Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 09:07:40 +1000 From: Antony Mawer <fbsd-questions@mawer.org> To: Jonathan McKeown <jonathan@hst.org.za> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Removing removable ATA hard drives Message-ID: <4525903C.7060700@mawer.org> In-Reply-To: <200610051131.10157.jonathan@hst.org.za> References: <200610051034.35795.jonathan@hst.org.za> <200610051056.52744.jonathan@hst.org.za> <200610050900.k9590TSJ011483@banyan.cs.ait.ac.th> <200610051131.10157.jonathan@hst.org.za>
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On 5/10/2006 7:31 PM, Jonathan McKeown wrote: > I should probably have said: we don't currently have offsite backups (we've > exceeded the capacity of our tape device and our budget), and the quick-fix > solution is dumping to this hard drive and then pulling it out and taking it > home. As such the removability is key to its intended function. I can't keep > dropping the main fileserver to fiddle with it, and the alternative in terms > of testing is to set up another box with the particular 4.9-STABLE snapshot > running on this server (to eliminate OS version-related variable effects). I looked into these options, and in the end opted for an external firewire hard drive for *ONE* of my offsite backup systems. I initially looked at USB, but found it to be somewhat flakey and didn't feel comfortable relying on it. I installed a firewire add-in card in the backup server, and am then using GELI to encrypt the data on the drive. I have a script which automates the attaching to the geli volume, mounting the filesystem, rsyncing from various sources, and then unmounting the filesystem... after which I can turn off the drive and take it offsite with me. This is on FreeBSD 6.1, so I don't know what, if any, firewire support is available on 4.x... ATA "hotswap", from what I gather, is only possible with specific hardware support, and even then is not something that it was originally designed for (as far as I am aware)... Hope you or others find some of this helpful! --Antony
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