Backup Online

macman

They offer to try to recover your data for you. They don't guarantee to recover it, because they don't know what has caused the drive to fail.

arciere

RAID1 (mirroring) is NOT a backup solution. If you press the wrong button and delete a file, it'll be deleted on both drives. Also, the NAS unit is still one.

byronwells

macman wrote: »

They offer to try to recover your data for you. They don't guarantee to recover it, because they don't know what has caused the drive to fail.

Yes they do know what has caused the drive to fail.. Because I have already told them in fully what has happen...

Dandytf

I managed 128gb Arcronis trial cloud backup last week.
40mb fibre 10 hours
Not 4tb solution OP

System

Chances are the drive itself is fine and its the SATA to USB portion of it which is goosed. I've yet to find an external drive where, dropping it from a height aside, the drive itself has failed. I have however seen plenty of them where its been the USB to SATA board and plugging the drive into a new caddy or into a PC has allowed the data to be accessed just fine.

byronwells

Tarambor wrote: »

Chances are the drive itself is fine and its the SATA to USB portion of it which is goosed. I've yet to find an external drive where, dropping it from a height aside, the drive itself has failed. I have however seen plenty of them where its been the USB to SATA board and plugging the drive into a new caddy or into a PC has allowed the data to be accessed just fine.

This hard drive has never been dropped at all..

arciere

Tarambor wrote: »

Chances are the drive itself is fine and its the SATA to USB portion of it which is goosed. I've yet to find an external drive where, dropping it from a height aside, the drive itself has failed. I have however seen plenty of them where its been the USB to SATA board and plugging the drive into a new caddy or into a PC has allowed the data to be accessed just fine.

To be honest, I've had an opposite experience. I've seen a few hundred drives with mechanical problems (either heads not moving, scratching the plates, or 'stuck' in park position), maybe less than 50 with a defective board. I worked in a repair shop for a long time and I remember that the Seagate/Maxtor drives where the worst on the market (also some cheap models of WD).
I am working in a different field now, still IT but not repairs, so I don't know if things have changed.
I got used to sending faulty drives to the Netherlands (that's where Seagate operates apparently) on a weekly basis, although they were quite efficient with the returns (you still got refurbished units though).
EDIT: No, apparently things haven't changed: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2017/

Pikeyp

Tarambor wrote: »

Chances are the drive itself is fine and its the SATA to USB portion of it which is goosed. I've yet to find an external drive where, dropping it from a height aside, the drive itself has failed. I have however seen plenty of them where its been the USB to SATA board and plugging the drive into a new caddy or into a PC has allowed the data to be accessed just fine.

I had exactly this happen with a Toshiba Canvio drive I bought off Amazon 2+ years ago ... ( it was one of Amazon's cheaper 'Warehouse deals) ... I assume the previous owner had similar problems and sent it back?
Anyhow I decided to take the drive out and try it in a separate enclosure ... and it worked just fine, and still does! Of course taking the drive out of the enclosure voids the warranty so you should be aware of that ...

mgfvvc

arciere wrote: »

RAID1 (mirroring) is NOT a backup solution. If you press the wrong button and delete a file, it'll be deleted on both drives. Also, the NAS unit is still one.

Mirroring doesn't solve all problems, but it can be a useful part of a backup solution.

If I delete from the main disk, as long as it's copied to the mirrored NAS, I have a copy there. Similarly, if any one disk fails I have 2 more copies. If my backup solution automatically deleted files from the NAS when they are deleted from the main laptop that could be an issue, however, if you adopt an incremental backup solution that retains old files that solves that issue.

In the end you have to decide what risks you are protecting against and pick a solution that targets those risks.


At the moment I have 3 copies of our critical files at home and versioned backups in the cloud, so I am secured against all but oversights and the most improbable coincidences.

arciere

mgfvvc wrote: »

Mirroring doesn't solve all problems, but it can be a useful part of a backup solution.

If I delete from the main disk, as long as it's copied to the mirrored NAS, I have a copy there. Similarly, if any one disk fails I have 2 more copies. If my backup solution automatically deleted files from the NAS when they are deleted from the main laptop that could be an issue, however, if you adopt an incremental backup solution that retains old files that solves that issue.

Sorry, I think we are talking about two different things. When you say 'as long as it's copied to the mirrored NAS', what do you mean? You have one drive (say USB), plus you have a NAS unit that you regularly use to take backups? If that's the case, RAID is not involved, and mirroring is just an action that can be performed either manually or scheduled. That's a backup.
RAID1 (commonly known as mirror), is a RAID system (that can be used on NAS units as well as computers) that simply mirrors the content of all disks. You have no control over this. THIS is not a backup solution. So if you are only using a NAS unit with 2 drives in it (or even 5), you are not having a backup plan.