Re: external SATA HD config/backup questions

<baratunde@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I have a pretty good idea of how I want to use FirmTek's 4-port
> external SATA card and enclosures along with SoftRAID 3 but wanted to
> run it by you guys before committing to the various drives etc.
>
> I'm using a Mac G5 tower and am trying to build a robust and reliable
> hard drive config using external SATA enclosures from FirmTek. I do a
> good amount of amateur video editing, podcasting and photo editing,
> writing, etc.
>
> Here's the proposed setup of the main drives
>
> A) internal SATA system drive - 160GB (aleady exists)
> B) Internat SATA low priority drive - 250GB (already exists)
> C) (PROPOSED) external SATA for working, video editing, music etc -
> 800GB (two 400GB in a Firmtek enclosure under RAID 0)
>
> I'm aneed a good backup solution for A and C, preferably using SoftRAID
> 3 to mirror them on yet another RAID stripe.

RAID 1 is best for high availability of data, not as a backup of
data. Using RAID 1, if you make a mistake and delete something
important it will be gone instantly from the mirror as well. If
the OS has a filesystem bug and wrecks the filesystem, the mirror
will be wrecked as well.

Unless you need the high availability provided by RAID 1, I
recommend having a mirror disk or mirror stripe, but not using
RAID 1. Use CarbonCopyCloner, rsync or something similar to
backup your files to the mirror once a day.

Since you mentioned using cron in your message, I'll point you at
snapshot:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/

which lets you create and maintain incremental disk-to-disk
backups very conveniently using cron. I use it to backup my
files hourly.

.

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