[TriLUG] Music Files (and a small rant)

[Pat Regan]

Mark Freeze wrote:
> The point is that they are mine and I want to keep them. It would not
> be the end of the world if I lost them, which is why I don't spend $5K
> on systems to protect them. But, on the same hand, I care more about
> them than just putting them all on a couple of 250GB IDE drives in my
> desktop box and 'letting the cards fall where they may.'
> 

I know I am getting into this thread a bit late, so let me just offer
you my 2 pennies first.  You can do what you like with them :).

Hard drives are not a reliable place to store data, and RAID is not a
replacement for backup.  Hard drives fail, and they fail often.
Especially modern IDE drives.  If you are going to rely on a RAID 5
array remember that you only need to lose 2 drives before your data is
toast. (better splurge for a hot spare!  disk is cheap.)

If you buy identical drives from the same vendor you will most likely
greatly increase your chance of multiple drive failures.  RAID isn't
there to keep your data safe, it is there to keep away downtime.

There is a reason people use removable media for backups...  They
seperate the read/write hardware from the media.  If something happens
to the heads in a hard drive, you're pretty much lost.  If your tape or
dvd drive goes out, you just use another one.

That said, I would highly recommend burning 100 DVD discs if you
actually want to keep all your data.  It is cheap, and not a whole lot
of work.  I just recently put a 16x +-rw burner in my girlfriend's
machine for about 60 dollars shipped.  I have been ordering 4x media for
less than 40 bucks per 100 disc spindle.

So for an extra 100 bucks you can have a real backup that you can store
off-site (a.k.a. a friend or family members home).

As long as you keep dates on all your files, you can burn anything new
you get very easily just by burning anything newer than the date of your
full backup.

> For the rest of the 'doesn't mean much if you don't protect it' crowd:
> 

This is probably me :).

> I'm sure that in your house you have a smoke detector, maybe even a
> fire alarm as part of a home security system.  Why not a sprinkler
> system?  Why not active fire zone protection for the most sensitive
> areas of your home?  Why not move closer to the fire station?  Why not
> undergo yearly fire training and prevention classes?  Just because you
> are not willing to go 100%, full-out, to protect your home doesn't
> mean you don't care about it or it's contents.  You make the best
> decisions you can with the money you have at the time.  (The money you
> spent going out to eat last week could have been used to buy fire
> extinguishers.)

It depends on what you are trying to protect.  I have insurance, so if
my house burns down I can replace 99% of everything in here.  What about
the other 1%?  That is the stuff I really care about.  The things I can
never replace.  My best example of that is photographs.  I just happen
to keep a backup copy of almost all my pictures off-site (except very
recent, of course).

You just have to decide how important your data is.  We can't tell you
that.  You probably won't believe me about how unreliable hard disks
actually are until you lose your data though :).  I know too many people
who haven't done proper backups, and they didn't realize what they lost
until it was too late.

> 
> Maybe in my original post I should have just said that I wanted to
> protect 500GB worth of data and just left the music part out.  Jeesh!
> 

You should expect to be ridiculed when you claim to be doing something
that is currently illegal :p.

> Regards,
> Mark.
> 

I hope something in my reply is useful to you, or anyone else for that
matter :p.

Pat