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RAID 10 and Back Up Scheme Advice

P

Pixelmage

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 22, 2008
46
0
I'm finally going to set up my OWC Elite as a RAID 10 (4 x 2TB drives) and connect it to my iMac 800 Firewire port.

Even though it would be key, I can't afford to get a UPS brick or an external Firewire drive for backup at the moment. But working on it.

Before I purchased the RAID, I was accessing/saving files to my iMac's second 2TB internal drive (by boot drive is SSD)

In the meantime and temporarily; since this is my first RAID, should I...

A. Read and write files to the RAID and use the internal drive as back up using what Apple Time Machine or Carbon Copy?

B. Or should it be the other way around?
 
My 2 cents:

If you can't afford an UPS or an external backup, don't do RAID. Backup should be your priority.
 
waw74 said:
RAID is protection from failure, but not a should not be your only forum of backup.

https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&...sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=raid+is+not+backup
Click to expand...

Interesting... But if I have 6TB of data (Synology DS412+ running RAID 10,I think it's RAID 10, basically two volumes that are mirrored) What kind of other external can back that up?

What I would have on my DS412+ is the Time Machine of my MBP, Pictures and videos older than 2 years, I keep the 2 most recent years on the computer, my growning digital movie collection, iTunes media, etc.
 
The DRis said:
Interesting... But if I have 6TB of data (Synology DS412+ running RAID 10,I think it's RAID 10, basically two volumes that are mirrored) What kind of other external can back that up?

What I would have on my DS412+ is the Time Machine of my MBP, Pictures and videos older than 2 years, I keep the 2 most recent years on the computer, my growning digital movie collection, iTunes media, etc.
Click to expand...

power supply in the the RAID goes toes up, kills all 4 drives.
something tragic happens to your home.
you have a little "slip of the fingers" and delete the wrong folder, it's now gone off both copies.


backup solution depends on how irreplaceable and valuable to you that data is.
your data might have different levels of how valuable it is to you, and require several different backup solutions to cover everything you have.

best to have an "offline" backup, and something that gives you a little buffer zone, so you can restore from a week old backup after "accidents"

even better to have something "off-site", drives (even ones that are offline) aren't protected from a natural disaster if they are 5 feet away from each other. having a drive (or set of drives) that you store at the office, or a fiend or relative's house, that you bring home every week or month and update, is probably the best way for this.
 
monsieurpaul said:
My 2 cents:

If you can't afford an UPS or an external backup, don't do RAID. Backup should be your priority.
Click to expand...


drsox said:
Absolutely agree. RAID isn't a backup.
Click to expand...


I will take the lazy route and say these x10. This is one of those common "a little knowledge" problems.


The DRis said:
Interesting... But if I have 6TB of data (Synology DS412+ running RAID 10,I think it's RAID 10, basically two volumes that are mirrored) What kind of other external can back that up?
Click to expand...

It's important to note that RAID 1 variants (in this case RAID 1+0) don't necessarily view the data as two single volumes. Any corruption issues are immediately transferred. If the RAID crashes or the controller fails, you will not be able to recover data from them individually. Even RAID 1 is fairly complex. Striping it as well just adds another layer of abstraction.
 
The DRis said:
Interesting... But if I have 6TB of data (Synology DS412+ running RAID 10,I think it's RAID 10, basically two volumes that are mirrored) What kind of other external can back that up?

What I would have on my DS412+ is the Time Machine of my MBP, Pictures and videos older than 2 years, I keep the 2 most recent years on the computer, my growning digital movie collection, iTunes media, etc.
Click to expand...

I tend to think of things that can be replaced... and things that cannot.

Pictures, Home videos, documents etc cannot generally be replaced.

Music, movies etc can easily be replaced if necessary.

There is no way that I would not have my irreplaceable data not backed up fully, and automatically, without human intervention at least twice. 1) Local and 2) to the cloud.

/Jim
 
Maybe what I should do is get a DS212+ and a DS112, keep the 212 here for media use and put the 112 at my dad's and VPN in to it for backups once a month.

Depending on how hot the DS412+ gets, I was considering putting it on the floor in my big gun safe. Fireproof for 90 minutes.
 
Here's my approach :

5 drive NAS and a 2 drive NAS in daily use - same manufacturer, same model - sharing an APC UPS.
6 drive NAS turned off, with mirroring of the other 2 NASs once a week. Same NAS, same UPS (UPS is running).
1 TB USB drive in the bank, used to copy important stuff every 6 months.

If one of the NASs fail, I can move the RAID set to another unit temporarily.

So far in 7 years I have had drives fail and hardware and firmware failures. No data has been lost (I think, but hard to tell if files have become corrupted, esp if they are media files).
 
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