[Leica] Seagate

[scheng at aotera.org (Spencer Cheng)]

Hi Tina,

I am not that down on RAID but I have changed the way I think about  
external storage from talking with an acquaintance who write Linux  
disk drivers for a living.

I would consider replicated external disks (or network storage)  
running RAID-1 which replicate the same data across 2 disks. It  
doubles the cost of disks since there is 2 copies of everything. There  
are quite a few boxes available these days (Linksys, D-Link, Western  
Digital,...). The important part is to buy disks from different  
manufacturers for each box so it's less likely that both disks will  
fail simultaneously. You will need 2 of these boxes in case the  
electronics in the box gets fried (the disks maybe fine but if the  
controlling electronics get fried, you're data is toast).

I use to like RAID-5 which uses spreads data across 3 or more disks in  
the same box but big disks these days makes RAID-5 less useful and  
more problematical.

I presume you unplug all these backup disks when not in use? And when  
you are using them, you plug them into a UPS, right? :)

Regards,
Spencer

PS. Seagate had a bad run of disks about 6-9 months ago but your  
problem sounds like poor manufacturing/design.

On Jul 31, 2009, at 16:12, Richard Man wrote:

> No, RAID is not a backup solution. It doesn't fail less. In fact, if a
> RAID dies, you are in a much worse position. How do I know? Because
> RAID died on me :-(
>