Thursday, March 5, 2009

For backups, RAID mirroring is not the answer

For backups, RAID mirroring is not the answer.
That's the lead item in my column in the WindowsSecrets newsletter this week.

Drive mirroring is a kind of continuous, real-time backup where an OS keeps a primary and a secondary drive in perfect sync. Whatever changes are made to one drive are transferred automatically to the other.

Mirroring is actually a form of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). This ancient hard-drive technology originated way back in 1987, when MS-DOS 3.3 was king and hard drives were incredibly expensive. For example, an Iomega 10MB hard drive cost $900 in 1987 dollars; equivalent to about $1,600.00 in today's dollars. (And yes, that's a miserly 10MB, not 10GB.)

RAID capability is built into many motherboard disk controllers today, which means that lots of people are using it.

And while RAID has its place, I don't think it's on the desktop--- especially not in simple mirroring setups. In this week's issue, I'll explain why.

The other items this week include:
  • A quick command restores a missing imm32.dll
  • How to thwart port-probe hack attacks
  • An easy fix for "USB devices not recognized" problems
The guys who run WindowsSecrets put my column in the paid-subscription section which operates on the honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my column) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!
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2 comments:

  1. RandyMarch 5, 2009 at 11:03 AM

    Fred,

    I use mirroring on my Ubuntu file server to prevent data loss through hardware failure.

    If one of the drives fail, then my system seamlessly keeps running. I buy a new hard drive, install it, format it and then the RAID copies all the files over to the new drive.

    I agree that this won't prevent data loss because of a virus or accidental deletion, but I have found that my drives *fail* more often than virus infections or fat fingers.

    Besides I still do take incremental snapshots every few evenings, so I do have the historical files.

    Although, I don't know what will happen or how I will be notified if when a drive does fail. Perhaps I should test that. :-(

    Kinda prepared for disaster,
    Randy

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  2. AnonymousMarch 5, 2009 at 11:04 AM

    fred, have you ever checked out drobo.com? i have one of their disk arrays with 4 500gig drives, and it works great. no longer do we have multiple copies of pictures and files on our 3 computers. oh, and i back the drobo up to an external once a month. it's painless, and it works.

    cheers,
    iceless in olympia

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