Hard drive failure?

[Cressy Snr]

Just returned from holiday so coming at this late; I don't think I can add to what has already been said by Nick and Andrew. I would keep an eye on disk #1 though - just in case.

It might be worth re-emphasising for others building music libraries using computer technology (or for storing personal documents and the like for that matter) that having disk mirroring or RAID doesn't, at least in my book, constitute a backup. A backup should be a seperate copy, ideally kept somewhere away from the computer you've backed up (a backup isn't much use if the burglar takes it with the computer or its in the same house that burns down). Often neglected is the need to check your backups occasionally to ensure you can actually read them to be able to restore if it proves necessary.

Ray

Hi Ray

I do indeed have an off site backup of my important stuff.
The iTunes music I have bought, plus the Hi-res paid downloads from Linn & other places is all backed up to a third portable drive which is kept somewhere else and is bootable.

At least then if the music goes down, my paid downloads are secure. Yes I'd have to re import my CDs and it'd be a pain but the paid downloads would be intact.

[Nick]

If its not vital it comes back its best that way. The other option is a UPS to bring it down gracefully.

A UPS in itself won't shut it down gracefully; you need to detect that the the UPS has taken over and use that to trigger a clean shutdown.

Ray

Yes, I was assuming that it would be intelligent enough to talk to apcd or its equivalent and to shutdown the computer cleanly on power outage, then shut itself down until power is restored, then wait for its batteries to be charged enough to repeat the cycle before starting up again.

I agree with the point about backups, RAID disks and any other form of mirror, is about redundancy in the case of a local failure, not about guaranteeing that you can recover from a catastrophic failure.

[floppybootstomp]

It might be worth re-emphasising for others building music libraries using computer technology (or for storing personal documents and the like for that matter) that having disk mirroring or RAID doesn't, at least in my book, constitute a backup. A backup should be a seperate copy, ideally kept somewhere away from the computer you've backed up (a backup isn't much use if the burglar takes it with the computer or its in the same house that burns down). Often neglected is the need to check your backups occasionally to ensure you can actually read them to be able to restore if it proves necessary.

Ray

This is superb advice. I have seen too many people devastated when losing collections of their 0's & 1's, be they music, pictures, whatever.

SSD HDD's give quoted lifespans in their sales spiel which means they too are prone to failure.

All other HDD's are mechanical devices and all mechanical devices are likely to fail eventually.

Backup to memory sticks, DVD-R's and external hard disks is good, doubling that backup and storing it in a secure place away from one's residence or place of work is an even better idea.

Your digital data is vulnerable, look at the wider picture if you want to preserve.

[ed]

fingers crossed, I hope that's the end of the saga Steve....looking on the bright side, its good experience to keep you alert in the future, and its spread the word.

I agree with Ray about raid vs standalone, but I'm a control freak.

I must admit I'm a bit of a luddite with the music as I keep a manual mirror of my NAS based library on a maxtor external. This works for me cos I just plug it into the studio machine when I want to listen to tunes in the studio....

for all windows stuff I use synctoy which is an incremental backup(free), and takes me back to the glorious days of incrementals on mainframes, when all files had a generation number...I can recommend synctoy wholeheartedly...I'm still looking for a linux version....Nick?

[Andrew]

for all windows stuff I use synctoy which is an incremental backup(free), and takes me back to the glorious days of incrementals on mainframes, when all files had a generation number...I can recommend synctoy wholeheartedly...I'm still looking for a linux version....Nick?

rsync?

[ed]

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

[Nick]

Well, its not incremental in the sense you mean, but rsync does a good job of keeping sets of files up to date.

I guess you can build a incremental backup out of 'find' using the last modified time and 'tar', something like

name=`date +"backup-%Y-%m-%d-23-hour"`
tar zcvf $name `find / -amin 3600`

[ed]

I discovered this which I think uses rsync.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BackupPC

going to have a dabble

[andrew Ivimey]

frightens the pants off me frankly - all this. It is all far too complicated when things go wrong. T'other Andrew's comment that hard drives seem to be much more reliable these says if one article of faith on which I base my continued life on this planet.

[Nick]

frightens the pants off me frankly - all this. It is all far too complicated when things go wrong. T'other Andrew's comment that hard drives seem to be much more reliable these says if one article of faith on which I base my continued life on this planet.

Back it up Andrew...

[Neal]

Yep back it up, I've worked in the disk storage and infrastructure industry for the last 30 years and it still amazes me that even fairly large corporations still do not correctly back up their data and in some cases have no back up at all relying on RAID to keep their data 'safe'

Steve has a good policy, local back up with another stored elsewhere, which reminds me that I must update mine!

[Dave the bass]

Your digital data is vulnerable, look at the wider picture if you want to preserve.

Word.

Buy Records!

DTB

[Ray P]

Buy Records!

DTB

However, for security, you have to buy two copies of each record and keep one at a mates house - just in case!

One good thing about LPs today though, no right minded burglar is going to 'alf-inch your collection - not worth getting a hernia for something of no value.....

Ray

[Dave the bass]

However, for security, you have to buy two copies of each record and keep one at a mates house - just in case!

Ray

....nah, I only need one copy of each record.

I've got 'em all backed-up on cassette tape innit

DTB

[pre65]

[

However, for security, you have to buy two copies of each record and keep one at a mates house - just in case!


Ray

That could be a problem.