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Post by brubacca on Feb 23, 2024 11:48:14 GMT -5
Just a public service announcement to check your drives and Backups. Hard drives do actually fail from time to time. Make sure you have redundancy and Backups.
My story is simple. Lost a single drive from my Raid 5 array. Also have backups. Didn't lose data. Think it's only the third or fourth time I had a pc/drive failure since the 90s.
Figure it's a good time to remind people to make sure you have a back up strategy.
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Post by marcl on Feb 23, 2024 12:12:50 GMT -5
Just a public service announcement to check your drives and Backups. Hard drives do actually fail from time to time. Make sure you have redundancy and Backups. My story is simple. Lost a single drive from my Raid 5 array. Also have backups. Didn't lose data. Think it's only the third or fourth time I had a pc/drive failure since the 90s. Figure it's a good time to remind people to make sure you have a back up strategy. Sound advice! I recently had a failure of my primary Synology NAS. It was a five bay box with a five bay expansion box, configured Synology Hybrid RAID 2 ... two drive redundancy. I also have a full backup in a separate Synology box. One day the primary failed to show up on the network. I did all the troubleshooting and could not get it to come up. I ordered a replacement for both the primary and extension two boxes, the newest models (they were 7 years old running 24/7). I pulled all the drives, started the new boxes to be sure they showed up on the network, with power off inserted the drives in the exact order they were in the old boxes .... and in 10 minutes it was up and running ... passed all diagnostics! |
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Post by brubacca on Feb 23, 2024 12:15:50 GMT -5
Glad to hear I'm not the only one with 2 NAS Boxes! I use Asustor, but same thought.
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Post by LuisV on Feb 23, 2024 13:15:49 GMT -5
For sure, very sound advise!! I'm actually in the process of building a NAS for my dad; ultimate plan is to implement a site to site VPN between our homes and perform a selective backup between his NAS and mine. To keep data from visibility, the backup will be encrypted.
Keep in mind that brand new drives can fail shortly after being unboxed. If your NAS has the capability, perform a "preclear" on the new drive; your software may call it something else, but it's basically a process of writing zeros across the entire drive... a very good stress test. Depending on size, this process can take anywhere between 6 - 18hrs.
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Post by marcl on Feb 23, 2024 13:22:36 GMT -5
For sure, very sound advise!! I'm actually in the process of building a NAS for my dad; ultimate plan is to implement a site to site VPN between our homes and perform a selective backup between his NAS and mine. To keep data from visibility, the backup will be encrypted. Keep in mind that brand new drives can fail shortly after being unboxed. If your NAS has the capability, perform a "preclear" on the new drive; your software may call it something else, but it's basically a process of writing zeros across the entire drive... a very good stress test. Depending on size, this process can take anywhere between 6 - 18hrs. Yes! I believe the data scrubbing that can be done periodically in the Synology boxes is similar. Also the Synology backup software runs a backup integrity check on a schedule. BTW .... WD Red drives have been running flawlessly for 7 years. |
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Post by LuisV on Feb 23, 2024 13:33:36 GMT -5
Agreed... been a fan of WD Reds for 10 - 15 years; maybe more... yup, I'm dating myself.   At one point of time, I purchased six HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) drives; at the time they were also well regarded 7500rpm NAS drives; WD eventually purchased them and I believe they evolved into the WD Red Pros. |
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Post by brubacca on Feb 23, 2024 14:54:37 GMT -5
I just started migrating from WD Red to Ironwolf.
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Post by 405x5 on Feb 23, 2024 15:11:22 GMT -5
Wow, you guys are so technologically advanced in this department compared to me that it’s embarrassing… Looks like you have your bases well covered.
The only backup I know is that thing behind the steering wheel that says “R”
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Post by brubacca on Feb 23, 2024 17:00:46 GMT -5
Considering the volumes of pictures that are digital I had to dig in and figure it out.
This can be as simple as having a pc with all the files and backing up to an external hard drive.
In addition to all our photos…
I run an extensive video and audio library that I have carefully and at great time expense ripped from my originals. This was we have audio, movies and TV shows that can be streamed through the house.
That is why I have the complex setup.
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Post by marcl on Feb 23, 2024 17:07:31 GMT -5
Considering the volumes of pictures that are digital I had to dig in and figure it out. This can be as simple as having a pc with all the files and backing up to an external hard drive. In addition to all our photos… I run an extensive video and audio library that I have carefully and at great time expense ripped from my originals. This was we have audio, movies and TV shows that can be streamed through the house. That is why I have the complex setup. Yes it gets complicated. People always say to me "just do cloud backup". And I remind them that between us my wife and I have 25TB of data, mostly photo files. Hundreds of thousands. To do a cloud backup? Years, maybe? |
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Post by 405x5 on Feb 23, 2024 17:48:00 GMT -5
In 1995 I had a Quantex system running windows 95. The hard drive was 3.2 gig and that was considered pretty large in those days lol
Fast forward to terabyte and for the life of me I had to look it up to figure out what the hell that was lol (again).
So at this point, I have external terabyte, hard drives and I don’t make a big deal out of it…… I checked to make sure everything is working and if it gets full out, I’ll swap it out for a new one they’re not terribly expensive, freshen everything up and good to go
I’m a hard-core fan of the physical disk for movies. My Blu-ray/DVD collection).
Streaming is almost a necessary evil, although I have it working very well at home.
I really do need to get my act together with respect to collected photographs…… Too many of them are sitting up there, unviewed on the PC.
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Post by brubacca on Feb 23, 2024 19:14:22 GMT -5
In 1995 I had a Quantex system running windows 95. The hard drive was 3.2 gig and that was considered pretty large in those days lol Fast forward to terabyte and for the life of me I had to look it up to figure out what the hell that was lol (again). So at this point, I have external terabyte, hard drives and I don’t make a big deal out of it…… I checked to make sure everything is working and if it gets full out, I’ll swap it out for a new one they’re not terribly expensive, freshen everything up and good to go I’m a hard-core fan of the physical disk for movies. My Blu-ray/DVD collection). Streaming is almost a necessary evil, although I have it working very well at home. I really do need to get my act together with respect to collected photographs…… Too many of them are sitting up there, unviewed on the PC. Went to college with a 30 MB MFM hard drive (Yes, Megabyte). It failed in like 3 months. Upgraded to a 85MB SCSI hard DRIVE.. DOS 3.xx wouldn't partition that high so I formatted it as 3 drives. An electrical engineering student said to me "You'll never need that much storage." Also figured the chips out to upgrade that pc to 1 MB of Ram.. It was a 286!!!! |
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Post by 405x5 on Feb 23, 2024 20:18:54 GMT -5
In 1995 I had a Quantex system running windows 95. The hard drive was 3.2 gig and that was considered pretty large in those days lol Fast forward to terabyte and for the life of me I had to look it up to figure out what the hell that was lol (again). So at this point, I have external terabyte, hard drives and I don’t make a big deal out of it…… I checked to make sure everything is working and if it gets full out, I’ll swap it out for a new one they’re not terribly expensive, freshen everything up and good to go I’m a hard-core fan of the physical disk for movies. My Blu-ray/DVD collection). Streaming is almost a necessary evil, although I have it working very well at home. I really do need to get my act together with respect to collected photographs…… Too many of them are sitting up there, unviewed on the PC. Went to college with a 30 MB MFM hard drive (Yes, Megabyte). It failed in like 3 months. Upgraded to a 85MB SCSI hard DRIVE.. DOS 3.xx wouldn't partition that high so I formatted it as 3 drives. An electrical engineering student said to me "You'll never need that much storage." Also figured the chips out to upgrade that pc to 1 MB of Ram.. It was a 286!!!! All right, then fossilized like me! And Dos to boot no pun intended |
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