Topic: Got bit in the ASS!

[seaweb11]

Yeah BABY

Some of my old data bases were sent to me today. Final Bill CRAP!!!!!!!!!

[Retro Rocket]

Man.....that bill is ridiculous.....

Mick

[clarkjh]

Ouch

James

[Laminar]

It looks like they purchased an identical drive, cracked open the old drive, and transferred the plates into the new drive.

Do you have an external drive yet for Time Machine? You can find 1000GB drives for around $100 these days.

[mystic_1]

Pricey yes, but some data is truly irreplaceable.

Congrats on getting some of it back!

mystic_1

[oldfett]

It looks like they purchased an identical drive, cracked open the old drive, and transferred the plates into the new drive.

That or else they just swapped over the PCB.

[Laminar]

It looks like they purchased an identical drive, cracked open the old drive, and transferred the plates into the new drive.

That or else they just swapped over the PCB.

Oh, absolutely. Either way would be tedious and not something I'd do in my living room. 

[bradweingartner]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP!!!!!! 

An external drive that you only plug in to backup weekly or whatever is a good start. But for the real important irreplaceable data you'll want to put it on a backup media as well. An archival quality DVD or CD is a good start.

The NICE part about those sorts of media is while they don't last forever, they also don't break. If your DVD drive takes a dump, your disc is still fine and you can put it in your next machine no sweat. Basically what you just paid someone $$$$ to do with your hard drive in a clean room.

Even external drives can break. And worse, if you have a data corruption problem or a virus they can erase/destroy the contents of the external drive whenever it's plugged in. But that DVD sitting on the shelf is safe.

[Inigo Montoya]

Actually brad, raid is commonly used as backup. Here are the definitions for the different styles of raid.

    * RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in a way that gives improved speed at any given instant. If one disk fails, however, all of the data on the array will be lost, as there is neither parity nor mirroring. In this regard, RAID 0 is somewhat of a misnomer, in that RAID 0 is non-redundant. A RAID 0 array requires a minimum of two drives. A RAID 0 configuration can be applied to a single drive provided that the RAID controller is hardware and not software (i.e. OS-based arrays) and allows for such configuration. This allows a single drive to be added to a controller already containing another RAID configuration when the user does not wish to add the additional drive to the existing array. In this case, the controller would be set up as RAID only (as opposed to SCSI only (no RAID)), which requires that each individual drive be a part of some sort of RAID array.
    * RAID 1 mirrors the contents of the disks, making a form of 1:1 ratio realtime backup. The contents of each disk in the array are identical to that of every other disk in the array. A RAID 1 array requires a minimum of two drives. RAID 1 mirrors, though during the writing process copy the data identically to both drives, would not be suitable as a permanent backup solution, as RAID technology by design allows for certain failures to take place.
    * RAID 3 or 4 (striped disks with dedicated parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any one disk. Fault tolerance is achieved by adding an extra disk to the array and dedicating it to storing parity information. The storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. A RAID 3 or 4 array requires a minimum of three drives: two to hold striped data, and a third drive to hold parity data.
    * RAID 5 (striped disks with distributed parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against the loss of any one disk. It is similar to RAID 3 but the parity is not stored on one dedicated drive, instead parity information is interspersed across the drive array. The storage capacity of the array is a function of the number of drives minus the space needed to store parity. The maximum number of drives that can fail in any RAID 5 configuration without losing data is only one. Losing two drives in a RAID 5 array is referred to as a "double fault" and results in data loss.
    * RAID 6 (striped disks with dual parity) combines four or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any two disks.
    * RAID 1+0 (or 10) is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), hence the "1+0" name. A RAID 10 array requires a minimum of two drives, but is more commonly implemented with 4 drives to take advantage of speed benefits.
    * RAID 0+1 (or 01) is a striped data set (RAID 0) which is then mirrored (RAID 1). A RAID 0+1 array requires a minimum of four drives: two to hold the striped data, plus another two to mirror the first pair.

[Laminar]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP!!!!!! 

An external drive that you only plug in to backup weekly or whatever is a good start. But for the real important irreplaceable data you'll want to put it on a backup media as well. An archival quality DVD or CD is a good start.

He has a Mac, so Time Machine is the easy solution. It's hard to beat automatic incremental backups. Combine that with off-site backup via a free online service for the most important things and he's good to go.

[Inigo Montoya]

Or a person could avoid the artificially high cost of a mac and get a raid set up in the 1, 1+0 or 0+1 and have greater speed and a realtime backup and just nix the OS charge and use linux which is more flexible and has more programming choices than mac. It is all about options. My option is windows 7 tight now but if that didn't work, it would be a flavor of linux. If someone wants to throw their money to Jobs, fine with me. It is not my money. but a real time backup is better than even time machine any day.

[seaweb11]

Thanks for all the input guys. Yes I'm a Mac guy. As stated earlier....., started with a Mac 16 years ago...and well, we all hate change.
The data that was retrieved saved me my business! Period!

I had been working diligently for the past few months towards a new web site design to allow for more advertising growth in my business.
I was in the "zone" of self employment. THEN THE CRASH!   I was at a complete standstill

Even with the HIGH cost of retrieval, I can now get back to where I was. Making some NEW $$$$

I have learned my lesson, and will be dealing with my data in a far more organized manor in the future.

I'm always amazed at how much I don't know about computers compared to a lot of people here, I always concentrated on what I was good at, and paid others for their skills as I needed them. Definitely got caught on this one  Good thing I give good phone $$

I'm out on this one

[bradweingartner]

Let me reiterate: RAID IS NOT A BACKUP!!!!!

Raid can provide data redundancy. But look at ANY system that requires 100% long term data integrity and RAID is only the first phase of data security. Period. It's primary use is two-fold. Improve data throughput in striped arrays, or to improve uptime in Mirrored arrays. Or both in Striped+Parity arrays. Nobody worth their salt is going to rely on a hard drive for mission critical data retention.

Consdier this: A RAID mirror is often two identical drive from identical manufacturers and in use they have identical run-time hours. When one drive dies, what then? Now you have all your data *secure* on one drive that is ripe for failure. Do you have any idea how many drives fail during the rebuilding/retrieval of the RAID data? THAT is why RAID is not a backup, regardless of what your Wikipedia cut-and-paste might say.

Again, RAID is NOT a backup. Tape, CD, even Offsite Internet based solutions are backup. They separate the system from the media. Last choice is an external hard drive. Problem is, most people leave the external connected 24/7. Leaving their backup exposed to the same types of failures that they fear happening to their main HD. Plus, I don't know how many times I've seen people use the external drive as their 'backup' only to discover later it was their onlycopy of the files. Defeats the purpose. Things like Time Machine at least help with this to a degree.

But as I said before. Important, irreplaceable stuff like financials or manuscripts ore family photos... Multiple backups across multiple media. And refresh it regularly. For your downloaded DVD collection or MP3s or whatever files you have that you need 1Terabyte of data for, yes, external hard drives are okay for that usage.

Actually brad, raid is commonly used as backup. Here are the definitions for the different styles of raid.

    * RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in a way that gives improved speed at any given instant. If one disk fails, however, all of the data on the array will be lost, as there is neither parity nor mirroring. In this regard, RAID 0 is somewhat of a misnomer, in that RAID 0 is non-redundant. A RAID 0 array requires a minimum of two drives. A RAID 0 configuration can be applied to a single drive provided that the RAID controller is hardware and not software (i.e. OS-based arrays) and allows for such configuration. This allows a single drive to be added to a controller already containing another RAID configuration when the user does not wish to add the additional drive to the existing array. In this case, the controller would be set up as RAID only (as opposed to SCSI only (no RAID)), which requires that each individual drive be a part of some sort of RAID array.
    * RAID 1 mirrors the contents of the disks, making a form of 1:1 ratio realtime backup. The contents of each disk in the array are identical to that of every other disk in the array. A RAID 1 array requires a minimum of two drives. RAID 1 mirrors, though during the writing process copy the data identically to both drives, would not be suitable as a permanent backup solution, as RAID technology by design allows for certain failures to take place.
    * RAID 3 or 4 (striped disks with dedicated parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any one disk. Fault tolerance is achieved by adding an extra disk to the array and dedicating it to storing parity information. The storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. A RAID 3 or 4 array requires a minimum of three drives: two to hold striped data, and a third drive to hold parity data.
    * RAID 5 (striped disks with distributed parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against the loss of any one disk. It is similar to RAID 3 but the parity is not stored on one dedicated drive, instead parity information is interspersed across the drive array. The storage capacity of the array is a function of the number of drives minus the space needed to store parity. The maximum number of drives that can fail in any RAID 5 configuration without losing data is only one. Losing two drives in a RAID 5 array is referred to as a "double fault" and results in data loss.
    * RAID 6 (striped disks with dual parity) combines four or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any two disks.
    * RAID 1+0 (or 10) is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), hence the "1+0" name. A RAID 10 array requires a minimum of two drives, but is more commonly implemented with 4 drives to take advantage of speed benefits.
    * RAID 0+1 (or 01) is a striped data set (RAID 0) which is then mirrored (RAID 1). A RAID 0+1 array requires a minimum of four drives: two to hold the striped data, plus another two to mirror the first pair.

[bradweingartner]

Or a person could avoid the artificially high cost of a mac and get a raid set up in the 1, 1+0 or 0+1 and have greater speed and a realtime backup and just nix the OS charge and use linux which is more flexible and has more programming choices than mac. It is all about options. My option is windows 7 tight now but if that didn't work, it would be a flavor of linux. If someone wants to throw their money to Jobs, fine with me. It is not my money. but a real time backup is better than even time machine any day.

No such thing as Real Time Backup. Sorry bud. It's like photocopying everything as you put in your filing cabinet (remember those) to have a "backup". If your filing cabinet starts on fire both copies are GONE. Think detached backup + offsite backup. That is if you care about your data at all...

[oldfett]

Consdier this: A RAID mirror is often two identical drive from identical manufacturers and in use they have identical run-time hours. When one drive dies, what then? Now you have all your data *secure* on one drive that is ripe for failure. Do you have any idea how many drives fail during the rebuilding/retrieval of the RAID data? THAT is why RAID is not a backup, regardless of what your Wikipedia cut-and-paste might say.

We use RAID 5 all of the time where I work and for the businesses we support. Is it the only form of backup? No we have tape drives and off site backups in place, but RAID5 gives us the redundancy to get a system back up in a matter of hours (sometimes less than an hour) instead of days. I have never had a RAID rebuild fail and we have done well over a dozen. You also typically only have to have the same size hard drive, but even that is flexible. You could have a 250GB WD, 320GB Seagate and a 320GB Maxtor in a RAID 5 configuration it will pick 250GB as the default.

I do get what your going at however. Certain makes of hard drives are always dying. Like the more recent Seagate 7200.11 drives that were dropping like flies. I think Western Digital even had a problem as late. Also if you get something like a nasty virus or something happens to the filesystem you are dead in the water, redundancy won't help.

Back on topic though, glad to see that your data is back! How long before you are back at full steam or are you already?

[Inigo Montoya]

Brad, what do you think those off site backups are using? I can tell you it is not ram. It is hard disk in most cases as it is still the most cost effective and fastest way to do backups.
Also, if you mirror the drive, it IS a realtime back in virtually all ways. As the data is being written to BOTH disks at the SAME time so even if 1 does die, the other will finish writing and have all the data. About the only way both drive would fail at 1 time if from a power surge. Brad, I work in this environment daily. You go to ANY server room and almost all back ups are done on hard disk other than some using multiple tape drives. Tape drives are mainly used as once a day backups.

[bradweingartner]

I don't see how you fail to see my point. RAID is not a backup. A MIRRORED drive does very little to actually protect your data from virtually anything except a single hardware failure. Because it's live, it's completely exposed to anything else that could happen to it. RAID does not protect you from corruption, virus infiltration, file deletion, etc. That's why it SUCKS as your only backup. Any *GOOD* off-site backup does not rely on a single RAID to keep your data safe long term. As you said, you use tape drives are used for once a day backup. And YES that's truly a backup. Because when all else fails that tape is sitting there isolated from the live environment. Now you can replicate this with hard drives but that goes above and beyond RAID. And that's my point.

If RAID alone was adequate you wouldn't need tape (or the other non-real time mirroring solutions), and that's my point.

Maybe I'm picky because the data I work with is sensitive medical record data and needs to be safe.

Now for the average home user, RAID is grossly misappropriated. Who needs live access to their tax return from 2003? Not me. Why risk that sort of non-volatile data. We're not talking about databases that need real time access, that are changing and updating regularly. We're talking about one persons data, accumulated at an extremely slow rate with very little need for minimal downtime. RAID is not the tool for the job.

Brad, what do you think those off site backups are using? I can tell you it is not ram. It is hard disk in most cases as it is still the most cost effective and fastest way to do backups.
Also, if you mirror the drive, it IS a realtime back in virtually all ways. As the data is being written to BOTH disks at the SAME time so even if 1 does die, the other will finish writing and have all the data. About the only way both drive would fail at 1 time if from a power surge. Brad, I work in this environment daily. You go to ANY server room and almost all back ups are done on hard disk other than some using multiple tape drives. Tape drives are mainly used as once a day backups.

[clarkjh]

With the last few posts it's seems hung up on backups.  Seaweb11, I believe is should be considered "Disaster Recovery".

In my mind it would include;
Your workstation, for you it's your MAC
Some sort of on site redundant storage; external drive is ok, something with RAIDed drives; (decreases the downtime if a dive fails) is better.
A backup on another media, Tape, CD/DVD, or storage key.  (time frame between backups is dependent on how important changes in you data is.)
Some sort of "Off site" backup or data storage.

It all depends on how much your data it worth to you.
Ok, I'll step down from the soapbox now.
James

[Inigo Montoya]

Brad, you misunderstanding how backups are done. You seem to think that offsite backups are not subject to virus attacks and such and that is not true. Any backup in the world could be hacked while the backup is taking place. The backup unit can fail while the backup is taking place.

RAID is a configuration, nothing more. It is a way of setting up multiple disks, You ask how I can fail to see your point but you are missing the entire point. The point is, what media do you put the backups on? THAT is the point. And I tell you, most backups are going to be done on hard disks. Hard disks which are set up in a raid format to allow duplication of the backup. Raid has NOTHING to do with virus or hacking, THAT is the server itself that is being communicated with for the offsite backup. If that server were to get a virus or get hacked, NO backup is going to succeed, that includes optical, tape OR flash ram.

Bottom line is raid is just a WAY to setup hard drives to be used. That's it. It does not do anything else. It only saves data, nothing else. Everything else is controlled by the OS it is hooked to.

So are you trying to tell me that if you save data to 2 or more hard drives and ONE fails, that ALL the data is gone?
Of course not. The other disk(s) still have that data.
Also, most companies maintain running raids that are constantly backing things up while offsite is usually done one or twice a day , some might do it more but it is not constant. It is done during lulls in network traffic.

[ev0lve]

Meh. RAID isn't a backup of your data. It's insurance that you can recover when your media dies.

Time Machine IS backup. If you want it for free setup rdiff and a cron job and be happy.

http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/

Use Time Machine or rdiff to back up to a RAID 1 setup and you're going to cover yourself against 99.98% of the problems that will cost you $1700 to recover from. Add a hot spare and you can jump that to 99.99% - all done automagically.

[Inigo Montoya]

Well whatever. If I have a mirrored raid and 1 disk dies, I just boot from the other with everything intact including all profile settings. I fail to see how that is not a backup.

[mystic_1]

RAID is a physical disk management system.

Backup is a data handling practice.

The two very different and are neither mutually required not mutually exclusive.


mystic_1

[bucky katt]

i prefer shell rotella t 15-40 

[Inigo Montoya]

I get that part mystic, as I stated, raid is merely storage but a mirrored setup is essentially a complete backup more complete than even time machine as everything is being written to 2 or more drives and the data is identical. Any of the drives can be booted from and as long as the mirroring is maintained, they will all have the same data. Even an incremental time machine backup is not 100%. THAT is what I am saying. Also, some here seem to think every hard drive on the planet is going to die in 5 minutes when there are computers with 10+ year old drives still chugging away. We just removed a WINDOWS 95 pc from service that still had its original drive.
And most backups are stored on hard drives that are set up in mirrored raid arrays.
I have yet to come across any company that uses cd or dvd for data backups. I have seen a few SDLT tape drives. Most everything uses raided disks for storing said backups.

I think there is just mis-communication here.

[Grnrngr]

i prefer shell rotella t 15-40 

Good choice, since you can't get Chlordane anymore...

on the serious side, someone said they don't use CDs or DVDs for backup because they don't last forever? They only degrade thru usage (unless you leave them sitting in the sun, or otherwise improperly stored) and if their primary use is backup, they shouldn't be getting used much and should certainly out live your grandchildren in terms of being able to recover data. Now magnetic media...yeah, that's why it isn't used much any more, except for tapes, and those are primarily used for short term backups. If you really feel insecure about losing a CD , make 2 or 3 copies. They're a whole lot cheaper than another HDD. I think we're getting lost in the semantics..RAID is NOT backup, yes it's true your data is "backed up" on some other part of the RAID but, it is a loss prevention system. You cannot recover your data if someone steals your computer. Backup means copying the sensitive data on your machine and storing it somewhere else, and it's best to have off site backup to your onsite backup, I.E., two different sources to recover data from, in the event of extreme catastrophe.