can and usually] lose the lot. Your controller goes down, you lose the lot [unless you have a spare controller thst is exactly the same as the old one]

Building arrays with TB's of data takes days and days too.

Keep it simple.


Edit - just to add. I purchase a "pair" on average every 9-12 months. So not a major cost IMO. But I'm imminently due to buy my next pair lol.

Who runs hardware RAID anymore? Mess up the array? Controller go down? Dude you are living in the past.

BTW, its hard to take anything you say seriously with all the fuck fuck fuck.

It's why I stopped posting on hardware forums. It's way too full of people who are either A) trolling or B) severely uninformed.
MOST levels of RAID offer data protection against a hard drive failure. There is only RAID (RAID 0) that doesn't offer data protection and you'll lose your data.

I of course was talking about software raid as you already were quick to figure out because you're capable of reading a full post. Also, it's extremely surprising the amount of people who post without fact checking. Before I post anything to help someone, I check to make sure what I'm staying is still relevant as things change all the time. It's so easy to make sure you never make yourself look stupid on the internet that why would you purposely post something as a complete fact without just consulting google first.

[bluray]

Oh, by the way my backup are Blu-ray discs. It's stores in the Blu-ray racks, which is out of reach from the kid. If the hard drive dies, I can re-rip it at at my convenience.....

[karandras24]

Oh, by the way my backup are Blu-ray discs. It's stores in the Blu-ray racks, which is out of reach from the kid. If the hard drive dies, I can re-rip it at at my convenience.....

^ This, ALL of my media is backed up on either Bluray or DVD and anything important (pics home movies etc) is also backed up on multiple drives.