new hard drive

[SuperJETT]

I'm going to use this for off-site backups---plug it in a USB dock, do a massive backup over a weekend, and take it home so it's off-site.

We had a major fire here at work last week that reinforced having a good disaster recovery plan for me regarding my servers/data. The fire was in a production area and caused the roof to collapse plus burned up every wire in the building.

WD Caviar Black, 1TB, 32MB cache, and heavy as a brick compared to most drives. It's also like completely silent.

 

[SXIPro]

What did that run you for $$?

 

[OCD Solutions]

That's Puter Porn right thar! lol.

 

[SuperJETT]

A whopping $103.

 

[oxnard111]

storage capacity it coming down in price.

less platters are better from what I know so take that into consideration when purchasing a drive.

i saw a deal the other day, two 1TB drives for $110 + shipping. Both were 3 platter designs.

 

[Glory_Freestyle]

Love how prices keep falling on storage.


Wish my backups here at work were under 1TB. :banghead:

 

[SuperJETT]

Love how prices keep falling on storage.


Wish my backups here at work were under 1TB. :banghead:

My primary backup media is a 4 drive raid 5 array with 10k rpm SCSI (may be SAS) drives. I think I do around 300Gb/night but am in the process of auditing my backup procedures to make sure I'm catching everything.

 

[ger87410]

Is the 4th for hot-spare?

U using a storage tower, then? Which tower?

 

[SuperJETT]

Is the 4th for hot-spare?

U using a storage tower, then? Which tower?

Dell 2950 2U server, 2 drives mirrored for boot/os, 4 in raid 5 for storage, no hot standby since it's only used during backups. Most of my other servers running raid 5 have a hot standby drive.

 

[ger87410]

Oh, wow. I've not seen a RAID-5 with more then 3 drives. Not that I've seen many RAIDs. How many of the drives have to fail before the RAID fails?

Currently we're using a RAID-5 with 3 drives and 1 hot-spare. We've been a little disappointed with our current setup as it only takes 2 drives to fail for the RAID to crash.

The problem is we're using DPT crap. DPT got bought out 10+ years ago. (Shows how old the equipment we're using is.) We even got a DPT hot swappable tower with dual power supplies for redundancy. Sounds cool, but 1 PS went already and they stopped making them 10 years ago. We can't even get bays, so only 4 of the 7 bays are being used.

Too bad the hot-swap towers are so bloody expensive.

 

[SuperJETT]

I've run 6 drive arrays in raid 5, actually have 2 servers running that right now. 5 are in raid 5 with a hot standby, first one fails, the hot standby spins up and is built up and the array is back to 100%. Second one fails, the array still runs with no loss of data. Lose a third and you're toast.

I've had 2 or 3 drives in those servers die over the years and it worked just perfectly, stick a new drive in and within a few hours it's back to normal.

 

[ger87410]

That sounds like our setup with 4 drives.

I thought you were stripping across 3 or more drives w/ 1 parity drive. I think you can do that. I'll give that a shot when I get some free time, see how well it works for us.

 

[Glory_Freestyle]

My primary backup media is a 4 drive raid 5 array with 10k rpm SCSI (may be SAS) drives. I think I do around 300Gb/night but am in the process of auditing my backup procedures to make sure I'm catching everything.

I do about 3.9TB for my full backup and around 650GB for my differentials.

When I stream to tape it takes 7 LTO3's.

Oh, wow. I've not seen a RAID-5 with more then 3 drives. Not that I've seen many RAIDs. How many of the drives have to fail before the RAID fails?

Currently we're using a RAID-5 with 3 drives and 1 hot-spare. We've been a little disappointed with our current setup as it only takes 2 drives to fail for the RAID to crash.

The problem is we're using DPT crap. DPT got bought out 10+ years ago. (Shows how old the equipment we're using is.) We even got a DPT hot swappable tower with dual power supplies for redundancy. Sounds cool, but 1 PS went already and they stopped making them 10 years ago. We can't even get bays, so only 4 of the 7 bays are being used.

Too bad the hot-swap towers are so bloody expensive.

Our SAN is all RAID-5, two LUNs are 2TB (8 drives, each) and one is 600GB (3 drives). Two fibre cabinets, one is full (13 active 300GB Fibre Channel drives, 1 hot spare), the other has 9 active, 4 empty, 1 hot spare) Hot-swap cabinets are awesome. Well worth the money.

 

[ger87410]

Our SAN is all RAID-5, two LUNs are 2TB (8 drives, each) and one is 600GB (3 drives). Two fibre cabinets, one is full (13 active 300GB Fibre Channel drives, 1 hot spare), the other has 9 active, 4 empty, 1 hot spare) Hot-swap cabinets are awesome. Well worth the money.

Wow!

What brand SCSI stuff you running?
Is your stuff rack mounted, then?

We seriously need to upgrade. We're still using SCSI-3 ULTRAwide. But other then the hardware breaking and you can't get replacements, there is no need for it. Our software is designed to run on a Pentium2. :biggthumpup:

 

[MADMAT]

I never looked at the diff between green and black....anyone know? I have like 3 greens for image storage.

 

[SuperJETT]

I never looked at the diff between green and black....anyone know? I have like 3 greens for image storage.

green is supposed to be high efficiency, blue is normal, black is high performance.

 

[Glory_Freestyle]

Wow!

What brand SCSI stuff you running?
Is your stuff rack mounted, then?

We seriously need to upgrade. We're still using SCSI-3 ULTRAwide. But other then the hardware breaking and you can't get replacements, there is no need for it. Our software is designed to run on a Pentium2. :biggthumpup:

All rack mounted Dell/EMC enclosures with Brocade Fibre switches.

 

[MADMAT]

Thanks Jett....I did not know that.....I only use drives this large for storage so far. Now I may have to drop a black one in for my OS!

 

[SuperJETT]

Thanks Jett....I did not know that.....I only use drives this large for storage so far. Now I may have to drop a black one in for my OS!

I wouldn't use anything that big for an OS myself. They are good performers in their size class, but a WD Velociraptor will destroy it speed-wise.

 

[SuperJETT]

I do about 3.9TB for my full backup and around 650GB for my differentials.

When I stream to tape it takes 7 LTO3's.




Our SAN is all RAID-5, two LUNs are 2TB (8 drives, each) and one is 600GB (3 drives). Two fibre cabinets, one is full (13 active 300GB Fibre Channel drives, 1 hot spare), the other has 9 active, 4 empty, 1 hot spare) Hot-swap cabinets are awesome. Well worth the money.

Yikes and Wow.

After the fire last week, disaster recovery plan is my focus. I'm redoing quite a bit of how I have things setup, including where different machines are.