# Preserve Hard Drive

## rawbeefman

I have an HTPC and I am in the process of ripping the family DVD collection onto it.  The bottom line, I have about a terabyte of data, and would be devastated if I lost it all.  However, economically and the fact that I want to keep the thing low powered, I do not want to mirror the data with raid1.  

Since the thing is spinning 24/7, there is a good chance it makes it to 3 years and dies.  What is my best course of action to prevent data loss.

1.  Spin down the hard drive with the content.  Is this safe?

2.  Perhaps a disk diagnostic tool.

3.  Is there a way to manually calculate when a drive SHOULD die.  I thought the manufacturer posted a number of revolutions the drive is rated at.

4.  Some other ways?

I appreciate the time spent on this issue.

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## bob doe

Drives generally have a life expectancy in hours and spin ups/downs.  A good desktop drive should last you 5 years or more if you take care of it.  Pick up a Seagate.  Best damn drives out there and they were the first to introduce 5 year warranties.

Depending on your usage, if you spin up and down ... say... 50 times a day, it might just be best to keep the thing running 24/7.

I'd also suggest getting a second terabyte hard drive and backing the data up perhaps once a week or once a month.  Unless you can live with loosing all the data.

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## NeddySeagoon

rawbeefman,

Raid provides a reliability improvement, not a backup 

```
rm important_data
```

removes the file from the raid set.

You need at least one backup. Its a really bad idea to overwrite your only backup as you update it.

If the primary copy fails at that time, you will have two bad copies.

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## sam_i_am

I'm planning on doing something similar. Initially I was going to go the RAID route. But after reading a bit more, I'm now leaning towards a separate disk backup that will mirror the main drive if it gets something new (perhaps weekly). In either case, I'm planning to have two copies of data (RAID 1 or a separate disk)

Sam

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## John R. Graham

My advice would be to get an 80GiB DLT tape drive (or bigger; the 160 GiB units are starting to become reasonable) surplus off eBay and keep real backups. The whole setup can be had for $200US if you're careful.

- John

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## Cyker

An 80/160GB tape to back up a 1TB drive?! That's a lot of expensive tapes!

This is the big problem - There just is no backup system that comes even close to being able to back up a modern hard disk.

The easiest and cheapest thing to do is to get another 1TB HD, whack it in an external enclosure and use that as a backup destination that you manually plug in and run some sort of rsync or tar or rar or 7z whatever op on it.

It's a problematic situation 'tho. I still haven't found a workable backup solution for my own RAID system, as the cheapest realistic way I've found involves building a SECOND RAID array!!

re. the other query; Spinning a drive up and down will generally kill it faster than letting it run 24/7:

After the 'infant death' syndrome, the next most major causes of HD failure are large temperature and voltage changes, both of which a drive will experience when being spun up and down (Drives draw a LOT of power when they spin up!).

Additionally, most 3.5" HD's are NOT designed to load and unload the head repeatedly and will often experience shortened lifespans in that event. 2.5" drives are much more tolarent of this treatment 'tho.

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## jcat

Personally, I would advise against tape backup, for simple home set-ups (and even corporate use!).  Hard drives are so cheap now, random access and restore tends to be quicker, and reliability is better (in my experience).

Cheers,

jcat

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## Simba7

I've got something like this, but I did a RAID5 across 8 drives. You can build one with 4, though.

Might want to just build an A/V Server and dump all your shows/movies on it. You can build one with an old Pentium or P2. My A/V server is a Dual PPro/200 with 1GB of RAM and 8x 250GB IDE HDDs. It definitely holds its own. Can't wait to upgrade it to all SATA's (it can house a total of 18 in it).

When I do upgrade it, I'm getting either 18x 1TB's or 18x 500GB's (maybe 750's if they're cost efficient) and do a RAID6. It's an old HP NetServer LX Pro.Last edited by Simba7 on Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:09 am; edited 1 time in total

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## rawbeefman

Cyker, that is very interesting.  Lets say I keep a drive just for Movies and I will watch 5-6 movies a month.  So the drive will spin up 5-6 times in a month.  

I guess I am curious what the most number of spin-ups that occur that would eventually lessen the drives life would be.  And that is as best as I can word such a mouthful of a question.

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## John R. Graham

 *Cyker wrote:*   

> An 80/160GB tape to back up a 1TB drive?! That's a lot of expensive tapes!

 FYI, I pay about $4US per tape on eBay.  I have running daily incremental snapshots of my main development boxes, plus monthly full backups, going back a year, with quarterly full backups set aside indefinitely.  That is why I love tape:  hard drive snapshots can't touch that cost or versatility.  I just love taking advantage of surplus generation-before-last data center technology.    :Very Happy: 

- John

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## sam_i_am

 *Simba7 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> When I do upgrade it, I'm getting either 18x 1TB's or 18x 500GB's (maybe 750's if they're cost efficient) and do a RAID6. It's an old HP NetServer LX Pro.

 

Whoa. That's a big setup. Wonder how much that'll cost on your electricity bill    :Shocked: 

My biggest issue with a RAID setup is that all the disks are running 24x7. I'm hoping that with a separate backup disk and some scripting, the backup disk would be powered down most of the time and would only wake up once a week (and only if there is something new). To make it a bit more robust, I'll be generating digests for all the files and checking them once or twice a year. As a last resort, I'll be keeping a separate backup on a bunch of DVD's. My family photos and videos are priceless  :Smile: 

As others have said, I don't think tape backup compares well against high capacity (>1TB) disks. Checking the tapes periodically would be nightmare. I wouldn't trust any magnetic material to hold its content more than a few years.

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## Simba7

 *sam_i_am wrote:*   

> Whoa. That's a big setup. Wonder how much that'll cost on your electricity bill    

 

Actually, our electric bill isn't much. Makes it nice. Our last bill was like $15. It's our gas bill that's around $60-70.

 *sam_i_am wrote:*   

> My biggest issue with a RAID setup is that all the disks are running 24x7. I'm hoping that with a separate backup disk and some scripting, the backup disk would be powered down most of the time and would only wake up once a week (and only if there is something new). To make it a bit more robust, I'll be generating digests for all the files and checking them once or twice a year. As a last resort, I'll be keeping a separate backup on a bunch of DVD's. My family photos and videos are priceless 

 

True that they are running 24x7. But with a RAID5, you only lose 1 disk out of 4, instead of a RAID1 which is just a mirror of each other.

As for DVD's, I don't care what they say the life span is for CD-R's or DVD-R (or +R)'s. While it is a decent medium, most max out in real world tests at 3-5 years instead of 50+ years that they claim. Maybe in an oxygen-less, sealed, and controlled environment, but not your typical house. Of course, you could put them in a bag and suck all the air out of it.

..and keeping the disks running at 24x7 isn't bad for them if they're properly cooled and the power going to them is clean.. I can see them lasting for years and if one fails, it's a RAID5 (or 6), just pop it out and shove in another. It's not like the drives are working constantly (ex. a data center server).

..and for the family photos and videos, I agree.. When my laptop HDD fried, I lost a good 2GB worth of pictures. I almost threw my 'book out the window from my car. I will NEVER buy another Toshiba HDD.

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## John R. Graham

 *Cyker wrote:*   

> ...This is the big problem - There just is no backup system that comes even close to being able to back up a modern hard disk.

 Actually, that turns out not to be the case.  At any given time, state of the art tape drive capacity tends to exceed state of the art hard drive capacity.  It's a matter of writable surface area, which can be far greater on tape.  For instance, today's SuperDLT media format S4 holds 1.6Tb per tape.  It's just that this is current technology, and thus very expensive:  only justifiable in a data center.  If you stay a couple of generations back, you can still have pretty good capacity and be quite economical.   :Wink: 

- John

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## lyallp

I think you should simply buy another 1TB drive, bung it in an external USB case, periodically, plug it in and do a complete backup, then put the USB case somewhere safe, ie, locate it somewhere else.

Has the additional benefit you can wander around to a friends place to watch a movie by simply plugging in your USB case.

It's what I do  :Smile: 

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