RAID vs Copy and Paste

[grangervoldemort]

Can someone please explain to me what the difference is between RAID and copy and pasting? 

I mean why not for eg get 2 x 8TB drives and copy and paste your data onto one from the source and then copy and paste from one of the 8TB onto the other 8TB?

 

Sometimes when I download files and they are large, there is something called ... I think, checksum. Hash something. And it verifies the original files against some kind of I guess database(?) to ensure that bit for bit is there.

Anyone know what I'm talking about and can link me to a article about it?

I assume RAID has some kind of verification built in that allows it to check that every bit of data is there? (Shrugs). 

 

Thank you

[Fasauceome]

Raid is instantaneous and ongoing. Imagine all the work people would have to do to not only copy new files, but also delete files on the copied volume when they make changes.

[Senzelian]

Simply copy and pasting data might be a somewhat justifiable alternative to RAID 1 in very small scales, but as soon as we are talking about more than just a few TB of data, you will need different RAID methods and a lot more drives.

 

[grangervoldemort]

7 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Raid is instantaneous and ongoing. Imagine all the work people would have to do to not only copy new files, but also delete files on the copied volume when they make changes.

But surely you would just copy and paste the changed folder/s and choose the option to delete the current files and paste these new ones?

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

But surely you would just copy and paste the changed folder/s and choose the option to delete the current files and paste these new ones?

That's easy to lose track of if you read and write many gigabytes a day. You have to manually remember which folders it is you manipulated, where they belong, and so on. There are tons of workloads where it's not only unviable to put in the time to do so, but the mental effort required is far too much.

[grangervoldemort]

Just now, fasauceome said:

That's easy to lose track of if you read and write many gigabytes a day. You have to manually remember which folders it is you manipulated, where they belong, and so on. There are tons of workloads where it's not only unviable to put in the time to do so, but the mental effort required is far too much.

I understand in a commercial environment or small office how tedious it would be. What about my other questions? 

Thank you

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

But surely you would just copy and paste the changed folder/s and choose the option to delete the current files and paste these new ones?

If you want to rewrite terabytes of data for no reason, sure, you could do that. OR you could have a raid setup that does it automatically and only overwrites the files that changed.

 

Not to mention any advanced file and folder permissions would get wrecked by a normal copy/paste and certain files don't even allow you to manually copy them. There's a reason you need a binary copy when cloning a drive and you can't just copy and paste your windows installation.

 

On top of that, RAID 1 is just one type of raid and arguably the worst; if you have more than 2 drives you should be using raid 5 or raid 6, which run a parity system that you could never hope of running manually.

[grangervoldemort]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If you want to rewrite terabytes of data for no reason, sure, you could do that. OR you could have a raid setup that does it automatically and only overwrites the files that changed.

 

Not to mention any advanced file and folder permissions would get wrecked by a normal copy/paste and certain files don't even allow you to manually copy them. There's a reason you need a binary copy when cloning a drive and you can't just copy and paste your windows installation.

 

On top of that, RAID 1 is just one type of raid and arguably the worst; if you have more than 2 drives you should be using raid 5 or raid 6, which run a parity system that you could never hope of running manually.

What is parity?

I don't know why I would want to change file permissions etc nor do I really know what they are.

 

What is a binary copy? What is drive cloning (sounds like copy and paste but just verifying bit for bit as I asked about in my OP which I am still hoping someone answers). 

 

What do you mean copy and paste windows installation? If you mean on the same machine are you suggesting that if I had a 128GB drive with Windows installed on it, and got another exact same 128GB drive, but blank, and I copy and pasted the entire contents of the OS drive to the blank drive by plugging both drives into another PC with windows running via SATA cables internally, that the new drive with the now newly copied OS on it, when plugged into the original PC would not work?
Surely it would? It would be a copy and paste of the other drive.....

 

Please explain. Thank you

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

What is parity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_bit

 

6 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

I don't know why I would want to change file permissions etc nor do I really know what they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system_permissions

7 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

What is a binary copy? What is drive cloning (sounds like copy and paste but just verifying bit for bit as I asked about in my OP which I am still hoping someone answers). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning

8 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

What do you mean copy and paste windows installation? If you mean on the same machine are you suggesting that if I had a 128GB drive with Windows installed on it, and got another exact same 128GB drive, but blank, and I copy and pasted the entire contents of the OS drive to the blank drive by plugging both drives into another PC with windows running via SATA cables internally, that the new drive with the now newly copied OS on it, when plugged into the original PC would not work?
Surely it would? It would be a copy and paste of the other drive.....

No, it wouldn't. Copy and paste don't work as you think they do. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try - experimentation is the best way to learn.

39 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

Sometimes when I download files and they are large, there is something called ... I think, checksum. Hash something. And it verifies the original files against some kind of I guess database(?) to ensure that bit for bit is there.

Anyone know what I'm talking about and can link me to a article about it?

I assume RAID has some kind of verification built in that allows it to check that every bit of data is there? (Shrugs).

The checksum can tell you if the file you downloaded is the correct one. It passes the file through a hash function. If the resulting output is identical to the checksum, the file is almost certainly the right one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function

RAID arrays don't use hash functions as far as I'm aware - hash functions can tell you something is different but not what it is. Parity on the other hand can tell you exactly what changed.

14 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

Please explain. Thank you

I'm happy to clarify things for you, but you need to do your own research - I can't explain everything there is to know about RAID and the technologies related to it in a forum post. Most (if not all) of this information is available on wikipedia in more detail than I could ever provide. If you have specific doubts I'll be glad to answer them but generic "please explain everything" posts aren't really the best way to ask.

[grangervoldemort]

25 minutes ago, Sauron said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_bit

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system_permissions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning

No, it wouldn't. Copy and paste don't work as you think they do. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try - experimentation is the best way to learn.

The checksum can tell you if the file you downloaded is the correct one. It passes the file through a hash function. If the resulting output is identical to the checksum, the file is almost certainly the right one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function

RAID arrays don't use hash functions as far as I'm aware - hash functions can tell you something is different but not what it is. Parity on the other hand can tell you exactly what changed.

I'm happy to clarify things for you, but you need to do your own research - I can't explain everything there is to know about RAID and the technologies related to it in a forum post. Most (if not all) of this information is available on wikipedia in more detail than I could ever provide. If you have specific doubts I'll be glad to answer them but generic "please explain everything" posts aren't really the best way to ask.

Didn't ask you to explain everything. Read back and you will see I asked to be linked to things because I didn't even know the name of things such as the has checksum shizzle macnizzle. 

 

From there obviously I am happy to be linked to articles. In order to know something you have to know it. OBVIOUSLY. If I don't know what a certain thing is called I can't google it because I don't know the name and typing in obscure things gets me no closer.

 

But you didn't explain why the copy and paste for a windows installation wouldn't work. I'm sure you could provide a quick summary of why it wouldn't work as well as a reliable article. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. 

[tikker]

2 hours ago, grangervoldemort said:

But you didn't explain why the copy and paste for a windows installation wouldn't work. I'm sure you could provide a quick summary of why it wouldn't work as well as a reliable article. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. 

For technical stuff Wikipedia is usually quite reliable, or at least a decent starting point. As per that page, why copying doesn't work:

Quote

Unlike standard copying functions, disk cloning involves copying hidden and in-use files, and thus presents special challenges, as those types of files are typically not available for copying. Additional complications arise when the process is used for networked computers,

In other words, you cannot copy everything through conventional means. Plus there's also stuff like the MBR that allows you to boot in the first place. A clone is an identical copy, down to the bit.

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, grangervoldemort said:

But you didn't explain why the copy and paste for a windows installation wouldn't work. I'm sure you could provide a quick summary of why it wouldn't work as well as a reliable article. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. 

Copy and paste wouldn't work in that case because:

1) you can't access the boot partition which is required for windows to even start

2) stuff like the paging file is invisible to the user and can't be selected and copied

 

Wikipedia is reliable enough to give you a general overview on a topic, probably more reliable than an anonymous guy on a forum. Incidentally you could have learned what I just explained by reading the pages I linked. If you want a more "reputable" source you should read some academic books on the topic http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

 

Or take a university course like I did.

[grangervoldemort]

48 minutes ago, tikker said:

For technical stuff Wikipedia is usually quite reliable, or at least a decent starting point. As per that page, why copying doesn't work:

In other words, you cannot copy everything through conventional means. Plus there's also stuff like the MBR that allows you to boot in the first place. A clone is an identical copy, down to the bit.

Thank you for your brief explanation. Appreciated. I always thought copy and paste WAS bit for bit. Is something like Acronis a bit for bit cloning software?

[tikker]

20 hours ago, grangervoldemort said:

Thank you for your brief explanation. Appreciated. I always thought copy and paste WAS bit for bit. Is something like Acronis a bit for bit cloning software?

Don't know the software, they mention cloning and imaging, so it's in the possibilities I'd assume. You're not wrong in the sense that copying copies bit for bit (how else would it get on the other drive?), it just doesn't have an identical layout, which is important if you e.g want to duplicate your OS.

21 hours ago, Sauron said:

probably more reliable than an anonymous guy on a forum

Agreed haha  

[grangervoldemort]

I'm not sure what to do. I am starting a YouTube channel and have 7TB of videos across multiple drives of varying capacity and from different years. 

I don't want to spend 2k on a NAS.

I do not require network access to the drives.

I just need more storage space and don't want my files to be split over small random multiple drives as I do now.

 

I need to backup but I have no physical offsite location and backing up via the net and paying for that service is impossible because my upload is 0.7mbps. 

>>>> On that note how do home users use these online services to backup TB's of data?
It's not possible. Here in the UK ISP's never advertise upload speeds because most people don't upload.

So there is no way to get faster upload speed even by upgrading the package from the ISP.

 

 

RAID sounds like an expensive proposition and backup is > RAID.

 

I currently have:

Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB x2 (2010 and 2011 models bought new at the time)

Samsung Spinpoint F3 2TB x2 ((2011 models bought new at the time) - mostly kept off (I have a Lian Li HDD individual power switch thingymobob).

Random old 500GB Hitachi 2006

Random old 250GB Toshiba pulled out from my bros old 2009 Macbook

Random old 250GB Western Digital 2007 that I think came out of a cousins old 2nd hand (he bought it used I think) old laptop. It makes clicking noises but not constant. The clicking noise is about every few minutes or so. No clicking when the drive is in use aka reading or writing. Weird....

 

I have been researching drives for 3 weeks now and no progress. 

SO many options and I don't understand RAID.

 

There's internal NAS drives.... and wtf is up with this... all 8TB+ drives are sold as NAS only drives. I mean you can't get a normal 10TB desktop drive. 

There's things like IronWolf and IronWolf Pro (What's the difference?! I had to Google it to find out the difference. WD should provide that info in plain sight on their site),

there's helium which people have concerns about leaking after which bye bye 10TB of data, 

there's enterprise,

there's NAS box's with drives in them (why the hell are they so expensive??! It's a few drives with a little circuit board with a CPU and an enclosure.

I see I can RAID on my motherboard anyway; why the heck are these RAID box's so much moneysss?),

there's WD My Book Duo, My Book Pro, My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra, My Cloud Pro Series, My Cloud, My Cloud Mirror, 

external drives but none that are 8TB+ that are NOT SMR drives,

oh yeah then theres PMR, SMR,

5400 rpm vs 7200rpm.... it's like wtf. WTF. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Too many options and the respective sites for the products don't explain. Just some marketing bull with nice photos and graphics.

 

I have no idea what to do. 

I ideally want external storage as I might sell my PC which is a CM Stormtrooper. 

Not sure if I should throw away the 2.5'inch drives and the old 500GB hitachi as I don't know how reliable they will be due to their age.

Not sure if I should take out and sell the 3 Samsung drives and replace them with 8TB's or 10TB's then if I do sell my PC I could always put those drives into external enclosures (which would obv have to be a separate purchase which means more ££££).

 

Agh. Any input appreciated.

[grangervoldemort]

Hello?

[tikker]

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

RAID sounds like an expensive proposition and backup is > RAID.

It is and while RAID is not backup, it helps if one drive fails that A) the data is not lost (assuming  you didn't do RAID 0) and B) your workflow doesn't come to a grinding halt, you'll pop in a new drive and it'll start rebuilding while still having access to the data (I think, be it possibly reduced performace).

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

There's internal NAS drives.... and wtf is up with this... all 8TB+ drives are sold as NAS only drives. I mean you can't get a normal 10TB desktop drive.

Probably because at that capacity they're already expensive, so it doesn't make any sense to build "cheap" consumer drives for them. They'll likely be used in a NAS/storage environment anyway if you need these sizes. Besides, there's no issue using them as desktop drives.

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

There's things like IronWolf and IronWolf Pro (What's the difference?! I had to Google it to find out the difference. WD should provide that info in plain sight on their site),

IronWolf is Seagate, not WD... Designation is clear to me non-pro general high-end consumer, pro is prosumer/professional. Look it up if you want to know what "Pro" encases.

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

there's helium which people have concerns about leaking after which bye bye 10TB of data, 

No experience with helium drives, but the failure case: that's why you have backups and maybe RAID.

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

there's enterprise,

There are, for, you've guessed it, enterprise environment (i.e. not general consumers).

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

there's NAS box's with drives in them (why the hell are they so expensive??! It's a few drives with a little circuit board with a CPU and an enclosure.

Because they have drives in them (e.g. 6TB drives are €200 a pop here) and they are very power efficient for what they do and have a tiny footprint. That is expensive to make. It all comes down to how much you care about your data.

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

I see I can RAID on my motherboard anyway; why the heck are these RAID box's so much moneysss?),

That's software RAID. I personally actually don't know why RAID cards are expensive. I'm guessing it has definitely something to do with reliability and probably also something with the RAID algorithms and such. Maybe @Sauron knows?

 

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

there's WD My Book Duo, My Book Pro, My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra, My Cloud Pro Series, My Cloud, My Cloud Mirror

Yes many choices, for everyting, look at how many motherboards there are.

 

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

oh yeah then theres PMR, SMR,

Just ways of how the data is stored on the platters to increase capacity. Google on how much they affect performance if they are what you want.

 

On 26/09/2018 at 8:37 PM, grangervoldemort said:

I just need more storage space and don't want my files to be split over small random multiple drives as I do now.

My guess would be a NAS like a Synology or something the likes would be the easiest to manage. I've heard good things about their software and I am sort of considering buying one. There are excellent guides availble on how to set it up and the LTT forum as well. I'd say get rid of all the small drives and get like a 4-bay NAS or something to start with, that you can fill with w/e size drives you like. Start with two 8 TB drives, and you could already store your entire 7 TB of current stuff on their initially.

Have a play with this to see how capacity works in these systems: https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=

Yes it's expensive (I'm in the same boat in that regard), but some things just don't come cheap. And massive storage (initially) is one of them.

[Sauron]

35 minutes ago, tikker said:

That's software RAID. I personally actually don't know why RAID cards are expensive. I'm guessing it has definitely something to do with reliability and probably also something with the RAID algorithms and such. Maybe @Sauron knows?

I do know, but the last time I tried to help on this thread I got answers that the mods had to delete...

 

I'm glad to tell you though - RAID cards are expensive because they need to handle a lot of drives, so they need a fast controller that can run parity checks and determine what should be written where without causing overhead; most of them also come with some cache memory or a slot for it, as well as a battery to keep the array safe in case of power loss. Other than that, reliability and features obviously play a role as with everything.

 

There's also more to a NAS than just a RAID card - usually they have a beefy NIC and the customized UI also comes at a cost. Personally i find them a little overpriced in most cases, it's often cheaper to grab an older pc and slap a raid card in it - or use ZFS which doesn't require a hardware RAID card and is arguably better. To be honest, RAID nowadays isn't really necessary with advanced file systems like ZFS and BTRFS around - it's basically a legacy system. The only downside to ZFS is that it requires quite a bit of RAM, which ends up being more expensive than a RAID card in a small installation.

[tikker]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I do know, but the last time I tried to help on this thread I got answers that the mods had to delete...

 

I'm glad to tell you though - RAID cards are expensive because they need to handle a lot of drives, so they need a fast controller that can run parity checks and determine what should be written where without causing overhead; most of them also come with some cache memory or a slot for it, as well as a battery to keep the array safe in case of power loss. Other than that, reliability and features obviously play a role as with everything.

 

There's also more to a NAS than just a RAID card - usually they have a beefy NIC and the customized UI also comes at a cost. Personally i find them a little overpriced in most cases, it's often cheaper to grab an older pc and slap a raid card in it - or use ZFS which doesn't require a hardware RAID card and is arguably better. To be honest, RAID nowadays isn't really necessary with advanced file systems like ZFS and BTRFS around - it's basically a legacy system. The only downside to ZFS is that it requires quite a bit of RAM, which ends up being more expensive than a RAID card in a small installation.

Ah that makes sense now. They sound like a hardware form of "easy to learn, hard to master". Finally they're less mysterious as to what they actually do.

I didn't think about the cost of the NIC in a NAS (looks at the 10 Gb Synology). Their high prices are what led me to repurpose my old rig as a storage server in the first place. Be it a little bulkier in footprint and energy usage, it works just fine.

RAID has always seemed a bit complicated to me for home use. I like the protection it can give, but at the same time it feels as if a home situation is just too small scale to justify it. I'm still looking for an effective, not too expensive redundancy solution for my media and backup storage, being JBOD at the moment. It sounds like ZFS may be a solution. I've never looked into it well enough. Thank you for the explanation.

[grangervoldemort]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

It is and while RAID is not backup, it helps if one drive fails that A) the data is not lost (assuming  you didn't do RAID 0) and B) your workflow doesn't come to a grinding halt, you'll pop in a new drive and it'll start rebuilding while still having access to the data (I think, be it possibly reduced performace).

Probably because at that capacity they're already expensive, so it doesn't make any sense to build "cheap" consumer drives for them. They'll likely be used in a NAS/storage environment anyway if you need these sizes. Besides, there's no issue using them as desktop drives.

IronWolf is Seagate, not WD... Designation is clear to me non-pro general high-end consumer, pro is prosumer/professional. Look it up if you want to know what "Pro" encases.

No experience with helium drives, but the failure case: that's why you have backups and maybe RAID.

There are, for, you've guessed it, enterprise environment (i.e. not general consumers).

Because they have drives in them (e.g. 6TB drives are €200 a pop here) and they are very power efficient for what they do and have a tiny footprint. That is expensive to make. It all comes down to how much you care about your data.

That's software RAID. I personally actually don't know why RAID cards are expensive. I'm guessing it has definitely something to do with reliability and probably also something with the RAID algorithms and such. Maybe @Sauron knows?

 

Yes many choices, for everyting, look at how many motherboards there are.

 

Just ways of how the data is stored on the platters to increase capacity. Google on how much they affect performance if they are what you want.

 

My guess would be a NAS like a Synology or something the likes would be the easiest to manage. I've heard good things about their software and I am sort of considering buying one. There are excellent guides availble on how to set it up and the LTT forum as well. I'd say get rid of all the small drives and get like a 4-bay NAS or something to start with, that you can fill with w/e size drives you like. Start with two 8 TB drives, and you could already store your entire 7 TB of current stuff on their initially.

Have a play with this to see how capacity works in these systems: https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=

Yes it's expensive (I'm in the same boat in that regard), but some things just don't come cheap. And massive storage (initially) is one of them.

I know Ironwolf is Seagate. I made a mistake when I typed WD. Sorry. But as I wrote I googled the difference and got my answer. Yet you told me to Google it... 

 

I know what RAID does in that it creates a mirror image within the same enclosure or PC or server. Only I don't know what you mean by reduced performance in that is the performance reduced forever or only while this 'rebuild thing' happens?

 

I need to know how to make backups, which is something you didn't answer. How are consumers doing it? With a 0.7mbps upload it is literally impossible for me to backup my data. And even if I went to say a university and begged for the IT guys there to let me upload my 7TB of data and pay for backblaze (so many costs) and they let me on their super fast fibre connection, if I wanted to access the data again... what then. And I would have to keep asking them. They might do it once for me but I doubt they would again. 

Can't find any data plans in the UK with fast upload speeds. 

 

I thought there are issues using them as desktop drives as they are designed to be on 24x7, so daily on and offs would cause it to die fast?

 

RAID is only useful after you have your data backed up. Say there was a fire or a power surge etc and all your data was lost. RAID wouldn't help with that. 

 

So I really need an offsite backup but don't have any place to store any physical backup I make. So what should I do? I haven't started my YouTube channel yet because my parents abuse me, and most of my videos are me talking about the abuse or audio recordings of the abuse happening. I also have audio recordings of my sister admitting to remembering the violent abuse (which stopped about 4 years ago) and my brother telling me he doesn't care about me and that they abuse me and have abused me. He is my half brother and my mother is my stepmother.

 

If my sister or brother see the videos, they will tell my abusers 'parents' who will then kick me out of the house forever and make me homeless (this time forever). They have made me homeless a few times and I have attempted to run away when I was younger a few times.

This time it will be forever. I have no friends due to their abuse (I physically was not allowed out to hang out with friends after school) and due to the schools they forced me to go to, including an international boarding school in a developing country. 

 

So for now I haven't uploaded a single video so have no income. I rely on their money. And I need cosmetic surgery to fix the damage they inflicted on my face which is what I am saving the money I have now for. I have a severely deviated septum too because of them.

 

I also can't upload my videos, because having recently gone to to a police station to talk about a call I made to them (I call the non emergency number when the abusers mistreat me, but never disclose the historic abuse which is what the police would arrest them for) the officer asked me questions which lead to me telling her I talk about the abuse in my videos. 

She said 'We can see those videos here when you upload them, so think about that'. Because I explained to her why i haven't uploaded. So now ontop of my brother and sister potentially seeing them, the police will see them and arrest my abusers. 

The problem with that is the police will question them for maybe a day or maybe 2 days keeping them in custody, but then they will let them go with restrictions after a day or two. At which point my abusers will kick me out forever. My life, ambitions, desires and dreams will be destroyed and I will have no more reason to live. 

I also do not have a degree due to their abuse.

I have reached out to Jim Chapman and Superwoman who are both YouTuber's. Famous ones. I know neither of them would recieve my messages personally, but in the case of Jim Chapman it is a specific girl, a 'PR' I guess, that accepts messages. She blocked me from messaging her after I sent my emails requesting Jim's help and explaining my situation.

I wish Linus would help me. Never reached out to him though.

 

So I need to keep costs down. RAID is like £1,000+ for like 10TB of space. Two 10 TB hard drives (and they can be used individually) is about £400.

 

I know the difference between PMR and SMR. That para was to point out that there is too much choice. With motherboards it's fairly straight forward. You know what features you need and you look for a mobo that has those features. 

 

With hard drives it's lots of marketing BS, companies witholding info to force people to buy SMR drives etc. I stumbled across the SMR info. No companies list that in the tech specs of drives. On purpose. 

 

All those dries by WD are confusing. It's not obvious like it is with motherboards what the differences are. I used to have the desire and time to learn about tech. Now with the home situation getting worse and me being mostly interested in girls, not tech I have little desire to learn about it. And it's not like I haven't attempted. RAID seems to be very confusing and difficult to understand as it's complicated. Heck even hard drive choices are out of this world now. Back in 2011 or 2012 when I last bought a drive, things weren't this complicated. Or I just have more requirements compared to now. 

 

I also get to eat once or twice a day and my stepmother has always refused to teach me how to cook and I am usually too scared to go into the kitchen to try. Learning to cook takes years. It's made much more complicated with my research to get a good body and because I am an ectomorph. My daily calorie requirement just for my body functions to work correctly is higher than most due to my body type. So the effects of calorie deficit are much more severe for me at a lower calorie amount compared to most. It's one of the reasons I lay in bed all day. All day. everyday. 

 

The research into macros and calories etc from YouTuber's like Merijn and Zac Perna only add to making it almost impossible to learn how to cook. I come from an Indian family, so good tasting food is what I am used to. Bland food makes me feel depressed and I can't eat much of it nor can I eat it fast.

Yet I go to a mexican restaurant sometimes and I can eat two of their large delicious burritos in 8-10 mins each. Comes with Guac and beans and a tiny salad on the side. Very highly rated place and the food is amazing.

Fitness Tuber's cook food in a very bland disgusting way. But it was only after following their recipes, often using store bought sauces or just a little simple seasoning, that I realised how utterly vile the way they cook their food is.

If you are born into a family that uses lots of spices in all meals, there is no going back. You can't have a disgusting miserable bland diet. 

What we eat has a profound effect on our psychological state and therefore feelings. It also effects how slow or fast and how much or little of it you can eat. 

After eating a chicken breast and some plain white rice, I am left starving. 

 

I tried asking my stepmother just today to teach me how to cook and she said no. She became psycho at one point. 

 

I tried audio recording it, but when I came back up to my room I saw that only 5 seconds had recorded because I vlog on my phone and all my drives are now full. I have only 1GB left on internal memory and the 119GB I have on the SD card is full. I didn't realise nor think in the moment I recorded, where the recording would be written to. So only 5 seconds recorded.

 

I need drive space ASAP, and my data is imperative should I take them to court and ofc for my channel.  

[Lady Fitzgerald]

@grangervoldemort I glanced through this thread and it appears what you want is to just protect your data and no kind of RAID will do that for you so, unless continuous operation should a drive fail is essential for you, I would forget using RAID. Making and maintaining backups doesn't have to be rocket science (leave that to Elon Musk).

 

For data to be reasonably safe, it needs to exist in three, different places. For most people, this is on the computer, on an onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup drive. For a drive to be a backup drive, it needs to be kept disconnected from the computer and powered down except when updating the backup.

 

An onsite backup is one that is stored in the general vicinity of the computer but not in sight of the computer, such as in a drawer or closet several feet from the computer or in nother room.

 

An offsite backup is stored somewhere other than the building the computer is in. The further away, the better (up to a point; you don't want to have to spend hours getting to it). I recommend using a safe deposit box at a bank but, if that isn't possible, then a trusted friend or relative's house would be an alternative.

 

Onsite and offsite backups should be swapped out as frequently as practical to keep both as up to date as possible.

 

I recommend keeping the OS and programs on their own drive or separate partition and data on its own drive(s) or partition to simplify backups.

 

Imaging is the best method of backing up the OS and programs drive or partition. An image is similar to a poto negative and is used to retore your OS and programs to the state they were in when the image was taken. For imaging, I recommend using Macrium Reflect Free.

 

While imaging is necessary for backing up and restoring the OS and programs (cloning can also be done but it's slower and wastes far too much space), it's too inefficient and cumbersome for backing up data. For that, I recommend folder/file syncing. When set to Mirror mode (not the same as RAID 1), a folder/file syncing program will copy and data on the source drive (the oine in your computer) that isn't on the destination drive (aka the backup drive) to the destination drive and any data on the destination drive that isn't on the source drive will be deleted from the destination drive. The source drive is never touched. The result is essentially an exact copy of the source drive on the destination drive.

 

Unlike imaging, folder/file syncing can be very fast because only data added, changed, or deleted are involved in an update.

 

For folder/file syncing, I recommend FreeFileSync. It also has a feature called Versioning. When enabled (which I strongly recommend), Versioning will send deleted files to a user designated versioning folder or drive. This feature will protect you from accidental deletions or enable recovering files that become corrupted. 

[grangervoldemort]

9 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

@grangervoldemort I glanced through this thread and it appears what you want is to just protect your data and no kind of RAID will do that for you so, unless continuous operation should a drive fail is essential for you, I would forget using RAID. Making and maintaining backups doesn't have to be rocket science (leave that to Elon Musk).

 

For data to be reasonably safe, it needs to exist in three, different places. For most people, this is on the computer, on an onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup drive. For a drive to be a backup drive, it needs to be kept disconnected from the computer and powered down except when updating the backup.

 

An onsite backup is one that is stored in the general vicinity of the computer but not in sight of the computer, such as in a drawer or closet several feet from the computer or in nother room.

 

An offsite backup is stored somewhere other than the building the computer is in. The further away, the better (up to a point; you don't want to have to spend hours getting to it). I recommend using a safe deposit box at a bank but, if that isn't possible, then a trusted friend or relative's house would be an alternative.

 

Onsite and offsite backups should be swapped out as frequently as practical to keep both as up to date as possible.

 

I recommend keeping the OS and programs on their own drive or separate partition and data on its own drive(s) or partition to simplify backups.

 

Imaging is the best method of backing up the OS and programs drive or partition. An image is similar to a poto negative and is used to retore your OS and programs to the state they were in when the image was taken. For imaging, I recommend using Macrium Reflect Free.

 

While imaging is necessary for backing up and restoring the OS and programs (cloning can also be done but it's slower and wastes far too much space), it's too inefficient and cumbersome for backing up data. For that, I recommend folder/file syncing. When set to Mirror mode (not the same as RAID 1), a folder/file syncing program will copy and data on the source drive (the oine in your computer) that isn't on the destination drive (aka the backup drive) to the destination drive and any data on the destination drive that isn't on the source drive will be deleted from the destination drive. The source drive is never touched. The result is essentially an exact copy of the source drive on the destination drive.

 

Unlike imaging, folder/file syncing can be very fast because only data added, changed, or deleted are involved in an update.

 

For folder/file syncing, I recommend FreeFileSync. It also has a feature called Versioning. When enabled (which I strongly recommend), Versioning will send deleted files to a user designated versioning folder or drive. This feature will protect you from accidental deletions or enable recovering files that become corrupted. 

Now this is the kind of response I was looking for. To the point, not telling me to Google stuff. 

 

I don't have any friends due to my abusive parents and all family members are like that within my 'family'. We have another house next to next door where my aunty and uncle live, but they wouldn't be happy with me leaving any of my stuff there, and they don't understand tech so likely wouldn't be gentle with it if say they needed to clean the area it was placed in. 

Also I'm scared of forgetting it exists. What if I moved and it was just sitting there. The uncle and aunty won't live there forever. My abusers (parents) rent the house to them. At one point they will leave I guess.

Safe deposit boxes are almost non existent now here in the UK. Banks stopped doing them years ago.

 

So my issue is a backup I create on a hard drive I physically own cannot be stored anywhere other then in this house. I was thinking a fire/water proof case would be ideal to keep the drives in, in my room, so that in the event of such a thing I could pick it up and run. 

 

Can you please explain how file syncing is different from RAID? I Googled it but couldn't find answers.

 

Of course I MUST have a backup of my data online. Any ideas on what I should do for this? Do you think begging the universities IT department to let me drive down there and upload my files on their super fast connection is worth doing (they'll probably say no, but worth trying... right?). 

I did find a faster upload service here in the UK but it's for businesses. It's £300 A MONTH. 

 

What do you think of this:

http://www.1mtb.com/how-to-get-50-tb-free-cloud-storage-get-huge-gbs-of-free-cloud-storage/

 

I wonder if storing your data in a different country, especially ones that have an iron curtain as does China, would mean your data falls under their laws? 

Is that free file syncing software able to sync automatically like the WD Duo does? 

 

I find this all quite overwhelming and confusing.

 

I was originally thinking that if I get a 10TB drive, then I will backup all my data to it, then I still need to organise a lot of my data, so I would organise it on the source drive, then copy over the backed up files on the backup 10TB drive with the newly organised files. 

I guess file syncing would still replace those files I have moved around, but saves me from having to write all that data again?

 

With versioning would I need to have yet another drive for that purpose of equal size? so 10TB for 10TB?

 

Also do you think SMR drives are worth using for backups? I'm scared the shingle recording method will prove unreliable in the long term and have read people get unusable write speeds of like 10-20mbps. 

And I am scared they will be especially slow should I need to make changes to data on it.

But they are cheap. I can get a 8TB 'XBOX' Seagate Backup Plus for £165. I assume them labelling it as XBOX makes no difference. It will still be formatted as NTFS and the drive will be the same as non-xbox version right? 
The XBOX version is £5 cheaper....

 

Thank you

[W-L]

Please keep posts on topic and relevant only to the question at hand. 

 

-Thread Cleaned- 

[grangervoldemort]

16 minutes ago, W-L said:

Please keep posts on topic and relevant only to the question at hand. 

 

-Thread Cleaned- 

What did you clean up? Looks IS relevant. Life is about survival. Part of survival is reproduction. Reproduction requires attraction. Attraction is dependent on looks. Looks are due to genetics and indicate genetic quality. The better looking you are the better your life. Business and money are arbitrary. Everything, yes even hard drives point back toward survival. 

 

-Red Pill-

[grangervoldemort]

Hello?