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- Thread starter ZiPA
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Dennis Lathem49692
Senior Member
I have read more reports that I would like of the Lacie large hard drive "solutions" failing.
I am moving to storing my digital images on hard drives installed in mobil racks. If I need to go back to a particular shoot I look up the drive and slide it into my external fireiwire enclosure. This way I keep half a dozen storage drives from sitting and spinning all the time.
I do back up on DVD, but this is more quickly accessed and if I need to edit a file my conversion and editing software is set up to save it back on the storage drive.
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CDL
See Profile for gear stuff
Pbase Supporter
That is alot of space. There is almost no way you can fill that upeven if you used a video cammera. Look at the cheeper model same thing just smaller.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10504
Its only $999. I think that is a better deal because I'd never fill up 1 TB let alone 1.6.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10504
Its only $999. I think that is a better deal because I'd never fill up 1 TB let alone 1.6.
Steve Maller
Leading Member
J
jjolly
Guest
spyz
Well-known member
When I bought my first 150MB drive a dozen years ago, I said I'd NEVER fill that up. Now my digital camera has 2GB which fills up in 2 days of shooting 
In less than 10 years, point and shoots will easily generate > 18 megapixel resolutions and pocket sized camcorders will output HD resolution digital video. By then even a few terabytes would seem small.
-K
In less than 10 years, point and shoots will easily generate > 18 megapixel resolutions and pocket sized camcorders will output HD resolution digital video. By then even a few terabytes would seem small.
-K
Although I haven't heard any such stories, this would still seem like having a bit too many eggs in the same basket. What do you do then when you've finally filled it up and then it breaks?I have read more reports that I would like of the Lacie large hard
drive "solutions" failing.
I'm thinking of building a file server with a 8 channel RAID5 disk array. That would easily give me expandable storage options up to 2.8 TB with todays disk sizes. Plus the RAID5 protects from any single disk failure, making backups more or less unnecessary. Of course, if the RAID controller fails and botches the the array, I'd be pretty much screwed.
Has anyone ever heard of something like this happening?
-JP
Bernard Carns
Senior Member
Power supplies and motherboards etc would be my concern.
Also I don't know if you could build a RAID5 arry based on USB or firewire, I haven't tried it.
I always have backups beyond belief.
I have 1 machine that has an Adaptec RAID 5 card in it.
That machine gets backed up to another machine daily.
Those daily backups are then put on drives like 500 GB Lacie and stored offsite and rotated through.
About every 4-6 months one of the drives fails in the raid, and of course no data is lost.
But I would NEVER trust anything without a backup.
I'm just too conservative with my data.
Not only do I back it up every night, I mirror it as well so the downtime if that server goes down is at a minimum. The mirror synchronization takes about an hour.
It takes 10 hours to do the backup, and its only 235 gb of data.
If I had to put the people it serves out of work for 2 days to rebuild it I'd be in big trouble.
With the mirror, I can be back up in minutes if the main server dies.
BC
Also I don't know if you could build a RAID5 arry based on USB or firewire, I haven't tried it.
I always have backups beyond belief.
I have 1 machine that has an Adaptec RAID 5 card in it.
That machine gets backed up to another machine daily.
Those daily backups are then put on drives like 500 GB Lacie and stored offsite and rotated through.
About every 4-6 months one of the drives fails in the raid, and of course no data is lost.
But I would NEVER trust anything without a backup.
I'm just too conservative with my data.
Not only do I back it up every night, I mirror it as well so the downtime if that server goes down is at a minimum. The mirror synchronization takes about an hour.
It takes 10 hours to do the backup, and its only 235 gb of data.
If I had to put the people it serves out of work for 2 days to rebuild it I'd be in big trouble.
With the mirror, I can be back up in minutes if the main server dies.
BC
Although I haven't heard any such stories, this would still seemI have read more reports that I would like of the Lacie large hard
drive "solutions" failing.
like having a bit too many eggs in the same basket. What do you do
then when you've finally filled it up and then it breaks?
I'm thinking of building a file server with a 8 channel RAID5 disk
array. That would easily give me expandable storage options up to
2.8 TB with todays disk sizes. Plus the RAID5 protects from any
single disk failure, making backups more or less unnecessary. Of
course, if the RAID controller fails and botches the the array, I'd
be pretty much screwed.
Has anyone ever heard of something like this happening?
-JP
Film_Ruled
Senior Member
Oh, now I would not say that...
I use externals purely as live servers for imagery along side of a two DVD backups.
This is crucial to a competitive small operation stock business. As everything is now 8MP and higher, it is even more important to have more space. I would preffer to have my 500GB and then two 1TB drives in the tool kit.
I just ordered the 500GB as the larger ones are a bit spendy..
The speed should be awesome!!
Working off of the nearly full 200GB right now...
I use externals purely as live servers for imagery along side of a two DVD backups.
This is crucial to a competitive small operation stock business. As everything is now 8MP and higher, it is even more important to have more space. I would preffer to have my 500GB and then two 1TB drives in the tool kit.
I just ordered the 500GB as the larger ones are a bit spendy..
The speed should be awesome!!
Working off of the nearly full 200GB right now...
Michael Meissner
Forum Pro
All hard drives fail. What makes it even worse is the machine is a stripe of 4 disks tied together to act as a larger filesystem, without any RAID or such. So instead of depending on the lifetime of one drive, you are depending on the lifetime of 4 drives, any one of which that fails will cause the unit to inoperable.
However a RAID doesn't protect you if either you or your OS trashes the disk. While I tend to average a hard disk failure at least once a year (since I've been in the computer industry since 1979), I find it more common that I will accidently delete a file or if I am unhappy with the change I just made in the photo album. I try to have two identical servers running (currently with a 120 gig and a 80 gig disk in each), and I sync the disks at stopping points (typically after I've processed the latest files, and are happy with them). I also maintain DVD backups every so often, and copy the newest files to my laptop and reduced images to my external ftp server.
Sure, it happens. For hardware RAID, you also have to worry about your manufacturer no longer supporting the old hardware (either because they went out of business or only want to work with the latest hardware) not being compatible with future versions of your OS. I tend to like RAID-1 instead of RAID-5 since RAID-1 is an exact copy of the disk, and you can pull it out and put it in another computer or enclosure without the RAID hardware.
My favorite site that describes all of the pitfalls to consider, particularly when you are doing backups for a company is the Veritas Tao of Backup that they wrote several years ago as an ad campaign: http://www.taobackup.org .
Data that isn't backed up in a secure, timely fashion to multiple locations is just waiting for the right set of circumstances to get destroyed. Hmmm, it has been awhile since I did DVD backups of the latest stuff and put them offsite.....
Those are both very true statments. I should say that it would be dificult for a non-professional photographer to fill it up, at least in my experience. About the 18 megapixiel cameras and HD camcorders, yea maybe before 10 years at the rate computers are advancing. I just don't want to spend $900 for a drive, I'd hope it comes down in price by the time I need it.
todds
Senior Member
You still need to backup and store your data at a remote location. The RAID setup doesn't protect against fire, theft, viruses or something wacky happening on your computer.
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Images: http://www.tdsphoto.com/gallery/index.htm
Hmm. The first three I've got covered pretty well. There's really nothing that could catch fire, and stone walls and floors don't really burn that well (I hope). I'm not worried about theft either, and viruses are a non-issue on a linux machine that is not connected to the Internet. And using a journaling file system takes care of most of the wackines as well.
Basically, what I am worried about is that the RAID controller somehow gets screwed and thrashes the array. Has anyone heard of anything like that happening?
-JP
That's a pretty bold statement. When I got my first 40 MB HD some ten years ago, I thought exactly that: "This thing's gonna last a lifetime!" Back then I also couldn't imagine ever needing anything else than floppies for installation media and portable storage.
How quickly the times change..
-JP
spyz
Well-known member
All hardware, electrical or mechanical, evenually fails at some point.
Your best bet is after a couple of years, to go buy an identical RAID card from a surplus shop for cheap and keep it around as a spare part. I did this with my motherboard (since my RAID chip is built-in).
A few years ago when I built my PC, the mobo was "latest-and-greatest" costing over $180. Buying an extra for spare parts was not an option. But last year I found the same board in a computer surplus shop for $25. Also, it's no longer sold in normal places like Frys or Best Buy so I would have been SOL if I didn't pick it up when I had the chance.
Its a cheap insurance policy if a something goes bad and you need to boot from the exact same device.
And to answer your question, yes, I did eventually need to use the spare board. My RAID got corupted and I used the second board for troubleshooting. Turns out it was the drive that went bad, however I wouldn't have known this if I didn't have a good board to check against.
-K
Your best bet is after a couple of years, to go buy an identical RAID card from a surplus shop for cheap and keep it around as a spare part. I did this with my motherboard (since my RAID chip is built-in).
A few years ago when I built my PC, the mobo was "latest-and-greatest" costing over $180. Buying an extra for spare parts was not an option. But last year I found the same board in a computer surplus shop for $25. Also, it's no longer sold in normal places like Frys or Best Buy so I would have been SOL if I didn't pick it up when I had the chance.
Its a cheap insurance policy if a something goes bad and you need to boot from the exact same device.
And to answer your question, yes, I did eventually need to use the spare board. My RAID got corupted and I used the second board for troubleshooting. Turns out it was the drive that went bad, however I wouldn't have known this if I didn't have a good board to check against.
-K
That's Moore's Law. Computer stuff tends to multiply by 1000 every 15 years. 200GB hard drives nowdays are sizeable. 15 years ago you'd expect something about 200MB. In 15 years 200TB will be normal. 2.8TB is just 9 times larger than a 200GB drive, after all -- just 5 years into the future of desktop HDDs.
Man, I love that law!
Man, I love that law!
Yes, it happens all the time. RAID anything does not protect the data. Think of RAID as a high availability system that allows you to keep your data online in the event of hardware failure. It does not, in any way, shape or form, backup or protect your data. RAID for a large array is a good idea, since losing any one disk in a large array is much more probable. The hassle of restoring the data makes a redundant RAID solution more appealing.Although I haven't heard any such stories, this would still seemI have read more reports that I would like of the Lacie large hard
drive "solutions" failing.
like having a bit too many eggs in the same basket. What do you do
then when you've finally filled it up and then it breaks?
I'm thinking of building a file server with a 8 channel RAID5 disk
array. That would easily give me expandable storage options up to
2.8 TB with todays disk sizes. Plus the RAID5 protects from any
single disk failure, making backups more or less unnecessary. Of
course, if the RAID controller fails and botches the the array, I'd
be pretty much screwed.
Has anyone ever heard of something like this happening?
--
http://public.fotki.com/wibble/public_display/
Protect you from brain farts. Overwriting or deleting the data is usually a major concern.
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http://public.fotki.com/wibble/public_display/
That's true, of course. Mounting the data filesystems read-only or setting the file permissions on original files to read-only will take care of that, though.
I would do all the editing of the files on local copies, and store only the masters and finished versions on the RAID. I should be pretty safe, IMHO..
-JP
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