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Managing Disks - Certify, Verify, Initialize
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Not sure where else to ask this. I have a Flex 8 with the past two years of video on it. I can't afford to take any chances and currently keep an offsite single 16TB backup in an Elite Pro enclosure but the workflow is not working for me (mainly because I'm already out of space) and I'm surrendering to spending a lot more money with and on OWC products. So I'm planning on calling on Monday to discuss ordering yet another Flex 8 configured for capacity over speed, probably all HDDs (as this will be for archival and backups only).
On the official SoftRaid website I know that it officially says three-disks are recommended for greatest reliability. Does this hold true when it comes to keeping both on-site and off-site copies? Does "Greatest reliability" refer to reliability of the RAID set itself, or overall lowest chance of data loss, in which case, would an onsite and offsite mirror (two disks each) be just as well? I'm well aware that you don't want to break up a RAID and I'm not talking about running a second Flex 8 with broken raids at all. All I'm looking to do is to use another Flex 8 as an archival solution. I need the top four bays dedicated to Davinici Resolve project files (with source footage, timelines and project files) and the bottom four bays dedicated to Pro Res renders only. What I had originally thought about doing was an on-site backup as a two-disk mirror housed in a ThunderBay -- Carbon Copy Cloned to a second two-disk mirror --- which would regularly be pulled with the power off and unit disconnected to keep an identical mirror off-site (so that the RAID is never broken and when empty, SoftRaid just won't see the volume at all; Bays 3 & 4 would just be empty then, except for when bringing the offsite drives back to update the data; once weekly or so). At no point am I trying to pull half of a mirror or anything like that. I'm only interested in a solution for greatest safety of data with large (and most importantly expandable) archival potential. I can't afford tape and have some concerns about that anyhow, so I think I'm stuck with doing what I want to do on hard disks. If there are any concerns about using the Flex 8 that way, please let me know. But if not (and hopefully not), I still have another question:
Is there any industry standard or at least official SoftRaid recommendation about how two sets of mirrors on and offsite compares to "a set of three-disks for greatest reliability"? Is there any official recommendation on if it's better to store on-site in a three-disk mirror with the offsite as a single non-RAID disk? Or is "greatest reliability" kind of all the same once there's a mirrored set of two both on and off-site?
Sean
This topic was modified 1 year ago 2 times by GuitarFlex
Posted : 21/01/2023 7:05 pm
We are making recommendations on helping users protect their precious data. We know there should be three copies of all data:
active, backup and archive. At minimum. We have customers and have seen workflows that involve many more backup steps, as the value of the data is so high, you need many backups to insure against a worse case scenario.
Also, standard backups are of no use to "hackers" who encrypt your data for "ransom". I have heard a long story of a multi national company, who was infiltrated and the scammers were so patient, they waited several months to encrypt all the backups, before locking the company out of their data.
Another event was a flood, where multiple backups were stored 20 feet overhead, and a 25 foot flood occurred.
So backups are for protecting against standard failure issues and also the unimaginable.
this is why off site backup is highly recommended, for disasters.
a 3 disk mirror is so good because you have 2 disks on site, providing "high availability", while the other is off site, brought in weekly, and in the event of a disaster, you can recover data since last synch.
How often should backups be updated? When the cost of recreating your data is more than the hassle of backing up again.
Its seems like you are paranoid enough to be protecting your data and your plan seems very reasonable.
Posted : 21/01/2023 8:46 pm
