RAID systems experience?

[marknorton]

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As the posts show, there are many preferred solutions. The key requirement is to maintain multiple copies of your data to not only guard against drive failure but accidental deletion as well. Some of the solutions desribed here give protection against a drive failure but not accidental deletion.

 

I use two ReadyNAS RAID 5 boxes, the larger one having 6 1.5Tb drives giving me something like 7Tb of protected disk space. I backup every night (monthly full backup with daily incrementals) with 3 generations of data so that I have 90 system snap-shots to retrieve data from.

 

It's vital, by the way, to have replacement drives immediately available for any RAID system because your protection is seriously compromised (and may be none) after a single drive failure. I have two 1.5Tb drives on semi-hot standby - powered on once every few weeks.

[usayit]

<< Puts his Disaster Recovery Specialist hat on

 

RAID is not a replacement for Backups.

 

RAID is "High Availability" deployed by business units that require limited downtime in the event failure within the storage unit.

 

Backups is "Data Protection" meaning a path to recover data that is either lost or corrupted.

 

 

I would surmise that most of us wouldn't place "High Availability" as a high priority. If I didn't have access to my family photos for a day to a week, its no big deal. What is of high priority are backups to make sure there is no data loss. I'm thinking along the lines "wparsonsgisnet" posted... with a couple disks rotated to my work office just in case my home experiences a flood or fire.

 

Once case study is "JournalSpace". They lost all their data relying only on RAID. Do a search, it was talked about a bit when it happened.

 

JournalSpace Drama: All Data Lost Without Backup, Company Deadpooled