Quoting DJ Doena:

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Quoting lasitter:

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Quoting DJ Doena:

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I regularily sync my filesystem with another location on a completly different drive. It only takes a few seconds because it only syncs the files that have changed.

So this is basically a file copy operation rather than the File -> Backup Database/

Yes, but it fulfills the same basic purpose. I have a backup of all my data on a different drive which I can restore if I made a major mistake or if my HDD crashed.

Wouldn't the sync just propagate the error? Or do you run it manually? Hopefully not before you realize that you made a major error... 

Quoting Kulju:

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A bit off-topic, but out of professional curiosity, why such a RAID configuration? Why RAID60, and why 5 Spares!?

There is no question that RAID60 is overkill, particularly in a SOHO installation.

Part of the answer is that even though I know better, I'm pretty lazy about system backups. I compensate for this with strapping on as much hardware protection as I can manage, and RAID60 fits that description.

In a multi-drive failure situation you have an enormous cushion with RAID60 before any data loss. With two dedicated parity drives, each holding a complete parity copy, rebuild time is VERY fast (at least compared with other RAID levels, where depending on the size of drive and system load rebuilds can take DAYS.

With hard drives manufactured and purchased in lots, it is all too easy to get more than one drive failing in close proximity to one another. And drive manufacturers just lie about how reliable drives are, even if you plunk down the big bucks (as I do) for the "Enterprise Edition" versions.

Just an example of the problem, starting with the manufacturers claimed reliability on a set of eight drives I bought about seven to  eight years ago:

"WD produces the world’s most reliable server class SATA drives. With 1.2million hours MTBF, 100% duty cycle, 5-year warranty, next-generation SATA technology, and best-in-class vibration tolerance, WD RE2 drives offer the best combination of superior reliability, high capacity, and optimum performance for enterprise applications."

Mean time between failures

I don't know how WD figures it, but I think there are about 8,766 hours per year (365.25 * 24) and if you  divide 1,200,000 / 8766 you get a number of around 137 years. I think they want me to believe that these drives were supposed to be VERY reliable.

In real life, five of the eight drives failed in the course of seven years, in one case more than one in a month. So RAID6 on six drives and two hot spares (at the time) didn't feel like all that much overkill for me.

My previous system finally bit the dust because of a RAID controller failure, and at the time the replacement part was so old it became expensive to acquire, and I felt it was time to move on to a new mainboard and OS.

After months of false starts, my current system came to life in January of this year. I originally started with eight drives in a RAID60 with two hot spares, but within two months, the controller called on both of the hot spares to cover for failing Hitachi drives.

I changed over to WD Caviar Black WD2002FAEX on the spares because of the 5-year warranty vs 3-year warranty. Glad I did, because one of them failed this week while just sitting there, waiting to be called on.

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You have 28,6TB of disc space and with that configuration you are only able to use 8,8TB for your actual data storage. Don't you think it's a bit overkill?

You've got the math right and yes, this is WAY overkill. 

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You also have to remember that RAID60 write performance isn't the best possible compared to other RAID configurations.

Right again! There are any number of RAID configurations that would be faster, but this was about the most redundant one I could come up with.

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I understood that you have DVDP installed on this same computer and you are using same discs as a source and target for your backup.

Yes.

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Since RAID isn't a backup of any kind, how do you backup that disc space? Do you have a tape library or another set of discs?

I have a 2TB drive in an external cabinet and I backup to that via USB, but that is slow. I'd love any recommendation you might have regarding a tape unit that represented a good value for the money. I'd probably spring for it!

And if you get redundant enough, like my setup, RAID can be a fair substitute for a backup.

Another problem that bites you is operator headspace and timing, when attempting to do the backup / recovery itself. A few months back I wanted to reconfigure my virtual drives, and dutifully (thought) I performed a complete backup with Acronis True Image. But I was in a hurry mouse clicking on what to back up and missed clicking on one of the partitions. I ended up losing about three months of edits worth of data on that partition.

Next time I'll probably screw up in some different way. As the saying goes, nothing is foolproof because the fool is always greater than the proof!

So PLEASE! Share your pearls of wisdom about tape backup units. I used to use SCSI tape backup changers many years ago but they were very slow and had limited storage capacities. Then with the explosion of disc storage space it seemed to me that the only good way to back up one disc was to another disc.

Thanks for your thoughts!

I work on daily basis with enterprise level storage systems, which have a price tag far beyond normal consumer range, but what I've learned from that environment is that RAID is by no means a substitute for a backup. It doesn't protect you against data corruption, as you mentioned, a RAID controller failure and by far the most obvious, SUE (Stupid User Error). You cannot restore data deleted by mistake from any RAID configuration.

IMHO, to be safe you need a reasonable RAID protection (which in my opinion, in your case, would be RAID6 with two hot spares) AND a separate backup. Theres no one "correct" way to do it, but I like tapes, since even if the hardware running the tape fails (from example voltage peak), the actual tapes are still ok. Also tapes aren't that expensive.

The first thing I would do with your setup would be enabling scheduled snapshots (daily?) on your data drives. On Windows file servers this feature is called Shadow copy. That doesn't cost you a penny, and will give a fairly good protection against SUE and/or file corruption. Still, not an equivalent for a real backup.

I can continue this later, but since it's my first holiday for a long time, now  I'm gonna hit a bar If you have any questions I'm happy to answer for the best of my knowledge.

Still, RAID60 (8 discs) with five spares is no matter how do you put it, a waste of money.

Quoting Voltaire53:

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I have about 4,500 titles and I normally do backups without images to speed things up but tried a full back-up today just to see... so

WITHOUT cover scans: 8 minutes.
WITH cover scans: 23 minutes.

I have about 3,900 discs and 11,000+ headshot images.  A complete backup of database, headshots and covers takes around five or six minutes and gives me about a 1.1 GB backup file.

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Backing up to a UBS 3.0 external drive:

6,229 profiles
6m42s to backup everything
2.02 GB database on disk to a single 1.42Gb backup file

Quoting scotthm:

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Quoting Voltaire53:

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I have about 4,500 titles and I normally do backups without images to speed things up but tried a full back-up today just to see... so

WITHOUT cover scans: 8 minutes.
WITH cover scans: 23 minutes.

I have about 3,900 discs and 11,000+ headshot images.  A complete backup of database, headshots and covers takes around five or six minutes and gives me about a 1.1 GB backup file.

I have a quick update since this last post.

I've since upgraded my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 and got a new USB 3.0 flash drive to back up my DVDP database to.  A full backup that used to take five or six minutes finished in 87 seconds this morning.

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Full backup: 21613 profiles, 21,953,265KB to a WD 2T My Book which is 75% full about an hour or so.
Every night if I have mad any significant changes, I start the backup in the evening when I start watching some DVDs.
My main disc has about 1,000,000 files on it so it makes a big difference it has been defrag for the day.

Quoting Srehtims:

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Full backup: 21613 profiles, 21,953,265KB to a WD 2T My Book which is 75% full about an hour or so.
Every night if I have mad any significant changes, I start the backup in the evening when I start watching some DVDs.
My main disc has about 1,000,000 files on it so it makes a big difference it has been defrag for the day.

Started 9:18 PM finished 10:02 PM. 44 minutes
To copy to an external drive 10 to 16 minutes depending on the state of defrag.
Why two copies, well I don't think I would live long enough to rebuild my data base.
Ilooked at down loading my on the Invelos db and it leaves a lot to be desired.