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Backing Up Approximately 500 GB of Data
Mugenmidget
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've archived most of my old hard drives throughout my usage of computers since about 2000, but I'd hate to lose all of what I have so far because of an HD failure.
How long does it take to back up a drive of this size? What kind of options are there for doing something like this? How much do back-up storage solutions cost? Is there good software to do weekly syncs or something similar?
I'm not sure where to begin other than maybe getting another hard drive of a similar size and cloning the data every now and then...
How long does it take to back up a drive of this size? What kind of options are there for doing something like this? How much do back-up storage solutions cost? Is there good software to do weekly syncs or something similar?
I'm not sure where to begin other than maybe getting another hard drive of a similar size and cloning the data every now and then...
Mugenmidget on
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A little addendum, make sure the USB drive (if you choose an external USB drive) supports USB 2.0 and not 1.1 or you'll be spending a few days watching files copy.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
For the rest, http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html. rsync is glorious.
One of the greatest utilities ever written, and --delete keeps my backups free of cruft. When I was more ignorant I would just nuke the drive, "cp -a" and let it run overnight. The process is much faster now :P
In case of a failure before I get to do any of this (I still need to buy another 500 GB drive): what would be someone's options for hard drive recovery? I'm probably going to burn the most important stuff I can to DVDs later tonight, but if I had to take it in somewhere and get it fixed then how would it go?
You'd ship it off to someplace that specializes in data recovery. If it was a controller failure they would likely "transplant" a good controller that is compatible with the drive and get the data off of it. If it was a hardware failure (bearings, actuator, etc.) then it would need to be disassembled in a clean room and...well, the procedure is complicated. If it was a head crash then it depends on how fucked you are. I've seen the magnetic surface stripped off of a platter before, and you can say goodbye to whatever happened to be there.
Turnaround time depends on the service, but three weeks is a reasonable estimate.
If a drive dies, there's no loss of data that was changed since the last backup because the changes are constantly mirrored. And, depending on the raid controller, I'm pretty sure you can continue using your computer as if nothing changed if you lose a drive, except you have no redundancy until the dead drive is replaced.
There are a few different ways I know of to set up the raid array. The easiest and cheapest option would be if your motherboard already has a raid controller built in. You could also buy a pci(-e) raid controller card, though I don't know how well that would run, or if a card would support running the OS off the array. I've also heard passing mention of setting up raid using software, I'm not sure if that was talking about something built into the operating system or was a separate program.
Are you saying a livejournal comment by some guy (from almost a year ago at that) is the final word on whether you should use raid? It all depends on the specific situation and priorities, and he doesn't spell out his reasoning for saying that. Judging from his hostility towards raid, you'd think it kicked his dog, shit on his face, and burnt his house down.
Did you continue reading the comments after the first one? The first thread of discussion is irrelevant as it goes off on ways to classify your data for backup and then into corporate-world with tape drives, but the second thread actually has a bit of discussion on why raid is/is not useful. There's a few comments on how raid is expensive or difficult to get working right, but they probably tried do something like use a 10 year old card without a gui when 500GB drives were $200+.
If you're worried about any data loss from a dead drive, don't want a failure to disrupt using your computer, or don't want to bother with having to remember to do the backups, raid is ideal. If the aim of the backup is to protect data files being corrupted by a program or your OS shitting itself, time delayed backups are better as raid saves the present state of the drives, whether the data on them is usable or not. Raid is also vulnerable to power surges if you have a piece of junk power supply that doesn't have a fail-safe. On the other hand, if you use a regular backup, there's also the problem of restoring your computer to working order, which could be a headache if for some reason the backup isn't bootable.
The OP specifically said he didn't want to lose data from a hard drive failure. Raid 1 is designed to do exactly that, with zero data loss if it fails, and the computer keeps working to boot. I am simply telling the OP about an option he probably didn't know of.
I - don't know if this changed in Vista, or if this applies to other OSes - if a problems occurs and the copy process is interrupted you most likely have to start over again (due the lack of a "retry" button :P ), because in most cases you won't sit for hours in front of the screen and watch the file names changing in the "copy to" box in order to determine what exactly happened and which file is responsible. It's especially a pain if you have lots of subfolders. Usually the system tries to ensure that every file copied is "correct" and of course has to collect parts of the file if there is a lot of fragmentation going on - which slows the copy process a lot if you attempt to copy a whole disk. A disk cloning program does not exactly care about files, it makes a bite to byte copy with all the fragmentation and (most of the) errors and arranges the target partition, so that it will work on the new disk.
Raid: Raid 1 is a good thing regarding HW errors, but ultimately not a 100% fail-save. Especially user errors and malicious programs can harm your data. If it is gone on disk 0 - then it will be gone on disk 1, remember that. You still have to run some sort of manual backup for your important files, once-a while.
A windows copy function with a retry button and resume copy. However sometimes slower then regular copy and has some issues with files over 4GB.
xcopy is a command line tool for Windows XP and Windows Vista, when you use the /c switch it will continue the copy operation even if it encounters an error. I usually use it with these switches (example drives obviously):
What that does is:
/e - copy empty folders
/c - continue on error
/k - copy file attributes (read-only, etc)
/y - supress prompting if overwriting existing files or directories (good for backups)
/h - copy hidden and system files
Depends on what utility you want to use. If you run Linux or a Mac the previously mentioned rsync is awesome.
By default rsync will only copy files that have actually changed, so no time is wasted overwriting the exact same file. For files that have been changed it will only copy the parts of the file that have been altered, which is especially handy for text-based file formats.
Rsync also supports transferring files across a network, either by running a rsync server or by using a remote shell. You can also tell it to compress the data (-z) to save bandwidth.
I have suffered two hard drive failures, one was the hard drive itself (a Maxtor, if anyone cares) and one where the PSU failed and fried half the components in the machine, including one of the hard drives (a Western Digital). I mention this primarily because I reckon backing up to a seperate physical device will always be safer than using RAID. RAID will protect your data if a drive fails, but not if something bad happens to the machine that the drives are in, like my dodgy PSU, or if it was stolen.
I also (because I'm really paranoid) have a single folder that has all my really important stuff in (bank and credit card statements, receipts for online purchases, etc.) that I back up onto an 8Gb SD card that I keep with me.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.