[s-cars] NAC- need advice on photo workstation, RAID and some other ???s

[Mark Strangways]

my RAIDs have yet to fail me, and I have had drives go bad and not replicate 
over to the other.
I use windows 2003 server, it has built in software RAID that works great.
Allows all configurations of RAID and is very flexible.

My 2 (copper) cents worth.

Mark
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Taka Mizutani" <t44tqtro at gmail.com>
To: "Kent McLean" <kentmclean at mindspring.com>
Cc: <s-car-list at audifans.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [s-cars] NAC- need advice on photo workstation,RAID and some 
other ???s


> Are you talking about RAID off a MB or using a dedicated controller card?
>
> I was going with a fairly high-end controller card (for a workstation) to
> maximize
> reliability. I'm wondering if going with Adaptec would be safer than 
> Areca,
> which is
> not the same size of company.
>
> I'm running Win XP Pro SP2. No wireless networks, but I could easily 
> network
> to a
> second PC via a 100MBs switch. These a RAW photo files, maybe 20MB each, 
> but
> will eventually number into the thousands. That's the problem- manual
> backups are
> fine with small chunks of data, but when you are talking about hundreds of
> GBs,
> that DVD backup won't cut it.
>
> I'm looking toward the future as well- that's why RAID and tape backups 
> are
> really the
> only thing I can see that will scale well when I'm talking about a 
> potential
> 2TB setup in
> a few years. Even tape doesn't have the density that I'd really want- the
> affordable systems
> max out around 200GB per tape and I'm not able to buy nor do I really want
> an autoloader.
>
> Taka
>
>
> On 6/10/06, Kent McLean <kentmclean at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> Taka Mizutani wrote:
>> > I'm building a dedicated photo workstation for maximum reliability
>> > and redundancy so as to avert any potential data loss. However,
>> > I have to do this in a reasonable budget, so I can't afford to drop
>> > multi thousands on this setup.
>>
>> I may be wrong, but...  I haved heard horror stories about RAID
>> setups where data got corrupted on the first drive, and it was
>> copied that way to the redundent drives, destroying what had
>> been good data.
>>
>> If it were me,  I'd rely on frequent manual backups.  I'd just copy
>> the work data to a second drive in the PC after every session.
>> I'd also get a removable (USB/Firewire) drive and copy to that,
>> too, then store that drive off-site.  And to make sure that a stray
>> magnet or flood doesn't screw up the drives, I'd burn the data
>> to DVD(s) on a regular (weekly, monthly) basis, and store those
>> off-site.
>>
>> That's my two cents, and worth every penny.
>>
>> Some questions that didn' arise:  what OS are you using?
>> Do you have a wireless network to back-up to a 2nd PC?
>> How much data are you talking about?  Some ISPs provide
>> lots of storage for little money (easy access and off-site).
>>
>> --
>> Kent McLean
>> '94 100 S Avant, "Moody"
>> '89 200 TQ, "Bad Puppy" up in smoke
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