Server Drive Questions (with used drives)

[frodotheturtle]

so i have a server with a 160gb drive in it. the drive is old and abused so i was plaining on replacing it with a wd red from ebay. as i have generally had bad luck with old drive i was also planing on getting a generic wd drive for cheep and keeping daily or weekly backups. i would need to find some way to automate this process as this is a macOS based server and i would rather keep it on the same os. 

 

Ps the server is being used as a render box as well as a nas. its a 2009 xserve with dual quad cores and a corsair drive in a caddy. it also has a gt730 with the mxm card removed (i still have it but if i leave it in blender won't load).

[schwellmo92]

What's the question?

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, frodotheturtle said:

i would need to find some way to automate this process

Do you mean automating the backup process?

[Windows7ge]

You could write a script and set the script to run periodically.

I don't know back-up software for MacOS.

[frodotheturtle]

On 2/14/2019 at 9:46 AM, schwellmo92 said:

What's the question?

both is that drive config a good idea and ideas on how to automate backing up

[frodotheturtle]

On 2/14/2019 at 9:46 AM, Radium_Angel said:

Do you mean automating the backup process?

yes. I forgot to mention that i want to turn off the backup drive when its not in use. i was looking at getting a standard used drive and only running it for about an hour a week.

[jake9000]

Rsync is a great reliable tool already built into your OS for exactly this purpose. You just need to find the ideal switches for your situation and put the command in the system crontab to automate it on a schedule. Here's a sample. https://ss64.com/bash/rsync_options.html

rsync -av <source> <destination>

[frodotheturtle]

47 minutes ago, jake9000 said:

Rsync is a great reliable tool already built into your OS for exactly this purpose. You just need to find the ideal switches for your situation and put the command in the system crontab to automate it on a schedule. Here's a sample. https://ss64.com/bash/rsync_options.html

rsync -av <source> <destination>

will macOS spin down the drive automagicly when its not in use or is that something i need to configure?

[jake9000]

Yes, there is a pmset utility which controls all the power management options. The command pmset -a disksleep # where # is a number of minutes will configure spindown after however many minutes of idle time.

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, frodotheturtle said:

yes. I forgot to mention that i want to turn off the backup drive when its not in use. i was looking at getting a standard used drive and only running it for about an hour a week.

I'm not certain spinning down the drive will solve anything, except increase wear and tear on said drive as it spins up and down as needed. Any reason you want to do this?

[Pickles von Brine]

You could also just setup an external drive on it using Time Machine. Let that do your backups. Then you if anything ever happens, reinstall OS and run the restore utility to restore your machine from the time machine backup. I have used them many times and they are great. Also does a hourly, daily and weekly backups automatically. Only backs up what has changed. 

[frodotheturtle]

On 2/16/2019 at 8:57 PM, Radium_Angel said:

I'm not certain spinning down the drive will solve anything, except increase wear and tear on said drive as it spins up and down as needed. Any reason you want to do this?

i will only need it once a week for the backup. i don't want to cause any more wear so if just leaving it running is better than cool.

[frodotheturtle]

On 2/16/2019 at 9:17 PM, Lord Xeb said:

You could also just setup an external drive on it using Time Machine. Let that do your backups. Then you if anything ever happens, reinstall OS and run the restore utility to restore your machine from the time machine backup. I have used them many times and they are great. Also does a hourly, daily and weekly backups automatically. Only backs up what has changed. 

does it allow for non system drives as i boot of an ssd but am planing on keeping data on a hard drive

[Pickles von Brine]

You can tell it to backup as many drives as you want. Works fine.