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How Much Should You Back Up Your Data and What is the Likelihood of Drive Failure?

avrona
19 minutes ago, avrona said:

Wow such a mature argument, not wanting to listen to someone's opinion, and then just using age as just some metric of knowledge in the subject. 

Wow! Look at the pot calling the kettle black! Your level of arrogance (not to mention ignorance) is unbelievably amazing!

 

Have you written articles and reviews for magazines or websites such as SSD Review or Tom's Hardware professionally  like Sean, who has been working in the field far longer than you, has done? Sean (and pretty much everyone else posting in this thread) has seen you opinions and rightfully dismissed them as being the ignorant nonsense they are.

 

Sean's opinions of you and your opinions has far less to do with your age and far more to do with how wrong they are. As far as the maturity of his argument goes, he was just talking down to your level maturity (or, rather, the lack of it). Maturity has little to do with age, by the way. You are behaving like a little child who stubbornly refuses to listen to people far more knowledgeable and experienced than you.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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40 minutes ago, avrona said:

Wow such a mature argument, not wanting to listen to someone's opinion, and then just using age as just some metric of knowledge in the subject. 

Considering you don’t have any experience, age is part of that matter, but that doesn’t matter, right? Because you know everything, no? And argument? I’m not arguing. I was agreeing! Hahah! I mean, what else can I do? I can’t refute you, the all knowing storage and data guru. 

 

I mean, I've spent my last 10 years learning and writing about storage and aiding hundreds of thousands of people on how to configure their data, backup, recover, and optimize systems with expertise in storage performance tuning, and met with, questioned, befriended, and challenged many industry product managers and engineers, but don’t mind me. I’m sure you’ve done more research and have more real world experience than I could ever dream of. I can’t argue if backing up matters or not with someone who can’t even grasp the concept and consequences of data loss or corruption. 

 

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2 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

Considering you don’t have any experience, age is part of that matter, but that doesn’t matter, right? Because you know everything, no? And argument? I’m not arguing. I was agreeing! Hahah! I mean, what else can I do? I can’t refute you, the all knowing storage and data guru. 

@avrona Since I doubt you will "get it", that was sarcasm Sean just used on you.

 

Lord Xeb is another one who has worked extensively in the field, including data recovery, yet you have chosen to ignore his expertise.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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35 minutes ago, noxdeouroboros said:

Are you over 18? Which country do you live in? In Europe you must be over 18 to have a legal business, I'm very curious about the country where you live, odd laws you have there.

Yeah I'm over 18 and besides all business laws are really relaxed here in England, you don't need to register or pay any tax until it starts generating a certain amount of profits per year.

21 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Wow! Look at the pot calling the kettle black! Your level of arrogance (not to mention ignorance) is unbelievably amazing!

 

Have you written articles and reviews for magazines or websites such as SSD Review or Tom's Hardware professionally  like Sean, who has been working in the field far longer than you, has done? Sean (and pretty much everyone else posting in this thread) has seen you opinions and rightfully dismissed them as being the ignorant nonsense they are.

 

Sean's opinions of you and your opinions has far less to do with your age and far more to do with how wrong they are. As far as the maturity of his argument goes, he was just talking down to your level maturity (or, rather, the lack of it). Maturity has little to do with age, by the way. You are behaving like a little child who stubbornly refuses to listen to people far more knowledgeable and experienced than you.

And may I ask since when having a different opinion on something is classed as arrogance, ignorance, and immaturity? 

19 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

Considering you don’t have any experience, age is part of that matter, but that doesn’t matter, right? Because you know everything, no? And argument? I’m not arguing. I was agreeing! Hahah! I mean, what else can I do? I can’t refute you, the all knowing storage and data guru. 

 

I mean, I've spent my last 10 years learning and writing about storage and aiding hundreds of thousands of people on how to configure their data, backup, recover, and optimize systems with expertise in storage performance tuning, and met with, questioned, befriended, and challenged many industry product managers and engineers, but don’t mind me. I’m sure you’ve done more research and have more real world experience than I could ever dream of. I can’t argue if backing up matters or not with someone who can’t even grasp the concept and consequences of data loss or corruption. 

 

Ok, what does any of that have to do with me having a different opinion on the matter?

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15 minutes ago, avrona said:

Yeah I'm over 18 and besides all business laws are really relaxed here in England, you don't need to register or pay any tax until it starts generating a certain amount of profits per year.

And may I ask since when having a different opinion on something is classed as arrogance, ignorance, and immaturity? 

Ok, what does any of that have to do with me having a different opinion on the matter?

?

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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You can have an opinion surely, but to state your opinion is the correct thought process without substantial evidence, that’s something you need to work on.

 

To dismiss concrete logic and facts based on your flawed logic weight scales is quite honestly disturbing. None of your opinions can hold up to peer review. 

 

If your data is valuable, you back it up. If it can have legal repercussions if lost, you back it up. Any argument against spending a few $ on a back up saying you should spend it elsewhere is entirely illogical. If you don’t care about the data, don’t back it up. Your unintentional backups are not such a thing. You are intentionally keeping multiple copies of your data....that’s not unintentional to start...

 

I don’t think you’re actually listening to anyone and are just blatantly spreading ill formed bias because you feel like being controversial and causing a stir to simply get more YouTube views. But hey, that’s just my unpopular opinion on the matter.

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6 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

You can have an opinion surely, but to state your opinion is the correct thought process without substantial evidence, that’s something you need to work on.

 

To dismiss concrete logic and facts based on your flawed logic weight scales is quite honestly disturbing. None of your opinions can hold up to peer review. 

 

If your data is valuable, you back it up. If it can have legal repercussions if lost, you back it up. Any argument against spending a few $ on a back up saying you should spend it elsewhere is entirely illogical. If you don’t care about the data, don’t back it up. Your unintentional backups are not such a thing. You are intentionally keeping multiple copies of your data....that’s not unintentional to start...

What about all the evidence I provided for my opinion in the video then?

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1 minute ago, avrona said:

What about all the evidence I provided for my opinion in the video then?

I tried watching that... Not great "evidence" for sure.

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1 minute ago, noxdeouroboros said:

I tried watching that... Not great "evidence" for sure.

There was no evidence. Anything stated could be evidence against his opinion. He simply refuses to understand and accept that.

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2 hours ago, avrona said:

I explained exactly why I do it in the video.

I do a copy and not a move because:

1. I often need the data on my SD cards for easily looking back to see what I did in certain photos or videos, make sure angles are about right when continuing to shoot a video, etc.

2. The main issue I worry about comes from the pain that is moving files on my system in terms of Windows because of some weird permission issues, and very often moves of bulk files don't work, so then you can just easily try again as it's all still there on the original drive, instead of messing around in what works and what doesn't. For example when I copied data to my NVMe, at first none of the files wanted to open because of permission issues, so I just copied them all over again with some different settings and it worked. What I'm trying to say here is the thing that is the issue is the way Windows does moving and permissions, which is all way more likely to happen, and happens to me all the time. 

You mention looking back at your SD card from time to time to see how something was done. What if your SD card fails tonight? Can you recover from that? Do you care about having access to what is on that SD card now, next year? Will it hurt your channel if it's gone? Your second point just illustrates why one should work on a copy (which inadvertedly means the original has become a backup) and not the original data.

 

If I try to read between the lines, I guess what you might be trying to say is that people can come across as overzealous and overstate what you need for a backup, and I would agree to some extent. Technology is reliable enough that you do not have to worry about data loss every minute of every day, I don't backup everything I have either, only what I consider important. My gaming PC? Yeah annoying if I'd lose that drive, but a night of downloading and Steam has my games again. My laptop however, with my PhD research on it... you bet I have backups of that. I'm not about to lose years of progress because my laptop decides to crap out or I spill a coffee on it.

 

2 hours ago, avrona said:

And may I ask since when having a different opinion on something is classed as arrogance, ignorance, and immaturity?

It's not, in my opinion, and I think there is some truth to what you are saying. What I do find ignorant, is advocating that backups are unnecessary. I associate this statement with someone who has never suffered catastrophic data loss.

 

We lost 80 TB of data a while back, not something you can easily backup, but the most important small stuff is immediately available again, because they were backed up.

 

I agree that for most people some form of cloud storage (backup) will be enough, and RAID probably overkill because even if they know what it is, yes the chances of failure are indeed slim (but not zero), but most people also never have suffered catastrophic data loss of important things, and this is indeed because storage media is in general pretty reliable. Like you say, most people will just buy a new laptop/computer/whatever say every 5 years, and hence refresh their storage media with it.

 

This also creates a false sense of security, I think however, which is why there are options to automatically backup photos from your phone, to Google Drive, for example, because people do not think about failure.

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Server: CPU: i5 4690k | RAM: 16 GB | Case: Corsair Graphite 760T White | Storage: 19 TB

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4 hours ago, avrona said:

What about all the evidence I provided for my opinion in the video then?

? Gasp! What evidence? All I've seen so far is unsubstantiated opinions. This is like watching the Keystone Cops meet the Three Stooges while trying to understand Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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5 hours ago, tikker said:

...We lost 80 TB of data a while back, not something you can easily backup...

I simply cannot understand why people keep saying large volumes are difficult to back up. If one has their computer properly organized with data segregated from system files and are using the correct hardware and backup schemes (including backup software, which can be had for free), backups are actually quite simple to make and require little time on the user's part since the computer will do most of the work (computers doing work for us being a major reason for having the darned things in the first place). The initial backup may take quite a while due the size of the volume but, again, it's the computer doing most of the work, not the user. As far as the cost of the drives needed for large backups, that cost is pennies on the dollar compared to professional data recovery (which hasn't the level of recovery success one can get from backups).

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

-snip-

It depends a bit on the environment, universities do not have a lot of money to throw around. For anything that isn't a professional data/compute center, I'd argue it's not easy to backup 100s of TB (there's also no real point in this case and we have ~15 of these). These are also scratch disks on data reduction nodes, so per definition no backup and not intended to store valuable data long term, it just died at an unfortunate moment. It was to illustrate the point. Our home drives are backed up daily.

 

[Edit] point being, the data on these nodes is variable and can be reaquired easily, hence they are just in RAID5/6.

Crystal: CPU: i7 7700K | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z270F | RAM: GSkill 16 GB@3200MHz | GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti FE | Case: Corsair Crystal 570X (black) | PSU: EVGA Supernova G2 1000W | Monitor: Asus VG248QE 24"

Laptop: Dell XPS 13 9370 | CPU: i5 10510U | RAM: 16 GB

Server: CPU: i5 4690k | RAM: 16 GB | Case: Corsair Graphite 760T White | Storage: 19 TB

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2 hours ago, tikker said:

It depends a bit on the environment, universities do not have a lot of money to throw around. For anything that isn't a professional data/compute center, I'd argue it's not easy to backup 100s of TB (there's also no real point in this case and we have ~15 of these). These are also scratch disks on data reduction nodes, so per definition no backup and not intended to store valuable data long term, it just died at an unfortunate moment. It was to illustrate the point. Our home drives are backed up daily.

 

[Edit] point being, the data on these nodes is variable and can be reaquired easily, hence they are just in RAID5/6.

I wasn't talking about the expense of backups. Yes, large volumes will cost more than smaller ones to back up but are not any more difficult to backup than smaller backups. I agree not all data needs to be backed up or needs to be backed up only temporarily. Data that doesn't need to be backed up is not difficult to exclude from a backup. A purge schedule can be set up for data that needs to backed up only temporarily. Once set up, again, the computer does all the work.

 

Each application has to be considered to determine what data should be backed up, backed up temporarily, or not backed up. I always hung onto any scratch files on something I was working on until the project was finished, including backing them up so, if something went south or I needed to redo an earlier stage, I wouldn't have to redo all the work. Once the project was finished, all I would keep would be the original files and the final work (in the case of any wordprocessing work, I save them to PDF when finished with the original word processing file embedded in the PDF to simplify any possible future editing without having to keep track of separate files); the scratch files would be dumped (and the backups would automatically go away as well when I updated my backups).

 

Going back to expense, any time data storage is being budgeted, space for backups should also be included in that budget. When I want to add a new data drive (I'm up to five 4TB data drives), I always budget for four more drives to use for backups for that drive (two for onsite backups and two for offsite backups). My backup scheme is a bit extreme for most people (ok, it's anal, but iit has saved my bacon data more than once) but the minimum for most people should be two backup drives for each data drive. Not allowing for the expense of backups when buying data storage space is like buying an expensive car but not having enough money left to properly maintain it or carry adequate insurance in case the the car gets damaged or totaled by an uninsured motorist an act of nature, stolen, you crash it and lose both the car and create property damage you will be liable for, etc.

 

You mention that universities do not have a lot of money to throw around (which, sadly, is true most of the time). Still, if they don't budget to protect the data storage space they have, they are being irresponsible and foolish. Businesses rarely can recover from data loss if they don't have backups. Look at all the cities that have been hit recently with ransomware and didn't have backups.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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17 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

I wasn't talking about the expense of backups.

Ah sorry, I misunderstood that then. Absolutely agree that, especially if you start right away, fundamentally, backing up large volumes isn't more difficult than backing up a small one.

 

17 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You mention that universities do not have a lot of money to throw around (which, sadly, is true most of the time). Still, if they don't budget to protect the data storage space they have, they are being irresponsible and foolish. Businesses rarely can recover from data loss if they don't have backups. Look at all the cities that have been hit recently with ransomware and didn't have backups.

True, if it's important, back it up.

Crystal: CPU: i7 7700K | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z270F | RAM: GSkill 16 GB@3200MHz | GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti FE | Case: Corsair Crystal 570X (black) | PSU: EVGA Supernova G2 1000W | Monitor: Asus VG248QE 24"

Laptop: Dell XPS 13 9370 | CPU: i5 10510U | RAM: 16 GB

Server: CPU: i5 4690k | RAM: 16 GB | Case: Corsair Graphite 760T White | Storage: 19 TB

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On 9/4/2019 at 4:21 AM, avrona said:

I've never really understood the whole backup culture that exists in the tech world.

 

Quote

 I have no backups of any of my files and thankfully I've never needed one, so I decided to do some research and make a video on the subject.

 

I'm not sure it's really a "culture", but working in an Enterprise environment with thousands of physical servers, and Petabytes of SAN, backups are a must for several reasons. 

- Application/Database data constantly changing requires that you have recent backups in case of catastrophic failure. 

- You avoid downtime not having to completely rebuild and configure VM's/Servers to an applications specification. 

- Data retention is an extremely expensive game, moving it to Tape/Cold Storage is far cheaper.

- Data retention is required by regulatory bodies for such purposes as Security/Data Audits, Tax, Legal disputes, etc....

- Local Pooled data such as RAID doesn't protect you from Viruses, Ransomware, Accidental deletion (happens a lot at work), File corruption during power loss, Physical damage like Fire/Flood, etc....

 

 

On a personal note, I only back up my "cant replace" files. Things such as some of writings, personal photos, backups of websites, apps & scripts i've created, etc...all get duplicated from my Primary PC to my NAS to have a backup. I have 100TB worth of "media" that is in redundant arrays and has a high amount of security configuration so at low risk of losing it but it's not worth backing up as its stuff I can easily acquire again. 

 

I have probably lost around 250GB of files personally over the years, mostly back in the early 00's with my 80-200GB disks. 

Disk failure rates I believe were higher back then from experience. Being a young teen I also accidentally deleted data sometimes. I think probably up until about ~2005. I still have some of my stuff going as far back as 2002. 

 

If you don't want to do backups that's your prerogative. 

If you're going to be running a legitimate business and get to a point of needing to be tax registered, you need to look into what your responsibilities are as far as data retention as it's illegal in many countries to not be able to produce documents if you get audited. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

@avrona Here's a thread that supports the need for backups.

 

Here are a few more.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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On 9/27/2019 at 11:49 PM, avrona said:

Wow such a mature argument, not wanting to listen to someone's opinion, and then just using age as just some metric of knowledge in the subject. 

 

You started a thread asking for opinions and details, then when people give them to you you argue they are being immature.

 

Why?

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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On 10/17/2019 at 2:45 AM, mr moose said:

 

 

You started a thread asking for opinions and details, then when people give them to you you argue they are being immature.

 

Why?

So it's not ok for me me to point out when people are being immature now when they are and are justing ruining the discussion for the rest of us?

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37 minutes ago, avrona said:

So it's not ok for me me to point out when people are being immature now when they are and are justing ruining the discussion for the rest of us?

It would be ok if they were actually doing any of that, but they were just giving you the opinions you asked for. 

 

.

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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Just watching the video... wow the video explains this thread.

 

I love having a backup of my data as i have important stuff i cannot afford to lose.

I have my M.2 drive backup to my data drive, data drive backup to replica drive and then the replica drive back up to my NAS.

 

The NAS runs 'RAID' i use that term loosely as it is RAID 0 and not technically redundant. The other data i have on my NAS is movies and audio which doesnt matter if i lose so that information is unimportant so not worried if i lose it.

 

So i think calling backups unimportant or pointless is wrong... they are worth it to the person depending on the value of their data.

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4 hours ago, avrona said:

So it's not ok for me me to point out when people are being immature now when they are and are justing ruining the discussion for the rest of us?

? ? ? ? The only one ruining this absurd "discussion" of yours is you and your childish refusal to pay attention to people who are far more knowledgeable than you. You need to grow up, little boy. 

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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5 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

? ? ? ? The only one ruining this absurd "discussion" of yours is you and your childish refusal to pay attention to people who are far more knowledgeable than you. You need to grow up, little boy. 

I am paying attention, it's not my fault people are saying things on here that I just can't agree on because they make no sense, so who's the one that needs to grow up?

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10 minutes ago, avrona said:

I am paying attention, it's not my fault people are saying things on here that I just can't agree on because they make no sense, so who's the one that needs to grow up?

I'm sorry to break it to you but it's you that needs to grow up. Friendly tip, when "reviewing" mice one should at least consider trimming their nails. 

Edited by noxdeouroboros
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18 hours ago, avrona said:

I am paying attention, it's not my fault people are saying things on here that I just can't agree on because they make no sense, so who's the one that needs to grow up?

Still you, little boy. You are the only one who is arrogantly making no sense.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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