On Wed, 2002-08-28 at 01:06, Tony Wasson wrote: [RAID] > As a side note, I have heard the recommendation that instead of RAID-1, > simply backup the primary drive to the backup on a regular basis, and you > will avoid many hassles when deleting a critical file. I see this as a Just my $.02 (actually CHF.05) RAID and backup are somewhat orthogonal. RAID protects from drive failure ONLY, allowing continuing service when a drive fails, and very short (or no) downtime after drive replacement. Backups protect from external errors, mainly. Of course, a regular full backup will restore the system on a clean drive with only a few hours data lost, but this involves substantial downtime. Especially when only doing incremental backups, it involves restoring 2 or 3 backup sets. I guess 80% or more of restore operations from backup are done because of user errors, restoring just a few files from a recent backup. AND: RAID does not protect from attacks or your kernel going crazy. So most people concerned enough to use a RAID will want to do backups, too. (Of course, people doing striping or RAID-5 for performance reason on easily recovered data - such as news spools or so - are a special case). I recommend to do regular backups (daily!), and RAID only if high availability is really critical, or if single disks are too small. To avoid having to manage tapes, I usually do backups on a 2nd disk (normally not mounted) - while not as secure as an offline (or even off site) backup, it's just much more convenient than always remembering to change tapes/CDs/whatever. If it is possible I also use cvs, even for very small things. This is also a form of backup (as long as the cvsroot is safe), especially regarding stupid file deleting. cheers -- vbi -- secure email with gpg http://fortytwo.ch/gpg NOTICE: keyserver.kjsl.com is known to carry a valid copy of my key
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