On Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 07:13:07AM -0800, Drew wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> 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 realize I'm treading on unsupported ground here but what suggestions
> can people give me to minimize the risk of data loss?
>
Firstly, a disclaimer - I've not tried this myself, so there's no
personal experience behind these suggestions.
Ideally you should unmount the array before failing & removing the
drive. If this is not possible then pick a time when the IO is likely
to be low - there's always going be a risk of corruption (especially
with something like a database), but modern journalling filesystems
usually cope with this okay.
As has been said elsewhere, you can have more than 2 disks in a RAID-1
array so don't leave yourself at risk by having a single disk in the
array. Whenever you want to do a backup, add in the new disk and, once
it's been fully synced, fail & remove it (or leave 3 disks in the array
& just pull one when you want the backup, replacing it with another).
Cheers,
Robin
--
___
( ' } | Robin Hill <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
/ / ) | Little Jim says .... |
// !! | "He fallen in de water !!" |
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