From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 24 06:34:58 2004 Return-Path: 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 D702016A4CE for ; Mon, 24 May 2004 06:34:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thunder.trej.net (as3-3-6.orby.s.bonet.se [217.215.33.185]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9BDF743D3F for ; Mon, 24 May 2004 06:34:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from freebsd@dagerot.nu) Received: from mailgw.trej.net (localhost [127.0.0.1])i4ODY5v31985 for ; Mon, 24 May 2004 15:34:05 +0200 Message-Id: <200405241334.i4ODY5v31985@thunder.trej.net> Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 15:34:04 +0200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Joachim Dagerot Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20040524082737.GA29727@rucus.ru.ac.za> To: questions@freebsd.org User-Agent: IMHO/0.98.3t (Webmail for Roxen) 3j-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information 3j-MailScanner: Found to be clean Subject: Re: disk recovery X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 13:34:59 -0000 I used to think just like you. I thought I found the perfect balance between being on a budget and still having some kind of data security by using the Vinum software raid. So I stored the first 10 hours of video and 4k of still shots of my newly borned first child on the raid, and everything went well until one day when the kid crawled upfront the server and started to switch on switch of with a rate only a kid can achieve. One disk broke and I never managed to get it up again. So all memories from my sons first year where lost. Also I got no support whatsoever from this list when I asked for help to replace and recover the RAID system, so I was quite alone with vinum at that point... Today I have a hardware raid with a four disks volume and a fifth disk as spare. Some of the directories are each night copied to another machine for backup. Now and then (unfortunately mostly 'then') I burn newly taken pictures and films to DVD and put them in a box on my office (just in case of fire back home). If you have 400Gb of data I assume it's not material produced by yourself but perhaps downloaded films, music etc. If your'e on a budget, don't backup that. But do backup everything you've created yourself. So, don't repeat my misstake! //Joachim | I have a personal server with 400Gb of hard disks in various shapes and | sizes. I don't have enough money for redundant disks, and I would like | to know what the most efficient way of making sure my data doesn't get | lost, in case of a hard drive failure. The best would be for some sort | of recovery if a disk goes south for the winter. | | On this note, what's the best way of recovering data when a disk does go | bad. | I have a personal server with 400Gb of hard disks in various shapes and | sizes. I don't have enough money for redundant disks, and I would like | to know what the most efficient way of making sure my data doesn't get | lost, in case of a hard drive failure. The best would be for some sort | of recovery if a disk goes south for the winter. | | On this note, what's the best way of recovering data when a disk does go | bad.