Comments on: Hard drives aren’t as safe as you think! http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/03/02/hard-drives-arent-as-safe-as-you-think/ Calling hardware like it is... Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:14:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Junior http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/03/02/hard-drives-arent-as-safe-as-you-think/#comment-45 Junior Mon, 05 Mar 2007 03:46:24 +0000 http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/03/02/hard-drives-arent-as-safe-as-you-think/#comment-45 The key point to protecting your data is redundancy (and I don't mean RAID!)... redundancy in the sense that you need multiple copies of your data in multiple places... some kept at home, some at the office, and some offsite somewhere else (preferably several States away). This is really the only way to approach 100% certainty that your data will survive a disaster (be it fire, flood, tornado, military invasion, or alien invasion). And if the disaster is so big that ALL of these backup sources are wiped out, well, then chances are really good that you and everyone you know are wiped out as well, and have no need for the data anymore. :) The key point to protecting your data is redundancy (and I don’t mean RAID!)… redundancy in the sense that you need multiple copies of your data in multiple places… some kept at home, some at the office, and some offsite somewhere else (preferably several States away). This is really the only way to approach 100% certainty that your data will survive a disaster (be it fire, flood, tornado, military invasion, or alien invasion). And if the disaster is so big that ALL of these backup sources are wiped out, well, then chances are really good that you and everyone you know are wiped out as well, and have no need for the data anymore. :)

]]> By: Chief Gizmateer http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/03/02/hard-drives-arent-as-safe-as-you-think/#comment-43 Chief Gizmateer Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:06:35 +0000 http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/03/02/hard-drives-arent-as-safe-as-you-think/#comment-43 Having been bitten by relying on RAID setups in the past, I personally feel backups are needed as well. I've had two drives go bad in a RAID-5 setup twice in the past 3-4 years which means I lost the RAID and I've had an instance where mirroring drives resulted in corrupted data. Granted I do sysadmin stuff, but one of the RAID-5 issues happened on my personal network. So, with over 60GB of music, 60GB of video, 10GB of photos including an archive of all my parents photos and my personal documents I decided to use RAID-0 on the active data, another drive on another controller which is nightly synced with the RAID as well as an external USB drive which is nightly synced and another external USB drive (Mvix HD760) that I copy data over every so often! Overkill? Maybe, but the data is irreplaceable. I've considered a NAS as well, but would not rely on just the NAS as my only backup. Having been bitten by relying on RAID setups in the past, I personally feel backups are needed as well. I’ve had two drives go bad in a RAID-5 setup twice in the past 3-4 years which means I lost the RAID and I’ve had an instance where mirroring drives resulted in corrupted data. Granted I do sysadmin stuff, but one of the RAID-5 issues happened on my personal network.

So, with over 60GB of music, 60GB of video, 10GB of photos including an archive of all my parents photos and my personal documents I decided to use RAID-0 on the active data, another drive on another controller which is nightly synced with the RAID as well as an external USB drive which is nightly synced and another external USB drive (Mvix HD760) that I copy data over every so often! Overkill? Maybe, but the data is irreplaceable.

I’ve considered a NAS as well, but would not rely on just the NAS as my only backup.

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