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Old 09-21-2009, 08:37 PM   #5
sclitheroe
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Join Date: Sep 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by photon View Post
Good point about the file system, but how much of a threat is file system corruption with ext2 file system though? How much more or less likely compared to a drive failure?

I use RAID1 on my NAS because it's the file server for my house.. it has all my photos, my financial documents, invoices... all the critical stuff that I'd be scared to lose if my main PC drive died. Not so much real time redundancy but just inexpensive hedging against drive failure.

The only flaw with tapes is unless you take the tapes offsite, you are still susceptible to a catastrophic event like a fire or a flood or theft or something

So have PC's backup to the NAS which has RAID1 to help protect against a drive failure, and then use a tape or similar system taken offsite, or an online backup service, to protect against file system corruption or fire/flood/theft.

I think some NAS devices are starting to partner with or provide their own online backup providers.

Seems like overkill, but I know way too many people who have lost all their photos of their kids, or years of important financial info, because of poor or nonexistent backups.
I experienced a major incident with cross-linked files on a HFS+ volume, which is pretty rare - it can and does happen. I've also had my share of filesystem issues in Linux over the years. And I've worked on plenty of NT/2000/2003/2008 servers that have corrupted NTFS partitions....

In addition to the onsite backups I have, I also use Mozy to keep my stuff backed up offsite - you are preaching the truth when you say people either have, or will, lose data because of a lack of backups. RAID is not backup. Hard drives sitting on a shelf are not offsite backup (unless its a shelf somewhere else)
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