Our speaker, John Foliot, described the problems people may encounter in accessing the internet, and how his program at Stanford helps to mitigate them. The attendance was good and the talk was very well received.
This month the newsletter is on line, as a PDF corresponding to the printed version.
Note that we now have an index of several years of the Prez Letters with topics listed. It's in the table of contents - check it out.
RAID1 for those who won't do backups
RAID: Redundant Array of Independent Disks
Aka: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
This month we will discuss a solution to the tearful realization that your precious financial records, wedding and baby photos are gone forever because when your hard drive decided to fail, you had no backup.
It is just a reality that ►►►
The online survey of 5,964 home users in North America found that 87 percent of users back up their hard drives just every two to three months < http://tinyurl.com/34bhog > or less frequently, far less often than any industry organization or publication recommends. This number is in sharp contrast with another survey finding - 80 percent of users have lost information and had to restore it < http://tinyurl.com/dg8xf4>.
-http://virtualization.sys-con.com/node/967622
SPAUG members, of course, are much better about backing up than the general non-business population, but they are far from fully covered.
So, to handle the SPAUG population and your friends, if you want to ignore the whole hassle of backing up, I suggest a one-time installation of a RAID1 board, which is a mirrored installation of two identical hard drives where the data coming to and from your hard drive is, in reality, coming to and from a pair of hard drives that are seamlessly duplicating your data onto two drives. If one of them fails, the other will have ALL of your data intact.
This method is used routinely by businesses that cannot afford to have data lost. Imagine a credit card processing operation where part or all of a financial transaction is lost every time there is some sort of hiccup with the computer.
There are many variations of RAID but they are more difficult to maintain and to correct than the simplest RAID1 mirror as described above. It is also the cheapest and simplest to recover.
Look for a card that supports the external LEDs that tell you, the user, that your RAID1 has failed and you need to put in a new hard drive. There is also an audible alarm that will alert you that the RAID1 has failed.
I recommend the following card: HighPoint Technologies' RocketRAID 1742, which includes:
SATA oriented - x6 faster
LED outputs for visual failure warning.
Audio Alarm
S.M.A.R.T hard-drive monitoring.
Email error notification
The total pricing of a do-it-yourself is about $250 for an internal card to fit your motherboard and two 500GB hard drives. Assistance with the install (included in your SPAUG membership) can be had from the SPAUG Clinic if you choose to not fool with the hardware.
This installation is my recommended solution for those who do want to have their data backed up and don't want the hassle of backing up. This solution does nothing for fire and theft. You have to still do something if you are to be protected for these two problems.
I do not recommend the external USB solution because USB interfaces are inherently slower than just about any other. This means that not only are the pre-made USB drives more expensive, they will be considerably slower.
I have had two RAID systems have a hard drive go bad. Both were in commercial operations and in both cases all of the data were intact. The solution was to copy the data from the "good" drive to another new drive and then to reset the pair. In practice, I usually take the opportunity to increase the size of the mirror if the volume warrants it.
Further, dealing with the installation (or the Clinic) you will attain the familiarity with the device so that you will know what to do when one of the drives breaks. Hopefully that will be a long time away, but at least you will be secure in the knowledge that your data are safe.
Our speaker, John Foliot, described the problems people may encounter in accessing the internet, and how his program at Stanford helps to mitigate them. The attendance was good and the talk was very well received.
Minutes on Page 4, PrintScreen June 2009
