Ultra reliable hard drives??

[Abz]

I think a lot of NAS enclosures run a version of Linux, and they probably use ext2/3/4 to format their disks. E.g. I've got a fairly old DLink 2-bay NAS, which I've hacked. That runs Linux, and the disks are formatted with ext2, so if anything happened to the DLink I reckon I could connect them to any Linux installation and read them, or use something like ext2fsd to read them in Windows.

 

Yep, an plenty of Linux OS's which you can do the recovery from if need be. Good point though.

[Delboy52]

I had a raid box fail on me once and both good HDD's within the box were unreadable to Windows. A pop up box to format them was all I got. Didn't realise they may have been in EXT2 format! Thanks for that info Steve. The box was RMA'd so no data was lost when the HDD's were re-inserted.

 

I currently have a 2 bay Netgear NAS box with 2 Seagate 3TB NAS HDD's raid1 wired to a network switch. It has a USB3 port to connect the old USB3 raid box with a further 2 HDD's and both boxes can be accessed as independent network drives from any PC, smartphone, tablet etc in the house. The NAS box has cloud and offsite access options but I haven't set those up. It didn't cost too much and has been running well for years as a wedding photography storage/backup.

 

1 x Netgear ReadyNAS 102 Sata300 - £90

2 x Seagate NAS 3tb - £184

[Chris Wilson]

OK, I now have two new matching "Enterpise" standard 1 tb SATA III drives, one has data on it that I saved in part from the dying drive. Can I stick them both in the PC and set the bios to use mirrored RAID and the one with data on will be copied automagically to the other virgin one? What about formatting it, do I need to do that first? I assume the PC won't interfere with the working SSD C: Drive and leave that untouched, with the OS and some applications on it? Cheers. I may add a NAS box as well later.

[RobUK]

Might be worth considering a ups, it could be the cause of failing hardware

[stevie_b]

Will it copy automagically? The answer is maybe. Hence I strongly recommend you take a backup of the data first. Reading the forums for my NAS box (I know you're setting it up inside your PC, but the principle still applies), it's got a reputation of toasting the data when you replace one of the two drives with a fresh one. It really depends on the implementation of the RAID, and it's not predictable enough to say without exact details.

 

Your C: SSD should be untouched, as long as you take care. But I suppose it also depends on the RAID options given to you in the BIOS. I would think it would ask which 2 disks to RAID together. This point would be a bad time to be distracted by anything.

[Pete]

Can I stick them both in the PC and set the bios to use mirrored RAID and the one with data on will be copied automagically to the other virgin one?

Technically, yes (note the serial number of each drive so you know which is the good drive). STRONGLY recommend a backup of that data first though.

What about formatting it, do I need to do that first?

The firmware should make a block by block copy of the one drive to the other - so your blank mirrored 'target' drive requires no prep.

I assume the PC won't interfere with the working SSD C: Drive and leave that untouched, with the OS and some applications on it?

You'd hope so wouldn't you? Windows can do some odd things in that respect.

Check the boot order of your drives, often they'll be set to boot off RAID first.

 

RAID on motherboards isn't the greatest - usually software driven and can be slow, but should be fine for your purpose for now. I tend not to 100% rely on them until I've been running for a month or so.

You'll need to ensure your motherboard drivers are correctly installed (any exclamation marks in device manager?) along with any RAID tools the manufacturer may supply could be useful for diagnostics.

 

The BIOS on boot should flag any RAID failures, but if you don't boot often then the RAID software could be good if available to advise you.

 

Give me a shout if you need help.

[Chris Wilson]

OK, not a job for after the pub then! Thanks everyone. You may be getting a call Pete.... But not at 12.45 AM though, no worries!

[Pete]

OK, not a job for after the pub then! Thanks everyone. You may be getting a call Pete.... But not at 12.45 AM though, no worries!

 

That's no problem.....The phone automatically goes silent at bed time.

[Chris Wilson]

Pete got the inevitable call, and being the gent he is talked for a long time helping me resolve the fact the C: drive no longer booted. Long story cut short, I have two matched, new, Enterprise class SATA III drives in a software RAID 1 and a now booting C Drive which is an SSD. OS Windows 7 64 bit Pro

 

 

Having wasted a lot of time, and some money on flaky SATA hard drives failing or starting to fail, and wanting to be able to store a few terrabytes of data for many years I am coming to the conclusion having a box of ten year old hard drives in the attic or elsewhere, wondering if they'll boot up or not, has made me look at alternatives. BluRay hasn't got enough storage per disc even at 50Gb per disc, and there seems no real data as to how long this medium lasts under average storage conditions. Tape seems the answer, but it comes at a price. I am thinking LTO5 drives, what sort of money do I need to be looking at for a new known brand drive, and has anyone experience of them in a home office environment? So now I use a software RAID1 on my main PC, but I have several gigabytes of photos and need to get them onto a reliable long term storage medium.

 

I will then not need to run the tape often, I am happy in the knowledge I have a couple of copies of stuff not inside a mechanical device that's likely to go AWOL if dropped or subject to knocks, or just plain decides not to spool up. I see new Tandberg tape drives on Ebay at £750. Ouch, never thought I'd be thinking in such sums, but it seems tempting to get a pro standard medium and put all this messing behind me... Pete will probably agree! Thanks Pete, you're a star Even if he is guilty of ageism in choosing what he did for my birthday gift

 

Thanks.

[Wez]

Something like this

 

[Digsy]

Personally I think that having a backup in a seperate box (which could still be a simple 2-bay RAID NAS or DAS) is a far simpler and cheaper solution than investing in a dedicated tape backup and hoping that is and when you actually need to use it in many years time, the media and the hardware to read it are still OK and supported by whatever OS you are using at the time.

 

I'm just talking personal and SOHO use here, I have no idea about commercial solutions.

 

The way I see it: Backup on 2-bay NAS may use "flaky" SATA drives but when one fails you will get a warning so you don't lose any data, and they are relatively cheap to replace. Also the whole NAS can be upgraded for a couple of hundred rather than forking out £750 for a second hand tape solution.

 

Some of the files on my PC are as old as my first PC (1991) and I've only had a proper backup solution for the last 5 years or so. Mind you I've never actually had a hard drive go pop on me at home. Two at work though, so I realise it is a pain in the backside when it does happen.

[Wez]

blah blah blah blah.............

 

[Chris Wilson]

I think people are misunderstanding my wants. I want to store data away from the PC, long term. My worry is old hard drives, not having been powered up for years, won't work, or they will have "issues" I read that DAT tapes have at least a thirty year storage time in anything approaching sensible conditions. I want to take stuff off a mechanically fragile hard drive to store it. Optical sounds ideal, but capacity and doubts over long term degradation make made me Google modern tape drives The Tandberg is brand new, not used, and tapes are quite cheap. When the market is offered a 50 year away from the home PC storage option with the ability to store many terrabytes per "disc" or whatever inert device, and the guaranteed hardware support to still read it after that time, people will flock to it. Hard drive capacity currently outruns affordable inert storage media quite grossly.

 

 

I have an issue though, seems modern tape drives are SAS. And I don't know if they can be run from an adapter card off a SATA type "normal" motherboard...?

[stevie_b]

I see. For long-term offline archiving, I would also recommend tape. As Digsy said, over a timespan of years you'd need to keep a weather eye to check that support for the tape format that you choose is still readily available.

 

I researched this several years ago, and like you, found that CDs/DVDs have questionable long-term stability. I came across archive CD/DVDs but as you pointed out, their capacity is small.

 

I don't know much about SAS, but I would think that if your motherboard doesn't support it, you'd be able to add support by fitting a SAS controller card for that.

[Abz]

I think people are misunderstanding my wants. I want to store data away from the PC, long term. My worry is old hard drives, not having been powered up for years, won't work, or they will have "issues" I read that DAT tapes have at least a thirty year storage time in anything approaching sensible conditions. I want to take stuff off a mechanically fragile hard drive to store it. Optical sounds ideal, but capacity and doubts over long term degradation make made me Google modern tape drives The Tandberg is brand new, not used, and tapes are quite cheap. When the market is offered a 50 year away from the home PC storage option with the ability to store many terrabytes per "disc" or whatever inert device, and the guaranteed hardware support to still read it after that time, people will flock to it. Hard drive capacity currently outruns affordable inert storage media quite grossly.

 

 

I have an issue though, seems modern tape drives are SAS. And I don't know if they can be run from an adapter card off a SATA type "normal" motherboard...?

 

I actually have tapes from 1992 stored in a warehouse that has humidity & temperate control with sensors and all sorts. It is great but we had a restore request from the early 90's when we was running Banyan VINES systems. Due to the tapes which optical tape we neither had drives which still worked nor systems which could extract the data. We ended up paying a company £35k to restore the data because some data was needed for a court case. Not all the tapes were readable and we was left with some corruption but we got the crucial data back.

 

Tape would be the cheapest form of storage and also it is supposed to be a 30 year shelf life like you say but that massively depends on how it is stored. They do not like varied temperatures nor places where you would get vibrations i.e a house located near a railway or building site. Though pound for pound they are a good solution, a few years ago some 'experts' were saying that "tape is dead" it is far from dead. We still use it to archive important data and for long term storage\backups.

 

Though you need to question you produce enough data to warrant a whole tape setup. If it is just one off, perhaps send it to a company to put onto tape? Checking restore process.

[Pete]

Even if he is guilty of ageism in choosing what he did for my birthday gift

 

It said "Aged to Perfection" on it!

I thought I was being quite generous with that selection.

[Pete]

As for archive solutions - really not sure.

I'd go with the pair of drives and replace/upgrade them every couple of years to new drives route.

Keep the old drives / cycle every two years so you have at least four drives with the data on at any one time.

Cheaper in the long run, but no good if you're planning on buying a time capsule in the garden.

[Chris Wilson]

Just a final thank you all you helpful folk. Now running a SCSI LTO4 tape drive for backups, 800Gb per tape uncompressed, and a theoretical 1.6Tb compressed, although obviously many files like jpegs won't compress any further. Got it cheap off Ebay, replaced the power supply caps, ran a cleaning tape through it and it's been great. LTO4 is a bit old hat to the IT people, but for home office 800Gb is plenty per tape, and new tapes come up cheaply on Ebay from time to time. It's a big and noisy beast, but I am a bit deaf and I run it at night, so no worries! I was amazed to see the build quality of the drive compared to the average DVD writer, I can see why they are so dear new! Cheers all.