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| Best Overall Amazing Back Up Setup? 1K-4K Budget! Software + Hardware? Help! |
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| asmi:
I use Synology NAS DS1821+ for backups (set up with 6 HDDs and can survive failures of any 2 drives) - I've set up Synology Drive client to do automatic backups every midnight of important stuff from my main desktop (initially I set it for real-time backup, but that interferes with some programs I use, so I had to settle for daily backups), set up the same thing for my wife's laptop, and Synology itself is set up to do a client-encrypted backup into Backblaze S2 every week, and keep 30 last backups there (which covers more than half a year). This comes to about 200 GB of data stored in the cloud, which costs me around $1 per month. So it's a very economic solution, yet it still meets the 3-2-1 rule - three copies of data, two of which are on a physically separate devices (in my case electrically too as my desktop connects to the switch via fiber optic cable), one of which is off-site. A bit of stats - I've been using Synology NAS for what seems like eternity, previous DS1512+ lived for over a decade before I upgraded it to DS1821+, in those 10 years my data survived 5 HDD failures. |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---I use Synology NAS DS1821+ for backups (set up with 6 HDDs and can survive failures of any 2 drives) --- End quote --- This probably doesn't apply to you or anyone setting up for themselves, but... I was called to a client to recover a server which had gone down and wouldn't boot. It was running RAID5 and could survive one drive going AWOL. The problem was that two drives had failed. However, only one had originally failed but no-one had noticed, and some time later (quite a long time) another drive had gone, and that was it. I've seen this before: the same client had, in a previous life, backed up to tape and some employee had religiously changed the tape every night before they went home. Turned out that the backups weren't working (can't recall if they were failing or just not starting) so the tapes had nothing worthwhile on them. It was that experience that persuaded the client to go for a fail-safe unattended system using RAID. Moral of the story is that regardless of the system, the stuff isn't where you think it is unless you regularly verify that. Automation can be the death of regular verification. Edit: having said that, it can conflict with what I said earlier about manual requirements ensuring the job never gets done. There is a happy medium which will vary according to circumstances. |
| Kjelt:
--- Quote from: PlainName on June 26, 2023, 06:00:06 pm ---I was called to a client to recover a server which had gone down and wouldn't boot. It was running RAID5 and could survive one drive going AWOL. The problem was that two drives had failed. However, only one had originally failed but no-one had noticed, and some time later (quite a long time) another drive had gone, and that was it. --- End quote --- That is pretty unusual that a drive failure is not reported. What is not that unusual with those RAID configurations is that if 1 drive fails and the new drive is inserted to rebuild the RAID yet another one of the original disks die. Since the disks are often from the same batch and rebuilding a RAID asks a lot of the disks. Two friends and a colleague experienced this. All three had disks that ran for more than four years without glitch. Still that is why RAID is NOT a backup. To prevent this scenario replace disks after a certain period or event. This period could be for instance the end of the manufacturers guarantee period, or something like 5 years in a 24/7 situation, you may decide. An event could be one of the critical SMART errors: https://www.pcworld.com/article/410623/these-5-smart-errors-help-you-predict-your-hard-drives-death.html Good NASses will notify you , even sent an email to you in such an event. That is why I can't understand how some drive coukd fail without notice. |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---That is pretty unusual that a drive failure is not reported. --- End quote --- I am sure it was reported, but no-one with the ability to interpret the report saw it. Which is why I say above that a self-build techy system is probably OK, but the same system built for a non-technical user is probably not. The OP here I would suggest is not a systems guru. |
| asmi:
--- Quote from: PlainName on June 26, 2023, 06:00:06 pm --- --- Quote ---I use Synology NAS DS1821+ for backups (set up with 6 HDDs and can survive failures of any 2 drives) --- End quote --- This probably doesn't apply to you or anyone setting up for themselves, but... I was called to a client to recover a server which had gone down and wouldn't boot. It was running RAID5 and could survive one drive going AWOL. The problem was that two drives had failed. However, only one had originally failed but no-one had noticed, and some time later (quite a long time) another drive had gone, and that was it. I've seen this before: the same client had, in a previous life, backed up to tape and some employee had religiously changed the tape every night before they went home. Turned out that the backups weren't working (can't recall if they were failing or just not starting) so the tapes had nothing worthwhile on them. It was that experience that persuaded the client to go for a fail-safe unattended system using RAID. Moral of the story is that regardless of the system, the stuff isn't where you think it is unless you regularly verify that. Automation can be the death of regular verification. Edit: having said that, it can conflict with what I said earlier about manual requirements ensuring the job never gets done. There is a happy medium which will vary according to circumstances. --- End quote --- Automation is THE ONLY reliable way to ensure you have somewhat reliable backups. Manual backups is the worst of all, because Murphy would always guarantee that disaster strikes just as you forget to make a backup for a while, and I suspect that pretty much nobody from this "manual backupers" check backup's integrity on a regular basis. That said, I set up NAS to send me an email whenever it completes a backup to the S2, and it's also setup to verify cloud backup's integrity every week as well (and inform me of this operation's status). Also whenever a HDD failure occurs, it starts beeping such that it's impossible to not to hear it, it also sends an email to me, and I always have a fresh HDD as a hot spare (hence I bought an 8 bays unit) precisely to avoid showballing of faults like you described. Restoring redundancy hit remanining HDDs rather hard, so a secondary failure is certainly a possibility, which is why I always maintain a hot spare so that this restoration would begin immediately without my intervention. To be fair I never had such secondary failure actually occur in my setup, but I feel it's enough of a threat to justify an expense of an extra hard drive. Once restoration has completed, I only need to purchase another fresh drive and replace the failed one as a new hot standby. |
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