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Old 05-22-2006, 07:09 PM
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Bigbird999 Bigbird999 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Greater Toronto Area
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Re: Disk rollover...

A sign in my dentist's office says

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO FLOSS ALL OF YOUR TEETH, JUST THE ONES YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE"

Applies here

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO BACKUP ALL OF YOUR FILES, JUST THE ONES YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE"

not_shorty
Quote:
backups are the solution to that problem, not paranoia
I agree, but you could have made your point without flaming folks. Risk is all about perception and previous experience affects perception.

Lets say you have 4 x 100 GB drives and you are recording 10 GB per hr HD files so 10 files per drive. Which is safer 4 x 100 striped Raid or 4 separate drives? The answer depends on what you mean by "safer".
When, not if, but when, a drive fails:-
1 in striped Raid, you will lose all 40 files - right now
2 in separate drive mode you lose 10 files (25% of your data) - right now while the other 30 files wait to be lost at an unknown time in the future
Most people would perceive #2 to be "safer". But, in reality, no individual file is safer because you don't know what drive will fail. What if the drive that fails contains the only copy of your daughter's solo dance performance that was broadcast on the local cable channel? That is the only file that really matters, and if you only back up 1 file, it should be that one.

Mick's perception of risk is obviously affected by his experience of losing a striped array 2 days after installation and I understand his shying away from striped arrays. In the same way, I understand somebody betting heads on a coin toss when the previous 20 tosses came up tails. Statistically it isn't right but perceptually it is.

So you back it up or you eventually lose it.

BB
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