RAID or single drive for backups?
RAID or single drive for backups?
Basically title. Is it common to use some kind of RAID for backing up other RAIDs or do people just go with single drives?
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It depends on your needs. How much do you value your data? Can you re-create / re-download it in case of a disk failure?
In some case, like a typical home users with a few writes per day or even week simply having a second disk that is updated every day with rsync may be a better choice. Consider that if you’re two mechanical disks spinning 24h7 they’ll most likely fail at the same time (or during a RAID rebuild) and you’ll end up loosing all your data. Simply having one active disk (shared on the network and spinning) and the other spun down and only turned on once a day with a cron rsync job mean your second disk will last a LOT longer and you’ll be safer.
Well, afaik the spinning up and down and related temperature changes do the most damage. I am not sure if a disk that is spun up daily will outlast one that mostly idles 24/7. Maybe if you do it only weekly?
I am not sure if a disk that is spun up daily will outlast one that mostly idles 24/7. Maybe if you do it only weekly?
Well, I do it weekly in a specific case but I also have other systems running daily. I guess it also depends on the use case / amount of data written and how damaging it can be if the "hot" drive breaks between the syncs.
Without any cold hard data, this isn't worth discussing.
The "cold hard data" is that 100% of the people that would be able to collect this "cold hard data" run their drives 24/7.