Hard drives!

Backup - its the only way. I back up my NAS once a month to two external drives and keep them off site. I still have all my CD's. I just dont want to have to rip them again !

James

I have had 2 bad experiences with Seagate drives and would not get another (I'm not alone).

A good backup plan is essential and also consider the enterprise versions of hard disks, expensive but far more reliable than the standard domestic variety.

Gerry

Whatever data you are storing it is a good idea to assume the hard disk will fail imminently. This really concentrates the mind on the issue of backups. This is one of the things that puts me off the whole streaming thing. It is bad enough having to think about this for all one’s computer data and now, of course, photos. At least with my music it isn’t currently an issue. For me it couldn’t be any more convenient than to pick out a CD or LP and put it on to play. Sorry, that’s another thread….

Until recently I had all my photos stored on a Western Digital 500GB external hard drive. This has now died. My backup strategy was to copy the most recent ones to the main hard drive then, when there were enough, burn them to DVDs. Unfortunately, when I went to recover the data from the DVD’s some of it was corrupted and couldn’t be read. So I have lost some of my treasured photos.

It is usually possible to recover data from a broken hard drive but, if it is not a simple problem, this can be prohibitively expensive. I was quoted £700 plus VAT for mine, which I couldn’t justify. The DVD disks are currently being investigated and it looks possible that something might be able to be recovered from these, which I gather is unusual. Fingers crossed.

We have now bought a new computer with a 1.5TB internal drive, where I now store photos, and a Seagate 1TB external drive for backups. I really thought I previously had a robust storage and backup strategy but you live and learn.

I know this reply doesn't really belong in the Streaming Audio part of the forum but I hope it might be of use to others anyway.

Chris

If you have data in one place, you have no data, and that goes for SSD.

There is no excuse what so ever for mac users not to have a back up, its built into the OS!

Solid state drives are "faster" but have no proven track record.

There a many experiments to employ "wear levelling" techniques, so as to prolong the useful life of these drives.

The idea is that life spans of solid state devices, from the older cards to the newer so-called "drives" suffered from only being able to read/write to any given area "x" times before failure. Ordinarily, data would be written contiguously, usually meaning that the first areas are used and re-used lots, whilst later areas are potentially left unused (unless you fill the drive right up and access all of your data an equal amount!)

Wear levelling attempts to address this by using the spaces more intelligently, by accessing all available areas equally, rather than working through them sequentially. This, in theory, should prolong the life of the medium.

Personally, I wouldn't like to commit important (irreplaceable) data to them yet.

But then, given suitable backup availability, nearly all data loses its status of "important" in this context.

It becomes more a question of ease of backup. Often it's a pain to do and therefore data written between backups performed may be lost.

Something many people are not aware of is that there are drives available that are designed for prolonged, if not permanent usage.

Such drives used to be targeted at the server market. Since the advent of SATA drives (which use many intelligent methods of their forerunners, the SCSI drives, such as prefetch and queuing methods) these drives are now available at affordable prices for the ever-growing home server market.

These types of drives will offer much better protection, even as a single drive solution, simply because they are more reliable.

Further to this, dedicated backup devices, using multiple drives, are now common place.

These devices offer various levels of redundancy, depending on the amount of available drives.

This is the feature usually referred to as "RAID" (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives)

If one takes some server grade drives, as mentioned above, and populates such a storage device, redundancy against failed drives becomes instantly available.

The commonly available configurations include:

• RAID 0 -  Requires at least 2 drives. The data is "striped" between 2 drives, theoretically giving up to twice the throughput (no data protection)

• RAID 1 - Requires at least 2 drives. The data is "mirrored" between 2 drives, whereby 1 drive is not available as storage, but solely as an instant backup "replacement" drive, should the first fail.

• RAID 0+1 - Usually requires at least 4 drives and offers both of the above.
• RAID 4 - Offers striping of drives meaning faster throughput, but keeping 1 drive just for parity data. One drive may fail without data loss.
• RAID 5 - As RAID 4 but distributes parity data between the drives.
• RAID 6 - As RAID 5 but with double parity. Two drives may fail, simultaneously, without data loss.

This is only intended as a basic run-down of common availability, to give an idea of potential options.

Caveat: RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 are often offered as a built-in solution on domestic motherboards.

This is very often not a proper RAID solution and is usually referred to as "software RAID"

Overheads are placed on the computers CPU and memory, offsetting any throughput gains to an extent.

(Proper hardware based RAID solutions offload this from the CPU/memory of the computer)

I would suggest that investing in a device capable of holding 4 drives and offering RAID level 4 as being a good solution for the basis of a decent media server.

Yes, a single drive, via USB may be used, relying on vigilant data backups in case of failure, but data capacity may become a problem. The higher RAID levels offer extremely simple and fast recuperation of data from drive failure. It's very simple to configure, too.

Madhatter: If you've approached a data recovery company, they usually quote a silly price. If you say the data isn't of sufficient value to warrant the cost, they usually halve the quote. (In my experience anyway)

Also, there are very good software based recovery solutions available that are worth trying first. Some are available now, specially designed for photographic work, etc. Just thought it worth a mention.

Garyi: There has been a backup utility (of sorts) built into Windows for around 10 years too!

The issue isn't so much availability of method, but rather availability of effort!

Backing up is something most of us look into *after* we've lost our data!

Instead of raid scenarios I prefer to use a second (external) drive and just copy new and changed files. This is then stored in a different place. I had occasion at work where the raid controller went faulty and corrupt data was written across all drives!

On solid state drives: Reality is right - they are very fast in general, but operate on a timer: the chips are only guaranteed to accept a certain number of writes, after that, the question is when - not if - the drive will fail. Plus, even the newest controllers seem to have issues that can further shorten the life span. I'm using an Intel 320 as main drive, bought it as soon as they became available, and it's been working great. But there have been widespread issues and at least one firmware update so I'm not taking any chances and backup often.

On RAID: I think a nice solution for pro's, but what if you accidentally pull the wrong drive? Plus what if an exact replacement drive is not available? With a RAID in degraded state common wisdom is you're living on the edge.

For home use, safest approach still seems to be one drive to back-up to, and at least one drive to back-up the back-up drive. Enough to put me off streaming for the near future. I burn the really sensitive stuff (administration for tax authorities etc) to DVD (Actually, does anybody know how robust self-burned DVDs or BR discs are?).

Cheers,

EJ

Got a new car EJ?

Have had it for years... here's a picture from last year, with friends behind the wheel. I'm standing next to the car, and the small kid is my eldest. (To the OP: sorry for highjacking your thread, won't happen again).

EJ

> Backup - its the only way.

Agreed I always back-up to CD. 

 >  At least with my music it isn’t currently an issue. For me it couldn’t be any more convenient than to pick out a LP 

How do you backup LP then? Cassette is a good option. 

Using a drive for backup and then copying to a secondary "backup" drive is kind of like a manual RAID 4 scenario, offloading the automation to the user instead - more prone to failure to adhere to backing up everything, all of the time

This method, coupled with an automation program taking care of the "remembering" to backup works for most people though.

I wonder if many people keep to the manual method simply because they perceive anything like a RAID array to be too difficult to set up?

If so, it's a shame (imho) as configuring such devices is usually another example of a very automated procedure, usually involving just a few simple "mouse or button click" steps on the "users" part.

The reason I mentioned RAID as a viable solution is because many people on here are looking at buying dedicated multi-drive storage devices for their storage, streaming and backup needs.

Many seem to be unaware of the available options already contained within the devices they're looking at....

Also, swapping a failed drive isn't difficult - one usually knows which is the effected drive by the flashing LED, etc

As for availability of suitable replacement drives, one usually dedicates a drive as "spare" within the RAID array, so that that one is used in the event of a drive failure. If, at this time, the drives being used are deemed obsolete, meaning the spare can no longer be replaced, once used, one still has the option of moving to a newer, larger capacity array, like we do all of the time with our USB drives anyway.

PBenny1066: Yes, I agree. Back in the day, nobody stored "off-site" copies of their photo collections, etc.

But then, those who were so terribly unfortunate as to be hit by fire, etc, still lost their data/photo's, whatever...

Nowadays, off-site storage is available with next to no effort to the user - automated "set it & forget it" software, again.

Ease of availability often changes ones stance on things

Also, these days, digital data often has no tangible hardcopy to "fall back on" in cases of disaster. All we have are secondary copies, contained within the backups we make.

Another interesting angle on this predicament is the question of what will happen, over time, to our archived data, as formats change and backward compatibility is lost!?

How many of us still have the ability to read magnetic tape?

Yes, a bit far fetched, I know - so how about floppy disks? The medium of choice 10/15 years ago. Practically all new PC's/laptops now exclude floppy drives.

Firewire (ieee1394 or what Sony liked to call iLink) based external drives? That's going the same way.

How about older PATA (IDE) hard drives? Most new machines now only come with SATA.

The dye used in early CDR's were said to have a life span of some 10 years. Physicists at IBM once quoted 2 to 5 years, for cheap media, until reliability may become suspect enough to necessitate making reproductions to ensure integrity!

If the hardware to read original CDR's is still available in 10 years time, will your discs you've carefully stored away even be readable!?

A very good point as regards longevity ! we all use hard drives which just aren't proving reliable and how long dvds and cds burnt now is an uncertainty too- we have made a progress that in a way seems backwards !

By comparisonI can print photos of the Smiths shot 25 years ago from negatives stored in the loft- will photos shot now and put on discs be readable and who will know what a jpeg is in 25 years ?

You're sensible not paranoid. You need a backup as your two drives are just protecting you from a single drive failure. If you accidentally delete your data or the second drive fails before you can sync with a new drive you've lost your data.

And boxes have been known to fail. A NAS back up onto an external USB drive is easy and doesn't require anything more than setting it off and leaving it, maybe overnight.When we start pushing files around this is the world we inhabit. Standard practice for valuable data but still seen as too fussy and leading edge in some quarters. Having worked with and occasionally lost business critical data for years, the move into streaming and backup management was distinctly old hat to me.

Raid is not backup it just gives extra redundancy (apart from raid 0)

drives can still go bad at the same time as can other components that fail drag the disks with them.

offsite backup is probably best.

sooner or later online storage will probably have enough capacity to hold your music data for a fair price. until that day a simple portable drive is probably best

Not as reliably, but quieter. A back-up is still essential. Why do you need SSD for your VB - very expensive?  Maybe SSD for VB OS and HDD for Music Files. You could get a VB RAID if you're worried about the reliability of HDD. 

Back-up drives can go wrong too. Most people only ever find out when they try to do a restore and it doesn't work. C'est la vie. 

Be cautious of storing things on-line unless you encrypt them: Big Brother is watching you. 

spend £1000s on hif gear. and dont spend  ON BACK UPS.   I have 3 back ups  every so often i run them. then store them correctly and safely  job done   .

So - backup disks - where do you store it?

Being totally paranoid - I have mine in a waterproof plastic in a fireproof box.

People forget the waterproof bit - but I dont like the idea of the fire brigade coming in with hoses and washing my data away ...

keep them somewere the temperature is stable sila gel bags  are used.. my gadget room seems to be it for me. i have two drive carefully packed there the othere one is stored at sisters house. 

i would hate to rip 3300 cds again ug

true for that a regular check of checksum files could help. in the end tho one could wonder if the cumulative upkeep in attention and work does not surpass re-ripping in the first place ^^