[TriLUG] Re: Dieing hard drive?

[Ben Pitzer]

Internally mounted IDE drives are not hot swappable.  As Mr. Tate mentioned,
however, external USB drives would be hot swappable.  Disadvantage:  Slower
transfer rates, I believe, depending on your system.  I could be wrong about
that.  I don't know what the transfer rates are for IDE drives much anymore.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of the spare drive backup plan.  Mainly for
the reasons that Chip mentioned to Jason.  Hard drives fail much more
easily, and I trust a tape or optical backup much more because I know that
if I have to restore, the chances of that backup media failing are pretty
slim.

Basically, the fact is that tapes and optical media are more reliable.  We
don't use them for primary storage for pretty obvious (to me at least)
reasons.  They're ideal for backups, which is why they're used in enterprise
backup systems.  Obviously, for my home desktop, I don't need an enterprise
level system, but I do like the reliability more.

USB drives can still be iffy in Linux, and internal drives requiring regular
reboots are pretty much out of the question.  This is my
firewall/dhcp/email/web/ftp/samba/print server we're talking about.  I know
if I tinkered with it long enough, and upgraded to the best 2.6 kernel, I
could probably get an external USB drive working on my Debian Sarge machine,
but quite frankly, I'd rather not have to go through that pain.  Then again,
installing an internal DLT drive, recompiling the kernel, and getting Amanda
(or whatever) configured would probably take up at least that much time....

Tough call, but I'm still not overly fond of the HDD backup media idea.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

---------------------------------------------

"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
 --Ben Franklin--




> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org]On
> Behalf Of Joseph Mack
> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 12:20 PM
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Re: Dieing hard drive?
>
>
> Brian Daniels wrote:
>
> > IDE drive swap bay:
> > http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210-BLK&cat=HDD
> > $7.95
> >
> > 4 spare trays for bay:
> > http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210-2-BLK&cat=HDD
> > $6.10 ea
>
> thanks for the suggestion
>
> > At the end of the week, swap to next bay and store the previous
> one in a big
> > anti-static bag.
>
> are these hot swappable?
>
> Thanks Joe
>
> --
> Joseph Mack PhD, High Performance Computing & Scientific Visualization
> LMIT, Supporting the EPA Research Triangle Park, NC 919-541-0007
> Federal Contact - John B. Smith 919-541-1087 - smith.johnb at epa.gov
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
> TriLUG PGP Keyring         : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
>
>