Re: [gentoo-user] smartctrl drive error @60%

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 6:16 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I really need to do, set up a RAID or some other backup method so
> that even if this happens again, I don't risk losing anything.  Then
> again, that will take time as well.  Also takes money.

Keep in mind that RAID is more about speed of recovery and protects
against the failure mode of total drive failure, which is a fairly
common failure mode.  A hard drive failure on a RAID involves no
unplanned downtime, and a need for some short planned downtime to
replace the drive.

Backup protects against a lot more, but typically results in a
recovery that takes hours, and when the drive goes you're down without
warning.

>
> Most of that is recorded TV shows, movies etc.  I also have some pics I
> took with my camera that can't be replaced.  Those I backup to DVDs
> pretty regular.  I use kbackup to tarball them and then burn them to
> DVDs.  It works.  One set is outside the home in case of fire.  The
> biggest thing is some of those shows would be hard to get again plus the
> effort to get them as well.

So, stuff like photos I backup to the cloud, or to offsite media
(generally I favor the cloud for active stuff, and offsite media for
stuff I'm done with).  Ditto for things like /etc, mysql, documents,
email, and other small but important things.

For stuff like MythTV recordings I used to just rely on RAID -
recognizing that there was a very real possibility that I could lose
them all.  Now I also do a backup to a drive that is normally left
unmounted, which isn't great, but since I moved to btrfs I wanted
something on ext4 that had daily rsnapshots.  Again, I'm willing to
risk losing this stuff.

Rich