[ale] Recommendation for off-line storage?

[Denny Chambers]

I know what your talking about. Working in the Storage industry for the 
last few years, it amazes me at the number of customers who think RAID 5 
is all the protection they ever need. Then when their RAID goes bust, 
they want to blame the manufacturer for their lost data. And I am not 
talking just about people with a few hundred megabytes of data either, I 
am talking about people with terabytes of data, with no backups.

My motto: "Restore your data or restore your resume...you'll need one or 
the other."

Denny

James P. Kinney III wrote:

>>took freakin' forever.  but they don't want to spring for tape
>>drives/libraries b/c "it's on a raid5 system, why do we need backups" ...
>>    
>>
>
>Because RAID recovery when 2 drives fail is imperfect and costs more than
>a decent tape backup system.
>
>Most corps are really boneheaded about data backup. Especially the small
>ones. They are the ones that have the fewest resources for recovery and
>thus they get hit the hardest during drive failures. Certain types of data
>MUST be kept for 10 years (Think IRS!). The company accounting data AND
>THE SOFTWARE THAT RUNS IT must be available during an IRS audit. These are
>things that absolutely can NOT be trusted to a single copy system. RAID5
>is designed speed and data security. But it is not designed for data
>archival.
>
>I have seen too many RAID5 arrays fail because the system was built using
>identical hard drive models and some even had sequential serial numbers.
>This is a statistically good process of getting multiple failed drives.
>RAID5 can only handle 1 dead drive at a time. If a second drive fails
>dureing the recovery, the RAID stack is toast without serious, low-level
>($$$) work.
>
>A mirrored RAID5 is a better bet fro the hard-drive only crowd. Use
>different drive brands for better hardware safety.
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>
>
>  
>
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