Computer Jargon

[jrm]

I'm in huge agreement with Nightcrawler on this one. A 50gb tape backup solution is pretty laughable in terms of capacity.

It probably sounds like overkill, but I have a RAID5 array made of 8 x 500gb disks (3.5TB usable) here at home for data storage. I use a number of large external USB drives (1.5TB) for backups which are taken weekly. With the RAID5, I gain redundancy against drive failure and the external drives give me backup in the case of a total failure of the environment. I also use a number of smaller (200gb) external drives for *very* important data that get rotated and stored off-site.

With these sorts of things, you really do need to weigh up the cost/benefit, and the amount of data you're dealing with. As soon as you get into the terabytes of storage, backup becomes problematic - and it's only going to get worse. There's no one simple solution for everyone, and it really needs to be tailored for the data you're trying to store. For home user, most people have a mix of data they can easily replace or doesn't matter if they lose, data that would be annoying to lose but not the end of the world - and finally data that they really really can't lose - tailoring backups around the sizing of each of those datasets is the key.

Also - everyone should keep in mind the old adage - having RAID doesn't mean you can neglect taking backups (I see this all too often in home environments).

[Dohmar]

Could be a plethora of things... easiest option, reformat. Put Windows 7 on it while you're at it

QFT. Mirrored RAID array is how I'd do it too

The tape drive is in addition to Raid. Sure you might say raid 5 is the go, but Ive seen entire arrays get nuked before and people have put all their faith in the HDD's, so I agree with JRM. A backup is not a backup if it is on the same media type however (at least if you're ITIL compliant) so external HDD"s don't cut it for me.

Tapes last 10 years. You can write over them around 100 times, but considering I'll be rotating anually and have a daily and a monthly set, thats at most, 50 times the tape will get written to over the course of the year before I retire the media, archive it and move onto the next set. thats 5 tapes (Mon - Fri) with 12 additional tapes to take a monthly snapshot which is then archived.

If I wanted backup capacity, I'd raid 5 a bunch of SSD's (provided I also had a crapload of spare cash - $900 per 250gb SSD makes it expensive). I don't. I want archival and I want to be able to be able to dump my data from any given month. Tape is the only way to do it. Why do you think corporations are still using tapes? I can bet you theyre not doing it to save money. 50gb might not seem like a lot, but its all I need to backup and have records for. If I was anal about backing up an entire terabyte, I'd be using 240gb AIT drives rather than the 50gb version... BHP in Adelaide has a Tape library with 32 tapes on automated feeders, 240gb per tape to backup their raid arrays - they have the need - I can get away with 50gb (and lets face it, $650 for a tape drive is not much at all - I still have a Sony DDS3 here that does a whopping 12gigs and that sucker cost $2k when it was released)

Some of you guys forget that I've been doing IT for a decade and a half Raid 1 is good enough coverage for hard drive failure for a home setup. Raid 5 if you really need write speed or just cant be arsed with backups.

Oh and Andrew, Raid 0+1 via a NETWORKED SATA DRIVE is not insane speed. Go get yourself raid 0 with 2 Serial Attached Scsi, 15krpm native, THAT is speed... and green drives are slow as dogs balls, thats why they have a black edition and an AV edition ;P

And screw 10gigs online storage. I'd rather backup to that 50gb tape and give it to my accountant to chuck into his fireproof safe.

-D

Edit - I did also consider bluray dual layer as backup but decided against it because a) optical discs often use organic dye that degrades and the plastic gets scratched so I don't really hold much faith in that, and b) a single dual layer bluray disc is at present $50....

Edited July 27, 2009 by Dohmar

[Madaz]

http://www.drobo.com/

Ben sound like you like to embrace old tech man tape drives are so um ...... commodore 64

i know they have served a good purpose but... i like to argue

[TALBO]

I say you go 4 x 300Gb WD velociraptors or 4 x 15K SAS drives or 4 x SSD's in RAID0 and take your chances....

+1 Ben, who needs eco friendly WD green drives....

[Dohmar]

I say you go 4 x 300Gb WD velociraptors or 4 x 15K SAS drives or 4 x SSD's in RAID0 and take your chances....

+1 Ben, who needs eco friendly WD green drives....

lol. never use raid0 is my humble advice. i'd even go so far as to say never trust software (chipset) raid too but tbh I cant justify a hardware raid card... and SAS only is worth doing when u get a decent controller - the motherboard I'm after DOES have a version with SAS but the reports for the SAS performance with that x58 chipset have been disappointing to say the least- not worth the 1/2 capacity and twice price ($220 for 10krpm 150gb Raptor SATA vs $329 for 15krpm 74gb Seagate Cheetah SAS)

OS on 150gb Raptor, 10kRPM

Data on Raid1, 1TB WD AV/24 hour drives

Backed up to AIT nightly with the occasional entire TB backup for my pr0- er, dvd rips... tapes are still used Steve, check out any corporation out there, I can guarantee Tape is the only enterprise level backup worth its salt.\

I do actually have a 500gb WD Green drive atm which isnt bad, its very quiet which I like (36gb raptor I have now is loud as). I'll be switching to the AV drives tho cause the PC will be left on 24 hrs a day, probably recording digital tv as well as home security video feeds, bittorrents and the like

-D

[heslo]

Thought about going SSD as a boot drive Ben? I did it and don't regret it!

[Dohmar]

Thought about going SSD as a boot drive Ben? I did it and don't regret it!

Thought has crossed my mind.... atm my boot drive is 36 gigs and I really dont need a huge amount bigger...

problem is the 32gb Kingston E is $559

the raptor is 150gb and $220

I invested in a 32gb ssd for my eee 901 and that made it at least 4 times faster... SSD's arent bad but for the cost, its just not worth it... yet..

-D

[TALBO]

lol. never use raid0 is my humble advice.

I do actually have a 500gb WD Green drive atm which isnt bad, its very quiet which I like (36gb raptor I have now is loud as). I'll be switching to the AV drives tho cause the PC will be left on 24 hrs a day, probably recording digital tv as well as home security video feeds, bittorrents and the like

-D

For the OS I don't have an issue using RAID0 (not currently doing it for other reasons) because I never ever keep anything important on an OS drive.... not with a MS OS anyway

I have a 36 (not in use currently Win 7 drive) and 74Gb Raptors and although noisier than 7.2K RPM drives they're not awful. Incidentally I have a 640Gb WD AAKS drive that whips the raptors in all benches except for seek whilst the AAKS has much better STR's than both raptor drives.

[heslo]

The 30GB Vertex can be had for $200. I use the 60GB in my systems and have had NO dramas what-so-ever and DAMN they are fast

[Dohmar]

The 30GB Vertex can be had for $200. I use the 60GB in my systems and have had NO dramas what-so-ever and DAMN they are fast

Got any figures as to read/write speeds? SSD's always win on latency and seek, but I'd like to see the write speed especially, see how your SSD's write speed will compare to a 150gb Raptor...

are the AAKS drives the 'black' series or the AV series ?

-D

[heslo]

Hope this answers your questions

[PREISS]

I admit to not knowing quite as much as you guys. one question though. Are you using these tapes/drives for work or personal use ? seems alot of money down the drain for the humble home comp that you can backup on external drive. If work related fair enough

[Dohmar]

Hope this answers your questions

Yeah that does. for $300 i could get that 60gb drive as opposed to the 150 raptor for $220, and the write speeds are better..

Cool. 60gb SSD and Windows 7 instead of raptor. $80 more but also a decent amount more speed.

Cheers for posting the benchmarks yo

-D

[heslo]

Too easy. Trust me, the difference is huge! Quiet as too, no more hard drive thrashing. Just be sure to put your pagefile onto a platter styled hard drive to cut down the amount of writes to the SSD and when you get the drive make sure it's up to date with the latest firmware (v1.30 from memory)

Read this, should help you set up your SSD for the best performance possible

[Madaz]

Heslo saves the day again now to get you off those tapes

[Dohmar]

Too easy. Trust me, the difference is huge! Quiet as too, no more hard drive thrashing. Just be sure to put your pagefile onto a platter styled hard drive to cut down the amount of writes to the SSD and when you get the drive make sure it's up to date with the latest firmware (v1.30 from memory)

Read this, should help you set up your SSD for the best performance possible

Can always put the swap file on the mirrored terabyte drives, or put the fastest CF card ~ 24 gigs size (assuming swap = 2*Ram and Im going for 12gig) and a CF to IDE adaptor... thats just a thought mind, I dont know how fast the fastest flash disk is, but if you get such an adaptor and the cards are cheap enough you can simply ditch the card every couple of years or, get the 30gb version of one of the drives as the swap partition

But having said that, even using the most agressive algorithm, the average ssd is projected to last 7-8 years generally, which is more than most magnetic platter based hard drives can boast. I think i'd raid 0 them and split the swap file over 2 drives and take my luck - like steve says, dont keep anything on the c:/striped drive that you dont need and everything will be fine.

I'm only just upgrading my system now after 5 years. I know how to make a system last, and I can bet that the ssd's I'd buy today will still be fine 5 years down the track... just means after a couple of years I'll have to have a mini upgrade, but it can easily be done

-D

Edit - Give me a viable alternative steve and I'll consider it. Until I see anything worthy, its all rhetoric.

Edited July 27, 2009 by Dohmar

[Madaz]

would help us if we knew what data your were backing up

[Dohmar]

would help us if we knew what data your were backing up

uhh? 50 odd gigs of bestiality porn fyi steve and no you cant have a copy

I've already stated, 50 gigs or less. Rotated on a weekly basis with Monthy major backups.

blu ray doesnt cut it and neither does any ssd or hdd based system, and forget NAS. i dont want to spend 10 hours a day doing networked based backups...

-D

[Madaz]

ok scenario one

Nephew comes over moves your tapes from the table as you've just taken it out the drive and got distracted, chucks it on the subwoofer and bang EMP

or

tape is backing up and starts wrapping itself around the spindle what do you do....

[Dohmar]

ok scenario one

Nephew comes over moves your tapes from the table as you've just taken it out the drive and got distracted, chucks it on the subwoofer and bang EMP

None of my siblings have children and I dont let children of any sort near my equipment. Children are like germs, you take precautions and they dont get to infect your stuff. Furthermore tapes are stored in a locked fireproof safe, germs 0 safe 1.

tape is backing up and starts wrapping itself around the spindle what do you do....

lol

this isnt a commodore 64 using analogue tape. This is helical scanned dat. If any mechanical error was to happen, then the manufacturer would cover it under warranty. And as for the more immediate concern about getting the data backed up, an external HDD is acceptable in short term. Turnaround for a broken tape drive is around 3 days, if you had to use an ext HDD as a stop gap measure for a fortnight, I'd be surprised

-D