Les Mikesell wrote at about 12:08:22 -0500 on Tuesday, April 26, 2011: > On 4/26/2011 11:38 AM, Michael Conner wrote: > > I installed BPC a few weeks ago and have been doing testing and setup > > since then and have things working pretty well on several linux, windows, > > and mac clients (ultimately there will be about 15 clients). The server is > > a Dell 2400 with a 160gb ide drive, Centos 5.6, BPC 3.1 installed with yum > > from the testing repos. I've added a sata controller and two 2t drives as > > a raid 1 setup, which is what I'll use for real backups. I can't boot off > > the sata drives, so I boot from the ide drive and put topdir on the satas. > > > > I've done some searching on offsite backups as I would like to maintain at > > least a recent copy offsite as disaster protection. DD has been too slow > > for these large drives (I would have to leave it going overnight with no > > backups running). I may go with periodic archives using the BPC archive > > function. > > > > However, another idea intrigued me that I saw in an earlier posting. > > Someone used a RAID 1 setup but only put in the second disk periodically, > > then removed it for offsite storage. I have three 2T drives, so was > > considering something similar where I would keep a normal 2-disk RAID 1 > > setup but periodically remove one disk and replace it with a prior offsite > > disk. > > > > Not being particularly experienced in all this, I was hoping someone on > > the list could offer advice on whether this was a good ideal or not and > > potential pitfalls. > > It is working for me, but I use a 3-member RAID1 where 2 are always > connected and the 3rd is rotated out periodically. This isn't really > necessary but when I was first trying it with one internal, one external > drive the internal one failed, corrupting the attached external, and it > was something of a hassle to rebuild from the remaining offsite external.
I did it that way where the 3rd 'backup' drive was mounted via USB and had a *catastrophic* failure where something went wrong with the 3rd drive causing all three RAID1 members to become corrupted. I'm not sure exactly what but I ended up losing 2 years of backups. I think a safer alternative would be to do what the OP proposes -- that way you always have one safe copy not part of the RAID in case something messes up.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WhatsUp Gold - Download Free Network Management Software The most intuitive, comprehensive, and cost-effective network management toolset available today. Delivers lowest initial acquisition cost and overall TCO of any competing solution. http://p.sf.net/sfu/whatsupgold-sd _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
