Of course, you could always *not* yank them; instead just fail them (after unmounting/syncing/whatever) and leave the actual disk in the machine. Purists would likely argue this isn't true backup or something, but backup can be taken to different extremes - it all depends on what risks you want to protect yourself against. If you don't care about location-based risks (eg fire), then I don't see why you would bother removing the drives. Leaving disks in the machine basically only protects you against 'oops' moments (rm -rf and such like)., but not much else. The advantage in RAID1 is that it makes a copy constantly, so it takes no time to create the backup - using other methods (rsync, tape, rdiff-backup) with a huge amount of data, this time can be prohibitive. Also, I'd say that plugging/unplugging disks would historically be a problem, but SATA shouldn't be, IMO. Also, there are solutions specifically designed for plugging/unplugging - which makes the point moot - so you might consider one of those. Having saidd that, this is Just my opinion, and I'm no expert... Max. 2008/11/20 Drew <drew.kay@xxxxxxxxx>: > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Linux <linuxlist@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> In recent months I've been exploring low cost solutions for backing up >>> the data on my home media server. I already run three raid-1 arrays on >>> this rig to protect against drive failures and a fellow linux user >>> suggested I consider using the existing raid, just yank the 'backup' >>> disks as needed, and drop in fresh disks to replace the yanked unit. >> >> I guess this is a little risky. Plugging disks too often does not sound good. >> Is "rsync" not enough for you? > > A year ago my old 10GB Travan & 4 tapes was enough to backup my OS and > data. In the last year I've seen my data storage jump from 40GB to 2TB > courtesy of a MythTV installation. I'm still figuring out how to > manage this large an amount of data and backup solutions are now on > the table as it's been indicated to me that loss of important 'media' > will result in a greatly lowered WAF(*). > > > -- > Drew > > "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." > --Marie Curie > > (*) WAF: Wife Acceptance Factor > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
