The joys of corruption
Discussion
agent006 said:
JamieBeeston said:
but as always, your stats are only as good as the quality of your kit.
Sorry, forgot to mention that the two failures I've had were both on high end Compaq kit (back in the days when they were good Compaq, not HP).You don't seem to realise that I'm agreeing with you, although I'm happy to have an argument about it (whetever it is) if that's what you're after.
I'm not arguing anything, simply relaying my experiences.Just in a 'helpful citizen' mood (I've had a nightmare day at work and could do with building some good karma for tomorrow) - I'd point out to the 'rest of us' reading this thread that RAID and all the geekery mentioned in this thread should NEVER be seen as a substitute for backup.
The people participating in this thread talking about high-end RAID controller cards do it for a living (i.e. making sure their servers don't go down is their job), and the people talking about using RAID setups at home are geeks messing about with it because they can and it may give a bit of extra performance.
It could be taken from this thread that putting a few disks in your home PC in a RAID-1 mirror set means that you're super-safe from disk failure, and that backup becomes less important. Don't think this - if you have a choice between spending money on extra disks to mess about with RAID, or buying an external drive / double-layer DVD writer (if your data backup requirements are 10 GB or so, rather than 5 TB of pr0n) - then go for the backup solution and make it *SO* easy to do, that you do it as a matter of course. Either an automated solution (make sure you don't get lousy software though - I've tried cheap 'home-level' PC backup packages in the past and they suck it down - either get something well-regarded, or put effort in yourself and use OSS to do it) or something as simple as an external Firewire hard drive and a full disk image every weekend will save the average home user from the worst of a drive failure.
Touch wood - my RAID dance and that weird s
t that Sickman prescribed me have actually stopped me losing disks. I've not yet had a 'normal' hard drive failure, as in the disk just packs in. My hard drive failures have been caused by other system failures (usually power related, after a particularly rare part got killed by a power cut, I've learnt my lesson and bought a bunch of UPS units).
Also, no RAID system will protect you from full-bore user failure. The type when you're running multiple OSes and end up wiping one of your other partitions by mistake. Or simply deleting the wrong files, or saving the wrong thing over the top of a vital document, or buggy software (or viruses, if you use Windows, or worms / trojans for everyone else) corrupting your data. Even the pros do this every so often. I've seen a professional DBA destroy a database by accident, which happened to be the merchant bank's core data warehouse... that box had RAID, fancy controllers, the whole works. It got restored from backup...
It's more rare, but RAID won't help if some malicious cracker gets into your box and decides to vandalise it. Neither will permanently-attached 'backup' solutions like Leopard's Time Machine either for that matter - it's always worth having a backup of your most vital data in another location, not attached to any computer.
Another random unnecessary rant from me again, but just wanted to say that even though there's a lot of talk about RAID in this thread, RAID is not the solution to the inevitability of data loss (everyone will lose their data at some point) - backup is. You can reduce the chances of a single drive failure destroying your data, but I'd wager that more people lose data due to accident / incompetence / malicious code / bugs than due to hardware failure.
The people participating in this thread talking about high-end RAID controller cards do it for a living (i.e. making sure their servers don't go down is their job), and the people talking about using RAID setups at home are geeks messing about with it because they can and it may give a bit of extra performance.
It could be taken from this thread that putting a few disks in your home PC in a RAID-1 mirror set means that you're super-safe from disk failure, and that backup becomes less important. Don't think this - if you have a choice between spending money on extra disks to mess about with RAID, or buying an external drive / double-layer DVD writer (if your data backup requirements are 10 GB or so, rather than 5 TB of pr0n) - then go for the backup solution and make it *SO* easy to do, that you do it as a matter of course. Either an automated solution (make sure you don't get lousy software though - I've tried cheap 'home-level' PC backup packages in the past and they suck it down - either get something well-regarded, or put effort in yourself and use OSS to do it) or something as simple as an external Firewire hard drive and a full disk image every weekend will save the average home user from the worst of a drive failure.
Touch wood - my RAID dance and that weird s
t that Sickman prescribed me have actually stopped me losing disks. I've not yet had a 'normal' hard drive failure, as in the disk just packs in. My hard drive failures have been caused by other system failures (usually power related, after a particularly rare part got killed by a power cut, I've learnt my lesson and bought a bunch of UPS units).Also, no RAID system will protect you from full-bore user failure. The type when you're running multiple OSes and end up wiping one of your other partitions by mistake. Or simply deleting the wrong files, or saving the wrong thing over the top of a vital document, or buggy software (or viruses, if you use Windows, or worms / trojans for everyone else) corrupting your data. Even the pros do this every so often. I've seen a professional DBA destroy a database by accident, which happened to be the merchant bank's core data warehouse... that box had RAID, fancy controllers, the whole works. It got restored from backup...
It's more rare, but RAID won't help if some malicious cracker gets into your box and decides to vandalise it. Neither will permanently-attached 'backup' solutions like Leopard's Time Machine either for that matter - it's always worth having a backup of your most vital data in another location, not attached to any computer.
Another random unnecessary rant from me again, but just wanted to say that even though there's a lot of talk about RAID in this thread, RAID is not the solution to the inevitability of data loss (everyone will lose their data at some point) - backup is. You can reduce the chances of a single drive failure destroying your data, but I'd wager that more people lose data due to accident / incompetence / malicious code / bugs than due to hardware failure.
cyberface said:
Just in a 'helpful citizen' mood (I've had a nightmare day at work and could do with building some good karma for tomorrow) - I'd point out to the 'rest of us' reading this thread that RAID and all the geekery mentioned in this thread should NEVER be seen as a substitute for backup.
The people participating in this thread talking about high-end RAID controller cards do it for a living (i.e. making sure their servers don't go down is their job), and the people talking about using RAID setups at home are geeks messing about with it because they can and it may give a bit of extra performance.
It could be taken from this thread that putting a few disks in your home PC in a RAID-1 mirror set means that you're super-safe from disk failure, and that backup becomes less important. Don't think this - if you have a choice between spending money on extra disks to mess about with RAID, or buying an external drive / double-layer DVD writer (if your data backup requirements are 10 GB or so, rather than 5 TB of pr0n) - then go for the backup solution and make it *SO* easy to do, that you do it as a matter of course. Either an automated solution (make sure you don't get lousy software though - I've tried cheap 'home-level' PC backup packages in the past and they suck it down - either get something well-regarded, or put effort in yourself and use OSS to do it) or something as simple as an external Firewire hard drive and a full disk image every weekend will save the average home user from the worst of a drive failure.
Touch wood - my RAID dance and that weird st that Sickman prescribed me have actually stopped me losing disks. I've not yet had a 'normal' hard drive failure, as in the disk just packs in. My hard drive failures have been caused by other system failures (usually power related, after a particularly rare part got killed by a power cut, I've learnt my lesson and bought a bunch of UPS units).
Also, no RAID system will protect you from full-bore user failure. The type when you're running multiple OSes and end up wiping one of your other partitions by mistake. Or simply deleting the wrong files, or saving the wrong thing over the top of a vital document, or buggy software (or viruses, if you use Windows, or worms / trojans for everyone else) corrupting your data. Even the pros do this every so often. I've seen a professional DBA destroy a database by accident, which happened to be the merchant bank's core data warehouse... that box had RAID, fancy controllers, the whole works. It got restored from backup...
It's more rare, but RAID won't help if some malicious cracker gets into your box and decides to vandalise it. Neither will permanently-attached 'backup' solutions like Leopard's Time Machine either for that matter - it's always worth having a backup of your most vital data in another location, not attached to any computer.
Another random unnecessary rant from me again, but just wanted to say that even though there's a lot of talk about RAID in this thread, RAID is not the solution to the inevitability of data loss (everyone will lose their data at some point) - backup is. You can reduce the chances of a single drive failure destroying your data, but I'd wager that more people lose data due to accident / incompetence / malicious code / bugs than due to hardware failure.
I wholeheartedly agree.The people participating in this thread talking about high-end RAID controller cards do it for a living (i.e. making sure their servers don't go down is their job), and the people talking about using RAID setups at home are geeks messing about with it because they can and it may give a bit of extra performance.
It could be taken from this thread that putting a few disks in your home PC in a RAID-1 mirror set means that you're super-safe from disk failure, and that backup becomes less important. Don't think this - if you have a choice between spending money on extra disks to mess about with RAID, or buying an external drive / double-layer DVD writer (if your data backup requirements are 10 GB or so, rather than 5 TB of pr0n) - then go for the backup solution and make it *SO* easy to do, that you do it as a matter of course. Either an automated solution (make sure you don't get lousy software though - I've tried cheap 'home-level' PC backup packages in the past and they suck it down - either get something well-regarded, or put effort in yourself and use OSS to do it) or something as simple as an external Firewire hard drive and a full disk image every weekend will save the average home user from the worst of a drive failure.
Touch wood - my RAID dance and that weird s
t that Sickman prescribed me have actually stopped me losing disks. I've not yet had a 'normal' hard drive failure, as in the disk just packs in. My hard drive failures have been caused by other system failures (usually power related, after a particularly rare part got killed by a power cut, I've learnt my lesson and bought a bunch of UPS units).Also, no RAID system will protect you from full-bore user failure. The type when you're running multiple OSes and end up wiping one of your other partitions by mistake. Or simply deleting the wrong files, or saving the wrong thing over the top of a vital document, or buggy software (or viruses, if you use Windows, or worms / trojans for everyone else) corrupting your data. Even the pros do this every so often. I've seen a professional DBA destroy a database by accident, which happened to be the merchant bank's core data warehouse... that box had RAID, fancy controllers, the whole works. It got restored from backup...
It's more rare, but RAID won't help if some malicious cracker gets into your box and decides to vandalise it. Neither will permanently-attached 'backup' solutions like Leopard's Time Machine either for that matter - it's always worth having a backup of your most vital data in another location, not attached to any computer.
Another random unnecessary rant from me again, but just wanted to say that even though there's a lot of talk about RAID in this thread, RAID is not the solution to the inevitability of data loss (everyone will lose their data at some point) - backup is. You can reduce the chances of a single drive failure destroying your data, but I'd wager that more people lose data due to accident / incompetence / malicious code / bugs than due to hardware failure.
Rant start
Funny thing backup, when we quote for systems full of disk, the client throws a fit when we quote the backup with it, they can not believe how much it costs to safeguard their valuable data.
My response is, these are disks, they have moving parts, they WILL fail.
Same for RAID cards, normally power kills them, and that’s yer lot.
Go back to tape, no problem, however, the biggest issue I see by far is, “there was no data on the tape”!
Well, have a backup and restore test on a regular basis.
Backup of any sort is no good if you can not restore!
Rant finished
Aaand breath.
cyberface said:
The people participating in this thread talking about high-end RAID controller cards do it for a living (i.e. making sure their servers don't go down is their job), and the people talking about using RAID setups at home are geeks messing about with it because they can and it may give a bit of extra performance.
That I be!
Good point though, I think it'd be too easy to read into RAID as an easy back-up solution. I am quite happy with the fact my RAID array could go down tomorrow, it holds nothing other than the programs for my machine, so if it goes down - Life's a b
h! All I need now is a Time Machine style back-up for my PC and I'm away. (Not that I want it for program back-up, just my personal folders
). I am still impressed with my RAID 0 performance, I don't think i'll ever go back to 'normal' HDs again!
Ash 996 GT2 said:
I wholeheartedly agree.
Rant start
Funny thing backup, when we quote for systems full of disk, the client throws a fit when we quote the backup with it, they can not believe how much it costs to safeguard their valuable data.
My response is, these are disks, they have moving parts, they WILL fail.
Same for RAID cards, normally power kills them, and that’s yer lot.
Go back to tape, no problem, however, the biggest issue I see by far is, “there was no data on the tape”!
Well, have a backup and restore test on a regular basis.
Backup of any sort is no good if you can not restore!
Rant finished
Aaand breath.
+1Rant start
Funny thing backup, when we quote for systems full of disk, the client throws a fit when we quote the backup with it, they can not believe how much it costs to safeguard their valuable data.
My response is, these are disks, they have moving parts, they WILL fail.
Same for RAID cards, normally power kills them, and that’s yer lot.
Go back to tape, no problem, however, the biggest issue I see by far is, “there was no data on the tape”!
Well, have a backup and restore test on a regular basis.
Backup of any sort is no good if you can not restore!
Rant finished
Aaand breath.
IME helps very much to ask them what they think will happen if all of the sudden they have NO data, no emails, no dbs at all to work with. All of the sudden budget for backup and DR suddenly becomes very available. And as long you mitigate risks associated with 'no-action-lets-hope-for-the-best', I'm happy.
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