Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Nearly Lost All of My Data

kevq.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 262 posts

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#71

Post by marmaduke »

Karunamon wrote: post #17
linsomniac wrote: post #11

Kudos to Synology for having a process to recover on a Linux box if the Synology box craps the bed. I was reading this story thinking "this is a good lesson on why you don't buy an expensive SAN, unless you can afford to buy two". But, the other lesson is: Backups. Sounds like backups were shut off 6 months prior. The other lesson is: Monitoring. Backups were going to the USB drive, but it that stopped working at som…

The nice thing about Synology storage stuff is that it's a nice GUI (seriously, they're about the only company I can think of that's doing appliance management right) on top of standard and battle-tested open source tools. This was one of the reasons I was okay with paying their prices. Even if the device completely craps the bed, I'll be able to hook the drives containing absolutely normal LVM/btrfs volumes up to an…

What about that “hybrid raid” stuff they have? What is it?

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#72

Post by drtillberg »

Power problems can be both stealthy and deadly.

Years ago I had a desktop with a 4-disk RAID 5 where the SSDs failed in quick succession, it's common. I lost some data-- or rather recovered files manually I think from a failed RAID and cold backup, switched to spinning disks, but after a while the new disks started beeping and generating RAID errors.

After much time and anxious guessing, I swapped the power supply and never had a problem since.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#73

Post by kalleboo »

marmaduke wrote: post #71
Karunamon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about Synology storage stuff is that it's a nice GUI (seriously, they're about the only company I can think of that's doing appliance management right) on top of standard and battle-tested open source tools. This was one of the reasons I was okay with paying their prices. Even if the device completely craps the bed, I'll be able to hook the drives containing absolutely normal LVM/btrfs volumes up to an…

What about that “hybrid raid” stuff they have? What is it?

It's just a particular LVM configuration with a nice UI https://superuser.com/a/1367697

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#74

Post by _bxg1 »

I just don't understand rolling your own backup drives in 2018 unless you're up to something nefarious. I rest peacefully knowing my data will never be lost by Dropbox, and the immediate backup means I don't have to mess with slow, periodic all-at-once backups.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#75

Post by cyphar »

Retric wrote: post #67
sbov wrote: post #47

> What are the chances of both a 4 disk RAID failing AND a USB drive at the same time? Probably close to 100% if your house catches on fire.

Probably closer to 10%. House fires rarely completely destroy the house and cars are often somewhere else. Wildfires for example often destroy homes, but generally allow most people to evacuate.

Their USB drive was plugged into their NAS. The probability (as they found out in TFA) is very high that a power surge will knock out most of their devices. A house fire wouldn't hesitate in destroying both. I think "close to 100%" is being too generous.

If you don't have 3 copies of your data (with at least 1 offsite) then your data doesn't really exist.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#76

Post by detaro »

_bxg1 wrote: post #74

I just don't understand rolling your own backup drives in 2018 unless you're up to something nefarious. I rest peacefully knowing my data will never be lost by Dropbox, and the immediate backup means I don't have to mess with slow, periodic all-at-once backups.

And I just don't understand how people can trust just a single online service with their backups. They can be part of a plan, e.g. to quickly get data off-site, but I wouldn't trust a single one enough (case in point: Dropbox actually has managed to loose data in the past, + the occasional security failure)

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#77

Post by pbhjpbhj »

brador wrote: post #58

Data Storage is dirt cheap. Buy a 6tb for $100 every few months and throw important folders onto it. Place old ones at relatives homes for offsite. Never worry about this again.

6TB drives are about £150 at the bottom end, average maybe £180. That's c. $200-240. £600 a year on back up hardware is pretty hefty.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#78

Post by sliken »

hendry wrote: post #55
nothrabannosir wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RaspberryPis can emulate Mario Kart on an N64, run Minecraft on Linux and even Mathematica at decent speeds; I'm willing to bet big bucks they can handle symmetric key encryption (which does not require much power). If a crappy NAS can run disk encryption, so can a raspberry pi. They're deceivingly potent.

Eloquent except the Rpi has a terrible USB bus.

It got significantly better in the last generation. As a result the disk I/O and network are significantly faster. While the last 2 versions had GigE, the throughput almost doubled in the last generation.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#79

Post by blattimwind »

x220 wrote: post #37
timthorn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surge protection isn't a big thing in the UK these days. You can get arresters but it's really rare now to hear of computer damage as a result of mains spikes.

Yeah but don't you think having a raid array but not having a surge protector is missing the forest for the trees?

Power surges, brownouts etc. don't really exist in large parts of Europe. I also never unplugged my computer(s) in thunderstorms (some of which are on a USP, most of which were simply plugged into mains, no surge protector, no USP) and lost exactly zero computers to that.

One of the few things that actually routinely comes with real surge arresters (i.e. gas-discharge tubes, not the MOVs plastered all over the place) is anything connected to a telephone line, e.g. A/VDSL modems. On some old PBXs for analog lines these were even contained in field-replaceable modules.

Re: I Nearly Lost All of My Data

#80

Post by mey »

My current approach.

Personal media archive, Windows 10 Pro, Storage Space with Parity across 4 HDD in a sata jbod. This is a purely software RAID. Moving the drives (or part of them) to another Windows 10 system allows for seamless recovery.

This archive, as well as all personal computers use Backblaze for offsite backup (including versioning). Versioning is important in case malware/accidents/buggy software. I don't consider any backup plan complete without this and being off-site (fire/theft)

For my business servers I use Tarsnap. (Off-site and versioning, 45 days)

Edit: Oh and everything is on UPS

Post reply on HN