Comp questions

[imma honky]

Ok, I have had 2 HD's fail in less than 2 years. Lost alot of stuff. I learned my lsson and my next step is a raid backup.
My question is, who uses/has used tape decks for back up? They would be sitting on a shelf somewhere after they are full.
Should I go ahead and get a blu-ray writer?(when the price comes down a bit).
What are my alternatives for a perminate clean back up?

Question number two.
Multi monitor systems.
What are you running?
How many monitors? Size?
Programs? Hardware? Sites I can get good info on?
I am about ready to trade in my bulky 17" flat CRT for a couple 19' LCD's, maybe even widescreen.

[ChiXJeff]

RAID is *NOT* a backup.

If you've lost 2 drives in 2 years, you've got something else going on. Don't bet on a RAID set saving your butt. Dirty power, heat, etc. may be killing your systems.

Personally, I've got a pair of 7 cartridge tape libraries running here, DLT4000s unfortunately which means only only around 280gb of near line storage. DVDs don't have enough capacity to seriously consider them for whole systems backups, but they should be okay for pure document backups. I still prefer tape backups, but they are very expensive.

[imma honky]

RAID is *NOT* a backup.

If you've lost 2 drives in 2 years, you've got something else going on. Don't bet on a RAID set saving your butt. Dirty power, heat, etc. may be killing your systems.

Personally, I've got a pair of 7 cartridge tape libraries running here, DLT4000s unfortunately which means only only around 280gb of near line storage. DVDs don't have enough capacity to seriously consider them for whole systems backups, but they should be okay for pure document backups. I still prefer tape backups, but they are very expensive.
From my understand, running a RAID is running two identical drives mirrored? So each has identical data and being pulled from simultaneously?

I should be more elaborate.

One drive(90G) failed most likely due to age and near 98% life/load/useage.
The other was a 250 gig I used in an after market USB box (probably a power problem).
If I remember correctly, both were WD. Maybe that's a coincidense(sp?).

How much did you pay for your tape back-up system?
I DO need fairly large backups, but like i said, it's for archiving. Once the data is backed up, it's going into storage until needed again.

[jeepdude10000]

i burn to DVD's and backup new data once a month, DVD's are cheap.
there is alot of info on raid here :http://techreport.com/reviews/2002q4/ideraid/index.x?pg=1

And i actually use only WD harddrives, i find them more reliable, I buy a new one every two years, no matter how good it still works.

[imma honky]

i burn to DVD's and backup new data once a month, DVD's are cheap.
there is alot of info on raid here :http://techreport.com/reviews/2002q4/ideraid/index.x?pg=1

And i actually use only WD harddrives, i find them more reliable, I buy a new one every two years, no matter how good it still works.
I have had some nice luck with my 4 seagates so far.

[RichP]

Seagates are the way to go now, they come with a 5yr warranty. WD has been having issues for the last year + or so, Maxtor I'm not sure about, they were a rock solid drive but I've had a bunch of them fail within 3 months.
At home I back up a variety of ways, one is to ghost an image to ghost server I have just for that, second is a 4m dat internal scsi, cheap tapes/expensive drives, Ghost images to a DVD. There is no one solution miracle. Newegg.com has an external 12 bay raid array, empty with carriers for I think $600 or so.
Can't quickly find the one I was looking for but here is one from adaptec
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822103002
you put your own drives in. Provided you have USB2 thats the way to go, USB1 you might as well go to bed and sleep overnite..
If you are really worried I'd either mirror with a second drive or ghost a new image to an external drive every so often...

[ChiXJeff]

I liberated the tape libraries from a former employer when the site closed and I was laid off. They're actually old VAX devices and are probably some of the earliest DLT4000 libraries that Quantum built. Also got a few hundred tape cartridges. Net cost to me: nothing. You can find this stuff on fleaBay for as low as a couple of hundred bucks each if you're lucky. Generally, you're talked a few thousand.

I've got a couple of Seagate drives that are 7 years old, still humming merrily away. Years ago, (okay, decades ago,) Seagate built junk drives, then they bought CDC's Imprimis disk drive division. They've been at least all right if not pretty good since then.

If you use DVDs for archiving, *NEVER* rely on a single copy. Always burn at least 2, and keep them in separate locations.

[Root Moose]

RAID is not a backup, it is a method of ensuring up times. Even at that, I've seen the world of RAID go to hell on production systems.

For home use your best bet is to get a second hard drive in your system. The way I do it with the server here is run off a primary disk. Every night run a backup to the second drive in your system. Every couple of weeks swap out the secondary drive with another drive that resides in a fire safe or at another location... or whatever works for you. You can add RAID to that kind of a set up to ensure up time. I'm thinking towards that since all the client computers in the house have their desktops NFS mounted off the server.

I never bothered with any of this until we got digital cameras. Our snap shots and home video is now the "family gold". I'm kinda hitting the wall at the moment... we are bumping up against the size of our disks (300GB) and I'll have to start implementing a pair of raid sets and possibly running the secondary/tertiary backup filesystems out to the garage (1GB connected already, heated, etc). Haven't thought all that through yet.

Tape medium is slow and "stupid" expensive for home use. Stick with disks in removable bays if you can. Also, when you buy a USB/FW enclosure for a hard drive make sure you do some research on the web. Lots of those external enclosures might as well be called "HDD coffins". They don't dissipate heat well and shorten drive life considerably. There's something to be said for the "turn key" enclosures from the HDD vendors. Make sure you have lots of airflow around the drives in your main case too.

I'm not a fan of the WD drives. I had a lot of bad luck with the 1200JB series disks in large (multi-TB) arrays. Stupid things would spin down for no reason. That combined with past experience has put me off them for good. I've had really good luck with Maxtor the last three years or so, particularly with the "pro" MaxLine series disks.

Seagate is a necessary evil. I've been using their drives since the early 90s... because that is what the old big iron vendors used to spec - not from choice. Anyone remember the old 1GB Seagates that came in the SparcArray 101s? I swear I'd lose at least one disk a week in those things. Add a half dozen arrays... All I was doing was swapping HDDs after hours. OT was paid, but damn it gets lame after a while. :)

I thought I heard that Seagate recently bought Maxtor... might be why the selection of Maxtor drives seem to be getting harder to find. <sigh />

Buy drives based on warrantee. Maxtor was the only vendor with a decent warrantee until recently (3 year). Now that Seagate has a five year warrantee... Well, is that Seagate "logic" applied to Maxtor's calculated MTBFs?

Displays, LCD 19" or larger. You can get some really good value out there now. I have a 20" Cinema display on my Mac at home. Excellent display but pricey. Work is a 16:9 Powerbook with a Benq 19" "pro" model (4:3) attached to it. On the Mac you just plug things in and they work. On Linux configuring X for multi-head is a bit of a bear but doable if you know your way around and are patient. I don't do Windows these days but I remember back in the mid 90s on NT (486-66 with dual Matrox Impression Plus display cards and NEC 21FG monitors - woohoo!) it wasn't that big a deal. All the modern operating systems will deal with multiple displays "seamlessly" once they are configured correctly.

If I were in the market for new displays on a desktop type machine, in an ideal world I'd have three displays: two 4:3 aspect displays and one 16:9 display. Stick the 16:9 in the middle and make sure it is a model that is easily rotatable into portrait mode (hardware and drivers) for dealing with documentation. that's a bit of a pie in the sky, overkill dream though. For a single display system I like 16:9.

HTH

[RichP]

I'm not a fan of the WD drives. I had a lot of bad luck with the 1200JB series disks in large (multi-TB) arrays. Stupid things would spin down for no reason. That combined with past experience has put me off them for good. I've had really good luck with Maxtor the last three years or so, particularly with the "pro" MaxLine series disks.
HTH

Back in 97-2k we had major issues with the 2, 4, 8, gig scsi drives that seagate used in the HP storage arrays, they, HP, were delivering them in the drive cases on pallets and I had a shopping cart where I would walk up and down the aisles of the freight trains [2 K500's with 20 cabinets of nike20's between them, service guard style], every day, usually 50 drives a day were 'bad'. Turns out they were not bad just overheated and the clarion software would take them off line and mark the carrier light yellow. Swap yellows for new and let it kick into rebuild for 5 hours or so.
They worked great at home once they were out of the carriers and had good air flow, seagates always did run hot.. still have a few but I mean, what can you do with a 2 gig or 4 gig scsi, geeze, I got corsair 8gig pen drives that let me image most OS's really quick so I can walk from machine to machine and do an install. Now if I could just figure out how to make them bootable I'd be all set...

[Root Moose]

They worked great at home once they were out of the carriers and had good air flow, seagates always did run hot.. still have a few but I mean, what can you do with a 2 gig or 4 gig scsi, geeze, I got corsair 8gig pen drives that let me image most OS's really quick so I can walk from machine to machine and do an install. Now if I could just figure out how to make them bootable I'd be all set...

LOL. Yes, ain't that the truth.

I have USB dongles in my pants pocket with more data on them then the entire Peoplesoft/Oracle HRMS system for the city back in 1996. Crazy. Mind you, if I lose the dongle, people will still be able to get paid and pay their mortgage. Lots of data doesn't necessarily mean the data is actually worth anything. LOL

[RTicUL8]

My hard drive is in the freezer today.

It booted to operating system not found last night.
Bios said "Hard drive? What hard drive!!?!" :smsoap:

Luckily, I knew it was failing and have a backup on my external - both a ghost image and a non-compressed copy.

====

However, I have to buy a new drive.
Anyone know of a good deal on a SATA drive today? 10/09/06

[RichP]

My hard drive is in the freezer today.

It booted to operating system not found last night.
Bios said "Hard drive? What hard drive!!?!" :smsoap:

Luckily, I knew it was failing and have a backup on my external - both a ghost image and a non-compressed copy.

====

However, I have to buy a new drive.
Anyone know of a good deal on a SATA drive today? 10/09/06


I always do the toaster oven first, it's usually galled bearings on the spindles that make them fail mechanically, heating them up usually frees them, then I resort to the freeze/heat cycles till I can get it running long enough to ghost it or dd it.
From a longtime admin who had to deal with the quantums in sun servers, they'd run for years but god help you if you powered them down to add or replace hardware and let them cool off..you were one fornicated bunny after that...

[RTicUL8]

I always do the toaster oven first, it's usually galled bearings on the spindles that make them fail mechanically, heating them up usually frees them, then I resort to the freeze/heat cycles till I can get it running long enough to ghost it or dd it.

Toast your hard drive?

RIIIIIIIGHT! :D

====

Look: I found a toaster drive: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/01/raid_on_rye/

[RichP]

Toast your hard drive?

RIIIIIIIGHT! :D

http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/12/01/raid_on_rye/intro.jpg

http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/12/01/raid_on_rye/intro2.jpg

Just take it up to it's normal operating temp, I usually put it in the toaster oven at around 150-200F for 35min. Works about 90% of the time...
I test it with the new hard drive and ghost boot disc on the bus and hooked up ready to go, if it comes up I do a disc to disc right then and there...

[Root Moose]

Just take it up to it's normal operating temp, I usually put it in the toaster oven at around 150-200F for 35min. Works about 90% of the time...
I test it with the new hard drive and ghost boot disc on the bus and hooked up ready to go, if it comes up I do a disc to disc right then and there...

Besides, if the disk is already fubar what do you have to lose?

[imma honky]

My current setup is my workhorse.
running 5 internal drives and dual DVD burners.
160 main drive
and 4
120 seagates
I can fill up those 4 seagates in a matter of days.
My problem is backing everything up before the drives all get full and I have to stop what i'm doing, clear the drives for more data.
I literally have stacks and stacks of DVD's as of now
I was looking for something a little more spacious and maybe one time transfer and store.... never to think about again.
I think when it comes down to it, I can't keep up with my own set-up.

[imma honky]

Just take it up to it's normal operating temp, I usually put it in the toaster oven at around 150-200F for 35min. Works about 90% of the time...
I test it with the new hard drive and ghost boot disc on the bus and hooked up ready to go, if it comes up I do a disc to disc right then and there...
I will try this method. You had mentioned it to me before, but I don't think we went into details.

[imma honky]

Anyways, amongst other things, my next PC project is a gamestation.
Something very simple, but over powered.
1 HD
dual processor FX2 AMD's
True SLi
running some quad 19 widescreens.

When I checked this set up a last year, the price was around 7k. By the time I have the chance to build it, I should be under 3k.

Not to mention I still have to build my OBC for the heep, but that's only 700$

[Root Moose]

My current setup is my workhorse.
running 5 internal drives and dual DVD burners.
160 main drive
and 4
120 seagates
I can fill up those 4 seagates in a matter of days.
My problem is backing everything up before the drives all get full and I have to stop what i'm doing, clear the drives for more data.
I literally have stacks and stacks of DVD's as of now
I was looking for something a little more spacious and maybe one time transfer and store.... never to think about again.
I think when it comes down to it, I can't keep up with my own set-up.

You know, they have support groups for internet pR0n junkies now.

:D

[Root Moose]

Just to be serious for a moment, for the amount of data you are dealing with you may want to look into one or more Buffalo Terastations. Simple, quick connect, RAID built in. Connect over GbE and forget about it. Check other vendors for USB2 style stuff if you don't want to bother with GbE.

That's what I'd do if I didn't have competing priorities for my cash.

[imma honky]

My problem is, No matte rhow much HD space I have... I WILL fill it up fast. So I don't need more HD's that will eventually fail and have to be replaced time and again. I am looking for that once and all back up source. I will stick to DVDr's for now, since I can get em by the hundred's, and burning only takes about 6m per.