Data Preservation

[Guest]

Hi, so I have some very important data I want to be kept on storage either on a single drive or multiple drives and I was wondering, what would be the best thing to do? I know drives can die on any time even without SMART warnings so I was thinking something like RAID 10 but I was told that RAID could fail. Even with or without RAID failing I was also told something about radiation or just drive errors... so... any ideas? 

[leadeater]

What OS are you using? If your using Windows 8+ you can use Storage Spaces to mirror data across multiple drives etc, works extremely well. Also enable volume shadow copies (VSS) on the disk but set the VSS target drive to something other than the source disk, be default it goes to the same disk. Set the copy schedule to at least once per day.

 

Of course none of this is a substitute to regular backups to an external device, can just be a USB HDD as long as you unplug it after the backup completes.

[Guest]

What OS are you using? If your using Windows 8+ you can use Storage Spaces to mirror data across multiple drives etc, works extremely well. Also enable volume shadow copies (VSS) on the disk but set the VSS target drive to something other than the source disk, be default it goes to the same disk. Set the copy schedule to at least once per day.

 

Of course none of this is a substitute to regular backups to an external device, can just be a USB HDD as long as you unplug it after the backup completes.

That sounds like software RAID, that doesn't sound safe. For backing up, should I fill one HDD at a time then instead of RAID? 

[leadeater]

That sounds like software RAID, that doesn't sound safe. For backing up, should I fill one HDD at a time then instead of RAID? 

 

Storage Spaces is very safe, it's not your traditional software RAID. It's intended use is actually for servers and Hyper-V but is available in the desktop OS also. Even has advanced features like SSD caching etc. I currently use it for my 4 SSDs in my desktop, have to admit I have it configured for no redundancy but I only have my steam library on them.

 

It's not on the same level of sophistication as ZFS but that's mostly due to it not having been around as long. Also ZFS is an actual file system too which Storage Spaces is not, the equivalent from Microsoft would be ReFS but that's even newer and only in Windows Server OS. I would not recommend using ReFS yet either.

 

For backup use Windows Backup and Restore.

[Guest]

Storage Spaces is very safe, it's not your traditional software RAID. It's intended use is actually for servers and Hyper-V but is available in the desktop OS also. Even has advanced features like SSD caching etc. I currently use it for my 4 SSDs in my desktop, have to admit I have it configured for no redundancy but I only have my steam library on them.

 

It's not on the same level of sophistication as ZFS but that's mostly due to it not having been around as long. Also ZFS is an actual file system too which Storage Spaces is not, the equivalent from Microsoft would be ReFS but that's even newer and only in Windows Server OS. I would not recommend using ReFS yet either.

 

For backup use Windows Backup and Restore.

I think I understand, correct e if I'm wrong but you said you're not using it for redundancy but just for storing in a giant pile? If so, then how would that work? 

[leadeater]

I think I understand, correct e if I'm wrong but you said you're not using it for redundancy but just for storing in a giant pile? If so, then how would that work? 

 

There's different resiliency options, see link. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn567634(v=vs.85).aspx. You can get quite detailed in the way you layout the storage configurations, have a look at some of the blogs online to see what is possible.

 

I would never advise anyone to use simple mode unless you truly don't mind losing the data, which is fine as I can download all the games again. 1.8 TB might take a while to download though

 

Also I'm not saying Storage Spaces is the only option for you or even the best, just something that is likely already available for you to use right now.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there Yames,

 

A few things from me:

- RAID alone should never be considered a backup but rather redundancy as if the whole device fails or gets stolen/damaged you would lose everything. 

- A backup should be considered having data on multiple drives or devices that are not connected to each other and stored on different locations.

 

I would recommend having the data on a main drive pool with a RAID array for redundancy and having one or more copies on external drives or devices such as simple external drives or NAS devices. Running backups to external drives as often as you can should provide you with the best safety for your data.

 

Captain_WD.