{"id":108,"date":"2005-12-06T10:17:22","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulhuntre.com\/items\/date\/2005\/12\/06\/back-that-thing-up\/"},"modified":"2005-12-06T10:17:22","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:17:22","slug":"back-that-thing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/2005\/12\/06\/back-that-thing-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Back that thing up!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So here&#8217;s the deal, I need to do something about my storage \/ backup situation. I have one drive that pretty much holds my universe and while I do back it up on occasion and by nature the data is also distributed around my network I really need to fix this. There are fundamentally three requirements:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I need to protect my &#8220;up to the moment&#8221; data from hardware failure of a hard drive<\/li>\n<li>I need to make periodic backups of my data onto an external USB \/ Firewire capable portable enclosure with a fan in case I need to restore from what they call &#8220;bare metal&#8221; or if the system becomes corrupted (RAID is no help here)<\/li>\n<li>In an emergency, I need to be able to &#8220;grab and go&#8221; with my data (fire, famine, zombies and the like) from the raid<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><u><b><\/u>Raid!<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<p>The answer to (1) is a RAID. I don&#8217;t need to get crazy, a simple RAID 1 (mirror) will do nicely and I intend to use the RAID stuff built into the Windows 2003 server OS for several reasons. The gadget whore in me says that this RAID should be SATA in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooldrives.com\/sata-hard-drive-case-removable-dual-drive.html\">nice external case with nifty LCD&#8217;s to monitor my drive temperature and cooling fans<\/a>. This would also keep this array outside of the power supply of the main server, though honestly I am not sure that helps. It does however also satisfy (3).<\/p>\n<p>In more reasonable moments I have a better idea&#8230; two drives inside the existing computer case. One of them in a 5.25 inch tray enclosure allowing me to pull and run if need be. These drives can be IDE or SATA. Honestly, I doubt it matters. If I do go with SATA drives I could in theory later put them in an external enclosure and SATA is definitely the way of the future. On the flip side, if I have to pull and run, IDE interfaces are literally EVERYWHERE to it would be easy to get the drives live again. This method has the additional bonus that all the parts I need are locally available for either SATA or IDE.<\/p>\n<p><b>IDE INTERNAL 250GB \/ 300GB*<\/b>: 2 x $160 (drives) + $30 (tray) = $350. This is the least expensive solution.<\/p>\n<p><b>SATA INTERNAL 250GB \/ 300GB*<\/b>: 2 x $180 (drives) + $40 (tray) + $40(SATA card) = $440. This is more expensive but also probably the one that will let me keep the investment for the future most easily.<\/p>\n<p>Just for amusement, here is the best I could do for an external 2 drive system. It is pretty cool, but probably impractical.<\/p>\n<p><b>SATA EXTERNAL 250GB \/ 300GB*<\/b>: 2 x $180 (drives) + $40 (tray) + $40(SATA card) +$140(enclosure) + $40(cables) = $620. Not only is this expensive, but the advantages are at best dubious.<\/p>\n<p><u><b>Backup &#8211; software<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<p>The answer to the software problem is more interesting. Effectively it comes down to restoration and how much pain you are willing to tolerate. There are, for all purposes really, only two types of backups:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>File &#8211; Wherein your data is safe, but recovery involves getting a machine at least partially running and then your backup software can restore your data, Usually you must re-install your applications and so on yourself.<\/li>\n<li>Image &#8211; Wherein your machine is &#8220;cloned&#8221; to another hard drive or tape\/cd\/dvd. In event of a failure your system can be restored to the <i>exact<\/i> state it was in when the image was taken.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We will be going with &#8220;File&#8221; because it is free. For Windows Server 2003 the &#8220;Image&#8221; option costs $699 <i>at least<\/i> depending on the vendor and specific tool. This, as they say, sucks.<\/p>\n<p><u><b>Backup &#8211; hardware<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n<p>Basically this is another of whatever HD I pick up above combined with a external USB \/ Firewire aware enclosure. I can go IDE or SATA without much difference to match the other drives. Call it $170 (drive) + $65 (enclosure) or $235<\/p>\n<p><i>*ed note: the exact size and price fluctuates day by day with the sales available<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So here&#8217;s the deal, I need to do something about my storage \/ backup situation. I have one drive that pretty much holds my universe and while I do back it up on occasion and by nature the data is also distributed around my network I really need to fix this. There are fundamentally three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}