[mythtv-users] Re: RAID5 ATA IDE hardware card recommendations for mythbackend machine

Peter Loron peterl at standingwave.org
Fri Dec 10 19:23:24 UTC 2004


More evil topposting.

The problem is that there is *NO* economical backup solution for 
end-users with hundreds of GB of data. The only thing that comes close 
is to have another RAID in another machine that you mirror to.

Individual drives aren't big enough for large collections (I don't even 
have Myth running yet nor do I rip DVDs and I've got > 150GB), DVD-R 
media is not that cheap, especially when you need dozens of discs to 
back things up (can you say inconvenient). Tape drives have the 
capacity, but are very expensive.

I agree that having an offline backup is ideal, but it just isn't 
practical for normal users at these data volumes. Building a RAID is 
it...and hope you don't get a power spike that blows the whole machine up.

-Pete

Anthony Vito wrote:
>>All of this was prompted because we just had an HDD failure and lost
>>about a month's worth of unarchived baby pictures; redundancy is the
>>primary issue. 
> 
> 
> For the last time... RAID is _NOT_ a backup solution. It's a data
> visibility solution. RAID allow the computer to keep on working even
> if one of the drive dies. Yes, you get redundancy, but other HUGE
> problems of data loss still exisit.
> 
> 1) What do you do when you accidentally delete something important?..(
> rm -rf * ... DOH ).. It's gone on all the disks with no way to get it
> back except a slim slim chance with some recovery software.
> 
> 2) What if a program corrupts a file, or a set off files? They get
> messup on the whole RAID array. That "program" could be a malicious
> virus.
> 
> RAID is nice for companies where a server going down means losing
> money and time. For the average home user, a nice automated daily
> backup plan is the best medicine. An external harddrive in an
> enclosure is a great way to accomplish this.
> 
> ( NOTE: both problems above can be solved by using a concurrent
> versioning system such as CVS or subversion to store all your files...
> but is kindof annoying to deal with all the time )
> 
> 
> 
> 
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