Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:21:13 +0100 From: Nick Barnes <Nick.Barnes@pobox.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: better disk reliability on a desktop machine Message-ID: <38171.1121430073@thrush.ravenbrook.com>
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I've been running FreeBSD on servers and on my desktop since about
2.2.2. My current desktop machine is set up for cvsup, although I
haven't done 'make buildworld' for a while (uname says 4.9-RELEASE).
I don't have any good backup system in place for this machine. I was
thinking "it's just a desktop". But these days it does have a
boatload of personal data on it (e.g. digital photos). So shoot me.
My main disk (ad0: 114473MB <ST3120022A>) is having hard errors.
Shoddy rubbish: I've only had it a couple of years. Past experience
suggests that it's going to take me three or four days to sort this
out (get a new disk, recover what I can from the old one, repair the
OS installation with cvsup/buildworld/installworld, repair packages
and ports in a similar fashion, figure out what's missing from my
files and scratch around in my inadequate personal backups to recover
what I can).
I don't want to have to do all that ever again, after this iteration.
So I'm thinking I probably want to move to a RAID mirror filesystem,
and keep some sort of quality backups offsite.
1. RAID mirror filesystem questions:
1a: should this be vinum? I have read and can follow the handbook
instructions for a vinum root filesystem.
1b: Will it help to upgrade to 5.x, to get this to go smoothly?
2. taking backups offsite. Seems to me that the best route is a
number of external firewire hard disks. This machine doesn't have
motherboard firewire, so I'll need to get a PCI firewire board.
2a: Recommendations for an affordable PCI firewire board?
2b: Should I upgrade to 5.x for the better firewire hardware support?
3c: Opinions on using firewire hard disks for this at all? Would I be
better off writing DVDs?
3. making backups.
3a: I'm used to dump/restore, but it seems to me that rsync might be a
better tool for this, as it would allow me to mount and browse the
backup. Opinions?
Nick Barnes
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