From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 15 12:21:19 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E361A16A41C for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:21:19 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nb@ravenbrook.com) Received: from raven.ravenbrook.com (raven.ravenbrook.com [193.82.131.18]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EF0243D49 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:21:18 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nb@ravenbrook.com) Received: from thrush.ravenbrook.com (thrush.ravenbrook.com [193.112.141.145]) by raven.ravenbrook.com (8.12.6p3/8.12.6) with ESMTP id j6FCLEXi075305 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:21:14 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nb@ravenbrook.com) Received: from thrush.ravenbrook.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thrush.ravenbrook.com (8.12.9p2/8.12.9) with ESMTP id j6FCLDFM038172 for ; Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:21:14 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nb@thrush.ravenbrook.com) From: Nick Barnes To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:21:13 +0100 Message-ID: <38171.1121430073@thrush.ravenbrook.com> Sender: nb@ravenbrook.com Subject: better disk reliability on a desktop machine X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:21:20 -0000 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 ) 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