Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote:
>
> (And for those who talk about backups - yes, taking backups is good.
> However, it's the rare laptop or desktop machine that can afford the
> luxury of RAID disks, and backups usually happen once a night, if that
> often. This means that if you've been working hard on something important
> all day, and the disk blows chunks at 4:30PM, you *will* be suddenly very
> concerned over exactly how much you can recover off the failing drive....
Been there done, that. I am not sure that RAID is physically
practical for a laptop, but it may be
substantially more practical and economical for a desktop or home
server, than the hope that
a home user might backup a system.
I am sure that there are plenty of people with true stories of
backup systems saving their lives.
But my personal history involves systems with no backup, systems
with poor backup,
systems with wishful backup, and finally systems with failed backup.
My first experience with tape drivers was disassembling and patching
a QIC driver (not Linux)
because small portions of the backup tape were unreadable (the
client smoked while backing the system up)
and the tape software thought recovery was an all or nothing
proposition.
My first personal rule of data disaster recovery is start with the
data on the disk.
I have only had rare instances where 99% of the data on a disk was
not readable and recoverable -
though for some reason the most critical data is always in that 1%
that puts up a fight.
Backup systems are what you go to after you have recovered
everything possible from the disk.
--
Dave Lynch DLA Systems
Software Development: Embedded Linux
717.627.3770 dhlii@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.dlasys.net
fax: 1.253.369.9244 Cell: 1.717.587.7774
Over 25 years' experience in platforms, languages, and technologies too numerous to list.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
Albert Einstein
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
