[Roller]

Quote:

 
I'm way too paranoid to use something so opaque like that.
 
Are there any services that give you something like a virtual drive you can backup to yourself so I could encrypt the the virtual drive with TrueCrypt and know what was going on with the encryption.
 

As long as you put it on the web, it's out there for anyone to see, depending on the will and knowledge, that is.

 

[maverickronin]

Being backed up on a remote machine isn't exactly being "on the web" though it does leave you open to more attack vectors.
 
I'd like to come up with a more convenient off site back plan besides swapping encrypted hard drive in a safe deposit box every month or something....

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Being backed up on a remote machine isn't exactly being "on the web" though it does leave you open to more attack vectors.
 
I'd like to come up with a more convenient off site back plan besides swapping encrypted hard drive in a safe deposit box every month or something....

Different people have different notions of security. You alone know the value you put on your data, and act accordingly.

 

[SuperZero5225]

Quote:

great picutres what game are you doing? BF3? Starcraft? or...not a game but 3Dmark?
 

Actually that's just Spotify. Wish you could see it but oh well lol. Thanks!

 

[SniperCzar]

I was thinking just use the site to site local network backup, not the online portion of CrashPlan. It's really much more flexible compared to something online focused like Mozy or Carbonite.

 

[Griffinhart]

Quote:

Except when the array fails and all data is lost.

If a small failure can bring down the entire array, then you're doing it wrong. A friend of mine has a five-drive setup and he can suffer total loss of any two drives and retain all data.
 
If you're going to do something, do it right.
 
-- Griffinhart

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I was thinking just use the site to site local network backup, not the online portion of CrashPlan. It's really much more flexible compared to something online focused like Mozy or Carbonite.

Hmm..
 
Didn't see that on the overview.

 

[pwnm30rdi3]

 
Here is my set-up. It keeps me happy
Specs:
Intel 965 Extreme Core i7 3.2 Ghz
3 x Hard Drives; 1 Segate 250GB, 1 WesternDigital 1TB, 1 WesternDigital 2TB
2 x nVidia GeForce GTX 280's (2GB total)
12GB of DDR3 1600MHz Memory
 
3 x HP S2031's (These fit perfectly on my desk)

 
Here is my attempt at the cable management, I spent 4 hours working on hiding these wires...

 
Here is a picture of under the desk,
I might upgrade to a prettier power strip to replace the two mismatch ones I'm currently using. 

 

[SniperCzar]

Quote:

If a small failure can bring down the entire array, then you're doing it wrong. A friend of mine has a five-drive setup and he can suffer total loss of any two drives and retain all data.
 
If you're going to do something, do it right.
 
-- Griffinhart

That's either a RAID5 with hot spare or a RAID6. As a general rule you want a parity drive or hotspare for every three or so data drives.

 

[jtaylor991]

I'd use Carbonite, but I think it would take >1 year excluding my movie collection to upload everything...smh (after the forst 200gb they cap your upload speed, so my local connection doesnt really make a difference unless its slower than their cap which I doubt, its like 1.5mbps up)
 
Quote:

I was thinking just use the site to site local network backup, not the online portion of CrashPlan. It's really much more flexible compared to something online focused like Mozy or Carbonite.

 

 

[SniperCzar]

Quote:

Hmm..
 
Didn't see that on the overview.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/backing_up_to_other_computers

Also does differential/continuous backups.

 

[Griffinhart]

Quote:

That's either a RAID5 with hot spare or a RAID6. As a general rule you want a parity drive or hotspare for every three or so data drives.

You would be correct; RAID6.

-- Griffinhart

 

[Roller]

Quote:

If a small failure can bring down the entire array, then you're doing it wrong. A friend of mine has a five-drive setup and he can suffer total loss of any two drives and retain all data.
 
If you're going to do something, do it right.
 
-- Griffinhart

Clearly you weren't following the kind of array people were discussing previously. If we wanted to do something serious, we would obviously need more drives and a proper card to manage them, not those puny pseudo hardware solutions that have a lot of overhead. But then again, the average user here won't be spending more on that than it will on (high end) audio hardware.

 

[christophrowley]

The bigger problem with RAID is when the controller dies, not the drives. Finding an identical replacement can be tricky, especially a few years down the line. Personally, if I had the money and data worth protecting with such measures, I'd mirror Drobo B800fs's and have one offsite. Super easy to use and business class reliability. Can't ask for much else. 

 

[spork42]

With RAID it is best to buy your replacements from different sources and batches at the initial time of purchase. You shouldn't be scrambling for replacements the second something goes wrong. This, obviously, adds to the cost rather significantly, but it is the right way to do it in my opinion.
 
Controller cards are good for offloading I/O away from the CPU and the rest of the system. If you want redundancy within a server which is doing something other than pure file storage, such as a server running SQL, etc., then you'll want hardware RAID since the CPU has enough to worry about already. Controller cards are also useful for situations where you want fast external storage, but even then, having a controller card isn't always about RAID, such cards often feature JBOD compatibility for a reason.
 
Solid software RAID solutions do exist, even at the enterprise level, and not having a controller makes things a lot simpler when a failure occurs. Sure, you are going to eat up system resources with software RAID, but on a dedicated storage machine, a NAS for example, this isn't going to matter.
 
For almost all home server data storage use, I would argue that hardware RAID is the wrong choice. For the cost of a hardware RAID controller card and its eventual replacement, you can build a dedicated NAS capable of handling quite a bit of load with a $200 investment over the drives themselves.
 
At home I run a dedicated FreeNAS machine based on an AMD Zacate board. It currently has 5x 2TB drives under RAID-Z2 (two disk parity) with a flash drive for the OS. The total cost of the machine, including drives, was under $700. (This was back before the flooding happened.)
 
The NAS not only handles my AD shares, but my server uses it for large storage as well. Both the server and the NAS have 2x Gigabit Intel NICs that I picked up for around $30 each at some point. With 2x teamed ports on each end and a managed switch in the middle, my transfer rates between the server and the NAS (and any other box with network teaming, such as my workstation) is averaging 110MB/s over the network, which isn't bad. (Reads can sometimes be faster depending on how much is held in memory versus waiting for disk I/O.)
 
Will it beat hardware RAID with enterprise disk? No, not really, but it doesn't have to. I have never been left wanting for more throughput even when the NAS is under simultaneous use for streaming and general usage.