You expect a fundamentalist and bureaucrat to learn from history? How is that supposed to work? These people do not even learn if what they do fails catastrophically.
Your number sucks badly. I have had flash media fail in as little as 6 months form discharge and that was after 2-3 overwrites.
Incidentally, your claim reminds me a lot of what many people defending DVDs as backup claim. It is straight in the region of wishful thinking. Sure, it may work, but it also may leave you without that critically needed backup without warning and it may do so with pretty high probability.
"mdadm" is very well behaved for this scenario and in general. For mdadm this is indeed relatively easy to do.
I had the misfortune to work with some commercial hardware-RAID cards where I am not even sure it can be done without major effort. Personally, I have stopped using any kind of hardware-RAID, because monitoring, management, reliability and performance typically all suck badly.
Well, there are those that get this and those that will suffer a catastrophic data loss sooner or later. Enough of the second group around. Usually they are much less proud of their flawed little ideas after it has happened to them.
And where did you miss that a backup needs to be followed by a compare? After that works, it really does not matter what your obviously "trash" quality SATA-to-USB converter messes up. I never had this problem despite using a _lot_ of USB disks. Maybe you should not buy the very cheapest ones?
Your rally have no clue what checksumming goes into USB and modern HDDs. The most likely candidate for corruption on external disks (and I never said it was impossible) affects internal disks as well.
True, but it does not protect at all against the most common environmental issues like a PSU going berserk, lightening strike, theft, vandalism, etc. Calling it a "backup" is naive. But hey, it is your data, I could not care much less.
Media without reasonable data-life are not backup. They are just trash sitting in a box somewhere. So it is not a "cheap, no-effort backup", it is an overpriced no-backup waste of space.
RAID is neither "old school" or "sub-optimal". It does serve a different purpose than backup: Raid is for reducing downtime, no other purpose. (RAID0 is not really RAID, as the "R" does not apply.)
That is not RAID. That is (mis-)using RIAD as a sort-of snapshot backup scheme. This idea can work in principle but has several problems:
1. raid-sync is often painfully slow and can take days for large disks 2. you always need to sync full disks 2. you need to know how to make the extracted disk a 1-disk RAID array for recovery (may be anything from trivial to very difficult) 3. you do not get verify and most data-loss in backups is because people did not verify 4. you need to handle naked disks safely 5. you can only do backup on disks that fit the RAID 6. you cannot do compressed backups 7. if you mess up, there is a real risk of killing all data on the raid 8. you can get an inconsistent filesystems state that way. Not really a problem with a good filesystem.
I am sure I have missed some things here. I tried this for a few weeks and found it to basically be the worst possible option. Still better than no backup.
Bullshit. There is very little possibility for data to get corrupted unnoticed on an external USB disk. In fact, one of the very few is in-memory and then the data is just as corrupted on RAID.
I did buy Fallout 4 as pre-order, including season-pass. I think I got excellent value for money so far and even if Nuka-World is a lemon, I am very satisfied with what they delivered. That said, I refunded "No Man's Skye" on Steam two days before launch, because it was amply clear at that time that it would not deliver.
The problem on customer-side is wishful thinking and an unwillingness to believe that they may be wrong. The problem on publisher/maker side is that they over-hyped beyond any reason and that is rightfully treated as fraud in the form of false advertising.
I very much support this stance and that includes most forms of entertainment. The other option is that you can decide to be a patron of an artist (e.g. by Patreon these days), but that is it. The only worth art has is derived by the quality of the experience it imparts. If it fails at that, it is worthless and should be treated as such.
I canceled my pre-order 2 days before launch, because it was very clear at that time that the game was massively over-hyped and could not really deliver and was over-priced in addition.
That said, if Steam now refunds regardless of playtime, it must be a lot worse than I thought. They would not do that unless they have a lot of really angry customers. I think what was stolen here was primarily player time by promising the universe and delivering very little.
RAID is fine to reduce downtime, but completely unsuitable as a replacement for backup.
The RAID does not have the following things which you critically need from backup (the following list is not complete): - resilience against operator error (accidentally delete/overwrite files, e.g.) - geographic redundancy, usually not even safe against the box killing the disks, lightening, fire, theft, etc. - too few copies: Usually 3 (!) independent backup copies used in rotation are considered the minimum. RAID1 gives you one and it is not independent.
My recommendation is to get at least 3 external USB disks, and establish a backup with them, because currently you have none.
Steps: - Select a backup interval. This represents the maximum time-interval for which you think losing new data is acceptable - At the end of each interval, do the following:
1. Fetch oldest backup disk from off-site location
2. Put backup copy on it, making it the newest backup. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
3. Move disk to off-site location
For somewhat reduced reliability keep the oldest copy at home and do the following:
1. Make backup, overwriting oldest copy. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
2. Move new backup to off-site location and fetch oldest from off-site location.
An "off-site location" can be anything from a garden-shack to a storage locker at work to an arrangement with a neighbor or a friend you see regularly.
If you think this it too much effort, then your data must not be worth much. This is pretty much the agreed minimum experienced sysadmins want. Of course, there are always those that never lost any important data and they almost universally think this is way too much effort. Many of them learn in time when whatever they do results in that loss.
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Was this not recently identified as an insufficiently shielded power cable inducing thrust via the earth magnet field?
He is a true believer. The very worst and most dangerous class of fundamentalist fanatic.
Sounds like high-intelligence, high-arrogance and no wisdom at all. That is not smart, that is exceptionally dumb.
You expect a fundamentalist and bureaucrat to learn from history? How is that supposed to work? These people do not even learn if what they do fails catastrophically.
Your number sucks badly. I have had flash media fail in as little as 6 months form discharge and that was after 2-3 overwrites.
Incidentally, your claim reminds me a lot of what many people defending DVDs as backup claim. It is straight in the region of wishful thinking. Sure, it may work, but it also may leave you without that critically needed backup without warning and it may do so with pretty high probability.
"mdadm" is very well behaved for this scenario and in general. For mdadm this is indeed relatively easy to do.
I had the misfortune to work with some commercial hardware-RAID cards where I am not even sure it can be done without major effort. Personally, I have stopped using any kind of hardware-RAID, because monitoring, management, reliability and performance typically all suck badly.
Well, there are those that get this and those that will suffer a catastrophic data loss sooner or later. Enough of the second group around. Usually they are much less proud of their flawed little ideas after it has happened to them.
And if it is the trash you can buy, you may have a problem from the disk being marked as "dirty". I take it you have never actually done this?
And where did you miss that a backup needs to be followed by a compare? After that works, it really does not matter what your obviously "trash" quality SATA-to-USB converter messes up. I never had this problem despite using a _lot_ of USB disks. Maybe you should not buy the very cheapest ones?
Your rally have no clue what checksumming goes into USB and modern HDDs. The most likely candidate for corruption on external disks (and I never said it was impossible) affects internal disks as well.
You seem to have no clue what a snapshot is. Maybe read a definition sometime before shooting off your mouth?
Indeed.
True, but it does not protect at all against the most common environmental issues like a PSU going berserk, lightening strike, theft, vandalism, etc. Calling it a "backup" is naive. But hey, it is your data, I could not care much less.
Media without reasonable data-life are not backup. They are just trash sitting in a box somewhere. So it is not a "cheap, no-effort backup", it is an overpriced no-backup waste of space.
Indeed. If it gets hyped this strongly, there has got to be something seriously wrong with it.
Unless you have (very expensive or very small) SLC SD cards, that is pretty worthless. With a bit of bad luck, data may get corrupted within a year.
And on the minus-side, it is not a backup at all.
RAID is neither "old school" or "sub-optimal". It does serve a different purpose than backup: Raid is for reducing downtime, no other purpose. (RAID0 is not really RAID, as the "R" does not apply.)
A snapshot feature is not a backup either. It can serve as a basis of one though. A backup must be an _independent_ copy.
That is not RAID. That is (mis-)using RIAD as a sort-of snapshot backup scheme. This idea can work in principle but has several problems:
1. raid-sync is often painfully slow and can take days for large disks
2. you always need to sync full disks
2. you need to know how to make the extracted disk a 1-disk RAID array for recovery (may be anything from trivial to very difficult)
3. you do not get verify and most data-loss in backups is because people did not verify
4. you need to handle naked disks safely
5. you can only do backup on disks that fit the RAID
6. you cannot do compressed backups
7. if you mess up, there is a real risk of killing all data on the raid
8. you can get an inconsistent filesystems state that way. Not really a problem with a good filesystem.
I am sure I have missed some things here. I tried this for a few weeks and found it to basically be the worst possible option. Still better than no backup.
Bullshit. There is very little possibility for data to get corrupted unnoticed on an external USB disk. In fact, one of the very few is in-memory and then the data is just as corrupted on RAID.
I did buy Fallout 4 as pre-order, including season-pass. I think I got excellent value for money so far and even if Nuka-World is a lemon, I am very satisfied with what they delivered. That said, I refunded "No Man's Skye" on Steam two days before launch, because it was amply clear at that time that it would not deliver.
The problem on customer-side is wishful thinking and an unwillingness to believe that they may be wrong. The problem on publisher/maker side is that they over-hyped beyond any reason and that is rightfully treated as fraud in the form of false advertising.
I very much support this stance and that includes most forms of entertainment. The other option is that you can decide to be a patron of an artist (e.g. by Patreon these days), but that is it. The only worth art has is derived by the quality of the experience it imparts. If it fails at that, it is worthless and should be treated as such.
I canceled my pre-order 2 days before launch, because it was very clear at that time that the game was massively over-hyped and could not really deliver and was over-priced in addition.
That said, if Steam now refunds regardless of playtime, it must be a lot worse than I thought. They would not do that unless they have a lot of really angry customers. I think what was stolen here was primarily player time by promising the universe and delivering very little.
RAID is fine to reduce downtime, but completely unsuitable as a replacement for backup.
The RAID does not have the following things which you critically need from backup (the following list is not complete):
- resilience against operator error (accidentally delete/overwrite files, e.g.)
- geographic redundancy, usually not even safe against the box killing the disks, lightening, fire, theft, etc.
- too few copies: Usually 3 (!) independent backup copies used in rotation are considered the minimum. RAID1 gives you one and it is not independent.
My recommendation is to get at least 3 external USB disks, and establish a backup with them, because currently you have none.
Steps:
- Select a backup interval. This represents the maximum time-interval for which you think losing new data is acceptable
- At the end of each interval, do the following:
1. Fetch oldest backup disk from off-site location
2. Put backup copy on it, making it the newest backup. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
3. Move disk to off-site location
For somewhat reduced reliability keep the oldest copy at home and do the following:
1. Make backup, overwriting oldest copy. Make sure to do a file-by-file comparison.
2. Move new backup to off-site location and fetch oldest from off-site location.
An "off-site location" can be anything from a garden-shack to a storage locker at work to an arrangement with a neighbor or a friend you see regularly.
If you think this it too much effort, then your data must not be worth much. This is pretty much the agreed minimum experienced sysadmins want. Of course, there are always those that never lost any important data and they almost universally think this is way too much effort. Many of them learn in time when whatever they do results in that loss.