Comments

farss wrote on 7/12/2007, 6:52 AM
I have the original 5200, work a charm. As far as I know the original 5200 is qulaified for drives upto 1TB although I'm only running Samsung 400GBs in it.
I think there's some anecdotal evidence that as drive capacity has increased MTBF has gone done. From my onw experience with older 40GB drives that never seem to die this might have some weight to it.

One thing, don't buy the Rouster version, that's the one with the router unless you want / need the router. The version without the router has two 1GB ports that can be agregated although 2GB maybe be pointless based on throughput figures, even so it's cheaper.

Bob.
Steve Mann wrote on 7/12/2007, 5:26 PM
This is a first.

I looked on resellerratings.com because I've never heard of eaegis.com, and they rate a 10 out of 10. Admittedly a small sample, but a 10/10 is unusual.

I am also looking for NAS, but two things to remember. Your network is slow, so plan on upping it to a gigabit ethernet. Also, the discs are running 100% so your cheapie desktop drives will die young. (They are typically rated with a 50% duty cycle). You need server-rated drives which are speced at 100% duty cycle. They cost about 20-30% more, though.

I suspect that they are the same drives that you find in the OEM packs at Fry's, but the extra bucks buys the longer warranty.

Steve
Xander wrote on 7/12/2007, 5:45 PM
I did the search on eaegis.com too and found the same results, hence my sceptisism. I am prepared to wait until it becomes more readily available. I have already upgraded the network to GigE in anticipation of buying some NAS, so no issues there.

Based on Steve's and Farss's comments about harddrive failure, does make one wonder. I was planning on running RAID 5, so theoretically it could cope with one harddrive failure.

Anyways, at the moment I have 2 TB in my PC: 250 + 250 + 750 + 750. I am at about 80% capacity - that is a lot of information to loose. Currently I backup the really important stuff to DL DVDs and keep two copies on different harddrives, hence the high utilization. Some stuff is not backed up - even Blu ray doesn't offer the necessary storage for large amounts of data.

Big question in general is, what is the best way to truly backup data in this day and age? I think having two RAID 5 systems, where one mirrors the others is probably the way to go, however, that is pretty pricey. Guess, it is one step at a time.
vicmilt wrote on 7/12/2007, 6:53 PM
Struggling with the same question -
I'm too cheap to backup all the data.

What seems to be working for me is as follows (but I'm totally open to further discussion/suggestion).

I've got all my data on outboard SATA drives. Four 500's which gives me two terrabytes of data storage. Am beginning to squeeze the end of the storage though. Two of my outboard SATA's are attached by Wiebetech SATADocks - easily removable drive docks. So I can bring in other drives as necessary - which totally used to be my workflow. But as you know, "any luxury used for more than two weeks becomes an absolute necessity". I've gotten to LOVE just cutting w/o switching drives. I could put in another 4 port SATA card and just add on another four drives - not until I need them though.

I do all my edits and preRenders on a twin 500gig SATA Raid 0 array - one terrabyte. Still quite empty.

Every night I backup the data on my Raid 0 (all the edits and preRenders) to another 500gig drive.

Now one thing - I religiously log what tape rolls are on each outboard drive. In the event one of them crashes, I will replace and redigitize that drive. Also - on each outboard drive, I make an "Assembly edit" of each roll. Simply drag all the clips up to the Assembly. I keep a copy of that Assembly on the Edit drive, as well. Theoretically if I lose a drive, all I have to do is redigitze the assemblies on that drive, and everything else should re-fall into place.

Waddya all think?

v
Steve Mann wrote on 7/12/2007, 7:28 PM
"what is the best way to truly backup data in this day and age?"

Oh, how about five five disk terrabyte raid boxes themselves in a raid-5 configuration? Twenty five disks in raid 5^5? (Would that be Raid-25?). Then five of those in another raid array, 125 drives in all. How many drives have to fail before you lose data?

The problem with a drive failure isn't that the massive array would just keep ticking, how would you know which drive failed?

Just kidding, of course
farss wrote on 7/13/2007, 2:22 AM
Just to answer some things about the Thecus 5200.
If a drive goes south you can config the box to email you an alert. Also it does have a LCD panel and drive status indicators.
You can replace a drive without powering the unit down, in fact according to Thecus it's easier to hot swap a drive than power down and replace. The unit has a few USB ports, a print server and an eSATA port. I've had no problem plugging a thumb drive into the unit and accessing that from any machine on my network.
I haven't tested replacing a faulty disk as so far one hasn't failed, phew!
One of the most important things about backups if you're really serious if off site storage. LTO tapes are very economical for very large amounts of data.

Bob.