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When my Drobo decided to roll tits up, it apparently corrupted more than a few of my files.
I am finding them here and there.
For the most part, I've got a back up or can replace them.
It's just irritating.
Having a back up does you no good if save the corrupted file.
Disclaimer, working in higher ed IT for... Well, a long time. And seeing those things still annoy me. Probably not the worst backup method, but I've never had one in my area that did not eventually do something that caused a catastrophic issue or series of issues for whatever research group had all of their data on the things... To the point that I just proactively work to remove them and get everything to other storage solutions... But could just be me with my own prejudices and experience guiding me :-) Good luck, sir!
ReplyDeleteThe Drobo was, originally, a means to get more storage and wasn't backed up at all. Rather, it was the second copy of everything I already had, plus new stuff I was adding.
DeleteDrobos are kinda RAID, sorta, so there was the sense of security that if a drive failed I wouldn't lose the data.
That didn't take the Drobo itself having some form of failure into account.
When it started acting up, I started making sure that everything on it was on other drives as well.
I am finding that some of those files are screwed up as I run into them.
Some movies have been reduced to 0kb files. Last night I found one with the wrong file name! I went to watch Seven Samurai and got Morbius instead. The file named Morbius was a 0kb!
Happily I've got an offsite back up of that too, but it's not handy to wake them up and get a new copy.
Yes, having to explain to a researcher who considers IT to be "electronic janitors" that simply having their RAs put the file into the "RAID Array" did not in fact equate to having secure backups when the unit attached to an ancient iMac they pulled out of our graveyard (surplus as they get rotated out of service and in theory off to be "recycled") started to "act oddly". Especially given that the R1 research institution we were working in HAD actual Enterprise class infrastructure, (to the researcher) free almost unlimited storage and actual verified offsite backups. But it was not on their desk in their Lab where they could actually see it and touch it, so... Mind that was just the backup, saying nothing about the security of those files... But as I am no longer there, not my problem :-)
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