On 06/05/12 04:15, phanisvara das wrote:
after seeing a few threads re. RAID arrays, problems booting off them, and extra strain the surviving member of an array is put under when it has to sync a new HDD after it's (only) brother's failure, i doubt the wisdom of my original idea to set up two identical 2TB drives as RAID1 array.
wouldn't it be safer (not to mention simpler) to just rsync the simple directory tree i'm concerned about to the other HDD every 15 min or so? if either of the two HDDs fails, the other one still has the important data.
it's not my desktop, but a file server i'm putting together for my employer. the only thing he cares about is preserving the data in question. if or when one of the HDDs fails, there's no need to preserve the operating system or anything else.
Neither RAID or rsync provide "data security".. in fact no tool or hardware does, that's a very dangerous mindset to adopt.. deep trouble ahead :-) .. now, that being said.. RAID can provide you much better *availability* and disaster recovery aid when things go wrong, but there is almost always a tradeoff for performance. It is not a replacement for backups, that's when rsync comes into play to help the file transfer/sync process. "data security" involves a "process" not only "a bunch of hw and software" but also policies regarding physical/virtual access to the information, data retention and confidentiality. Yes, cheap-ass hardware fails and usually sucks..but human beings screw things up in a much larger scale..big time! so think before you type ! ;-) Cheers!! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org