Best HD make for PC

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh dear oh dear. You are an amateur aren't you?

[John Rumm]

And if the tape drive failure resulted in it stretching your tape?

or the other disk, or your tape, or your optical, your NAS etc.

All backup hardware and media can fail, the failure modes are difference, the MTBFs are different. Part of designing a dependable system is using the strengths of your chosen technologies.

Tapes on their own are ok, but tapes *and* disks are better etc.

[John Rumm]

I think the burst into flames bit was more a suggestion that is what computers do when in a house has bursts into flames, rather than they themselves starting the ball rolling...

Although certain large defence electronics company in Basildon managed to lose a whole building when a PSU on a VAX burst into flames... it would not have been so bad had it been in a room with a fire control system, and had it not been in a first floor office, on a wooden floor, directly above the site paint store! ;-)

[dennis]

You will have to explain which bit you are disagreeing with me over as all of that is more or less what I said. The only difference being that the tape system costs more to buy.

[dennis]

You are the amateur.. you have stated that you swop circuit boards to recover data from disks. Only an amateur needs to do that. A professional system doesn't ever require that. It is a result of not designing and/or implementing a proper system in the first place. So now you have proven that you don't have a clue go away and stop pretending.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Grow up dennis and stop throwing your toys out of the pram.

How do you think one recovers data from a disk whose drive electronics has failed?

Before resorting to the clean room to remove the platters and fit a new head assembly.

Who said it was our disk anyway?

playground tactics. Dennis. Dont sulk.

[dennis]

We nearly lost a few £M when a power supply caught fire, fortunately we had put the sprinklers on manual so they didn't operate and the security staff knew where the power switches were.

[dennis]

So why bring it into a discussion about backups.? What did you hope to prove other than the fact you are an amateur?

The point is adequately proven, your claim to be an expert is a lie. It has to be as I have never claimed to be an expert and I plainly know more about it than you. Try posting where there are mugs that believe what you say.

[Man at B&Q]

If any/all of those happen to the PC on my desk at work, guess what happens.

That's right, the data is restored from the *disk* based backup system.

Disks are used as backups. Get over yourself and move on!

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

Why am I not surprised at the lack of an answer?

MBQ

[Perry (News)]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:24:44 +0100, "dennis@home" waxed lyrical about:

Dennis, did you get dropped on your head as a baby leaving you with damage to Wernicke's area and some form of comprehension dyslexia?

I only ask because people attempt to make clear, unambiguous statements setting out situations and you insist on reading into them something that just isn't there

Nowhere did I say that we use tape 'for the important stuff'

For us, and I accept that each set of circumstances is unique,

Tier 1 (Disk) is used for our most critical data (i.e. *the most important stuff*) as it allows us fast recovery in the event of a DR as well as being able to recover deleted/old versions of files very quickly. Tier 1 is *not* a pre-tape cache, this data never goes onto tape unless we need to take an archival snapshot of particular items (not all of it) for regulatory compliance.

Tier 2/3 (Tape) is used for bulk backup where time to retrieve is less important than cost. I believe that, during the backups, TeleVault buffer this data to disk before streaming it off to tape but, as we only get charged for the appropriate Tier, how they handle the mechanics of getting it onto tape is their business. That said, tape lends itself nicely to large files/datasets as, once data is streaming, the transfer rates are good. It's not so useful where a number of items for restore are spread over a number of tapes as the mechanical overhead becomes proportionally large

As other people have mentioned, we use tape for archival storage of

*some* data to meet FSA regulations as certain data has to be kept for years... and years... and years... - although I'm sure that we'll be unable to read some of the backups in 25 years time if left in their current form, so we're almost certainly going to have to look at some form of data migration from the archive tapes onto newer media at some point but any decision on what that media will be will be taken some years down the line - it might be tape, disc or some, as yet unavailable, incredibly cheap, fast and data-dense medium

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If my house was destroyed by fire, loss of computer data would be the least of my worries...

[Huge]

"All my important stuff is stored on the Acorn"

Not so important after all, then?

[dennis]

Because you are stupid enough to expect an answer to such a vague question?

[dennis]

You are going to have to explain why you think that is reliable enough for your data. What reliability do you expect and how you guarantee it.

Disks are not very reliable so if its what you are using then either you are doing something special or your data is not important or you misunderstand what is being done.

[dennis]

No family photos or stuff like that then?

Houses are insured and can be replaced, some stuff can't be. Don't protect the stuff that doesn't matter and forget the important stuff.

[dennis]

The acorn is fire proof, and the HD will survive the fall and the knocks from the house falling down. Just like the external one will.

Its a bit like expecting all the disks in your backup array surviving the bomb blast, earthquake, flood, fire, etc.

[Perry (News)]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:49:39 +0100, "dennis@home" waxed lyrical about:

You really don't understand this level of technology, do you...? At this level you don't look at the reliability of individual components (disks, controllers etc.), you provide enough redundancy to look at statistical reliability of the system as a whole. Any individual item can fail but if you have enough redundancy in the system to protect the data that it holds then individual (or multiple) component failures just don't matter - everything is hot swap so failed units are just removed and new ones added, enough redundancy gives overall failure probabilities that are even lower than the likelihood that you're ever going to start talking sense.

A company like TeleVault starts by taking enterprise level multi-multi-terabyte SANs, each with multiple redundant components - everything from spare on-line disk shelves through to mirrored filer heads with hot spares, multiple power supplies fed from different UPSs (with generator backup) then mirroring this configuration (and the data) across a number of geographically dispersed data centres all linked by a (very) fast network infrastructure that is designed to route itself around any outages. Truth be told, there's a lot more involved but the overriding aim is to provide state-of-the-art levels of reliability

As you're such an authority in this area Dennis, perhaps you should write to the, rather large, number of City companies that use Guardian to provide disk-based backups of critical data and offer to pop around each evening with your tape drive to show them how it's done - that is if you can work out how to detach it from your ZX Spectrum...

Now go away and play with your crayons Dennis, all you're doing is showing your ignorance...

[dennis]

I understand it better than most people here. Why don't you read this

explains how televault works including the backup to offsite locations that they do to ensure they don't lose customers data too often. PS guess what, it uses tape.

You might think you are backing up to disk but you aren't when it comes down to the facts.

You may want to take your own advice and look here

[Jules Richardson]

I think my only experience of a computer catching fire was an Acorn setup, actually - although to be fair, it was the Microvitec display that started producing flames, not the BBC to which it was attached...

cheers

Jules