Seriously people

[Partial]

Macs don't have hard drive failures or require backup.

Life without boundaries you pc tools.

Highest customer satisfaction baby. It must be sad to be as unsatisfied as you.

[Scott Campbell]

Re: Seriously people

Back your shit up on physical media. I was a week from doing it. Then the heads on our hard drive failed so hard they destroyed the platters. We were willing to pay $1200 to recover the data - just to make sure we weren't missing anything, but they can't. I also have 95% of the same data on the drive I had transferred it from a few months ago. In that time, that drive also failed - on a less physical level, so there is still high hopes for an almost complete recovery. But we're still one failed recovery effort away from losing 10 years of digital photos, illegal music downloads, and hundreds of hours of creative and professional work.

Cloud storage is the answer. S3 is cheap, and I'm sure there is even cheaper stuff out there.

Too bad xdrive wasn't still around. That was an awesome application.

I just used the S3 storage cost calculator and came up with $750/mo. Maybe I did something wrong.

[mraynrand]

You guys are scaring me.

The fail rate for mobile HDD are high?

What's the best solution for a family scattered around the world? On-line backups?

The media server solution looks good but what can go wrong with them? Won't they eventually fail at some point themselves? You know, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, Murphy's Law, etc.

Yeah, any hard drive will fail sooner or later. But the point is that your chances of the server failing at the same time that a main rig fails is pretty much non existent - unless you have a fire or something.

In a perfect world we'd all keep daily backups off-site. The media server isn't perfect, but it beats the crap out of what most people are doing. And it's ridiculously easy and cheap to set up and automate for nightly backups. I don't have to "do" anything. I have a little green button in my system tray that lets me know that both machines are backed up daily. If it turns yellow, something went wrong. Easy, cheap and more robust are the reasons I'd recommend it.

But admittedly, I'm not an IT guy.

I don't know what to do - I'm up over 2 terabytes with digitizing Packer games. And now the f'ing HD games take up 30gb each. I can't back that up, and I have to jump through hoops to make the backup ignore the places where those are stored. Annoying. I wish the NF fucking L would sell games on blu ray.

My server is at 6TB now, and it could easily be at 9TB with the new cheap 1.5's available. Windows Home Server allows you to specify which folders to backup.

it's pretty slow backing that up, but only on initial back-up. After that, it only backs up newly added stuff. It's faster than I thought. Still, annoying. (And I still hate the NFL stranglehold on games)

[Zool]

The built in backup software allows you to do incremental backups too. Theres really no need to backup your OS and this is where the local RAID comes in. If one drive on your workstation fails, the other picks up and goes. When you replace the bad drive in the mirror, it rebuilds the mirror.

WHS will back up all PC's (and Mac's too I believe) on your network - including laptops. Can RAID do that?

Yup. Anything on a RAID is constantly mirrored to another drive. You're using a RAID 5 in your Windows server.

[Scott Campbell]

The built in backup software allows you to do incremental backups too. Theres really no need to backup your OS and this is where the local RAID comes in. If one drive on your workstation fails, the other picks up and goes. When you replace the bad drive in the mirror, it rebuilds the mirror.

WHS will back up all PC's (and Mac's too I believe) on your network - including laptops. Can RAID do that?

Yup. Anything on a RAID is constantly mirrored to another drive. You're using a RAID 5 in your Windows server.

Ok, but how do you get that to work on a laptop?

[Partial]

Re: Seriously people

Back your shit up on physical media. I was a week from doing it. Then the heads on our hard drive failed so hard they destroyed the platters. We were willing to pay $1200 to recover the data - just to make sure we weren't missing anything, but they can't. I also have 95% of the same data on the drive I had transferred it from a few months ago. In that time, that drive also failed - on a less physical level, so there is still high hopes for an almost complete recovery. But we're still one failed recovery effort away from losing 10 years of digital photos, illegal music downloads, and hundreds of hours of creative and professional work.

Cloud storage is the answer. S3 is cheap, and I'm sure there is even cheaper stuff out there.

Too bad xdrive wasn't still around. That was an awesome application.

I just used the S3 storage cost calculator and came up with $750/mo. Maybe I did something wrong.

Holy crap how much are you backing up?

[Scott Campbell]

Re: Seriously people

Back your shit up on physical media. I was a week from doing it. Then the heads on our hard drive failed so hard they destroyed the platters. We were willing to pay $1200 to recover the data - just to make sure we weren't missing anything, but they can't. I also have 95% of the same data on the drive I had transferred it from a few months ago. In that time, that drive also failed - on a less physical level, so there is still high hopes for an almost complete recovery. But we're still one failed recovery effort away from losing 10 years of digital photos, illegal music downloads, and hundreds of hours of creative and professional work.

Cloud storage is the answer. S3 is cheap, and I'm sure there is even cheaper stuff out there.

Too bad xdrive wasn't still around. That was an awesome application.

I just used the S3 storage cost calculator and came up with $750/mo. Maybe I did something wrong.

Holy crap how much are you backing up?

~5.5TB. It's a media server.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Macs don't have hard drive failures or require backup.

Life without boundaries you pc tools.

Highest customer satisfaction baby. It must be sad to be as unsatisfied as you.

Everything goes
Well, anything goes all of the time
Everything you dream of
Is right in front of you
And everything is a lie (or) And liberty is a lie

[Partial]

Re: Seriously people

Back your shit up on physical media. I was a week from doing it. Then the heads on our hard drive failed so hard they destroyed the platters. We were willing to pay $1200 to recover the data - just to make sure we weren't missing anything, but they can't. I also have 95% of the same data on the drive I had transferred it from a few months ago. In that time, that drive also failed - on a less physical level, so there is still high hopes for an almost complete recovery. But we're still one failed recovery effort away from losing 10 years of digital photos, illegal music downloads, and hundreds of hours of creative and professional work.

Cloud storage is the answer. S3 is cheap, and I'm sure there is even cheaper stuff out there.

Too bad xdrive wasn't still around. That was an awesome application.

I just used the S3 storage cost calculator and came up with $750/mo. Maybe I did something wrong.

Holy crap how much are you backing up?

~5.5TB. It's a media server.

Do you really have 5.5TB of stuff worth backing up? If so that is insane.

20GB is 11 dollars per month with a weekly backup.

Discounting porn (for those lonely nights), I have about 3gb of stuff worth keeping. If I wasn't in IT (I keep a buildable copy of every project so I can reference code at any time) I'd have about 1gb.

As for convenience stuff like movies, than I probably have 40-50gb.

[Scott Campbell]

Re: Seriously people

Back your shit up on physical media. I was a week from doing it. Then the heads on our hard drive failed so hard they destroyed the platters. We were willing to pay $1200 to recover the data - just to make sure we weren't missing anything, but they can't. I also have 95% of the same data on the drive I had transferred it from a few months ago. In that time, that drive also failed - on a less physical level, so there is still high hopes for an almost complete recovery. But we're still one failed recovery effort away from losing 10 years of digital photos, illegal music downloads, and hundreds of hours of creative and professional work.

Cloud storage is the answer. S3 is cheap, and I'm sure there is even cheaper stuff out there.

Too bad xdrive wasn't still around. That was an awesome application.

I just used the S3 storage cost calculator and came up with $750/mo. Maybe I did something wrong.

Holy crap how much are you backing up?

~5.5TB. It's a media server.

Do you really have 5.5TB of stuff worth backing up? If so that is insane.

20GB is 11 dollars per month with a weekly backup.

Discounting porn (for those lonely nights), I have about 3gb of stuff worth keeping. If I wasn't in IT (I keep a buildable copy of every project so I can reference code at any time) I'd have about 1gb.

As for convenience stuff like movies, than I probably have 40-50gb.

It's not all worth backing up - mostly movies. I don't back up the movies. But I probably have close to 500 GB of home movies and pictures that I do back up, on 2 desktops and a soon to be added netbook. I don't think that amount of critical storage is particularly unusual for people with kids. And HD camcorders are only going to increase the amount of required backup space.

WHS handles both the backup and server duties. I also have a bit torrent client that runs on it so that I don't have to leave my regular PC on.

The wierdest part about it is that its unbelievably stable. I go months without restarting it. Seriously. A Microsoft product. Maybe that's because it's pretty simple and stripped down. It's not overly ambitious the way a typical OS is.

I really bought it for the server functionality. I was able to get rid of 3 HTPC's and replace them with Popcorn Hours. Much more stable, and no screwing with them once they're set up. The backup functionality was just gravy.

[Partial]

What is the HDD config on your media server? Damn, you guys must be taking a lot of big ass photos and videos. You would be amazed how much space people would save if they would save their photos at a reasonable resolution and ppi.

[Scott Campbell]

What is the HDD config on your media server? Damn, you guys must be taking a lot of big ass photos and videos. You would be amazed how much space people would save if they would save their photos at a reasonable resolution and ppi.

6 x 1TB.

I don't compress any of my photos. Though I don't shoot in RAW, so they're not that huge. Storage is dirt cheap right now, so I'm not all that inclined to save space.

[Partial]

What is the HDD config on your media server? Damn, you guys must be taking a lot of big ass photos and videos. You would be amazed how much space people would save if they would save their photos at a reasonable resolution and ppi.

6 x 1TB.

I don't compress any of my photos. Though I don't shoot in RAW, so they're not that huge. Storage is dirt cheap right now, so I'm not all that inclined to save space.

What is the redundancy on that beast if you've got 5.5gb of crap?

[Scott Campbell]

What is the HDD config on your media server? Damn, you guys must be taking a lot of big ass photos and videos. You would be amazed how much space people would save if they would save their photos at a reasonable resolution and ppi.

6 x 1TB.

I don't compress any of my photos. Though I don't shoot in RAW, so they're not that huge. Storage is dirt cheap right now, so I'm not all that inclined to save space.

What is the redundancy on that beast if you've got 5.5gb of crap?

Client = copy 1. Server = copy 2.

There's actually a 3rd copy because I folder synch between the 2 clients periodically.

[3irty1]

An old trick we used to do to squeeze a bit of extra life out of a failing hard drive is to put it in the freezer for a few hours. Afterwards plug it in and see if it works long enough to back it up. Works for about 75% of hard drive failures. Doesn't sound like this would have saved Skins porn, but in the future it might help someone else.

Btw anything but a Raid 1 config isn't reliable for back up purposes. This is what I use to back up my storage drive. I have a separate drive for my OS which I'll back up periodically with clonezilla.