On Nov 8, 2011, at 10:22 , Lee Larson wrote: > On Nov 8, 2011, at 9:00 AM, Bill Rising wrote: > >>> >>> • The two desktop computers are backed up by wire with Time Machine to a >>> software RAID in the Linux server down the basement. The Linux machine >>> advertises the RAID volume using Netatalk, so it looks and behaves just >>> like an Appleshare server. >> >> Is a software RAID as reliable as a hardware RAID? (I would guess it is, or >> else you wouldn't use it.) > > That's a good question. I really don’t know, but I've noticed no problems. > Since many (most?) of those dedicated hardware RAIDs are running embedded > Linux anyway, I suspect the difference isn't very great. Mine is probably > less reliable because the box is doing so much else: MythTV, SETI@home, file > server, …
Aha. I thought the RAID stuff was a magic set of hardware.... >> >> Do you have the Time Machine drive backed up redundantly? This is the one >> thing I really want to do, because of working on laptops all the time. Of >> course, maybe this is a silly idea, because the data are already redundant >> (one copy on the laptop, one copy on the backup). > > Most of the crap that's backed up with Time Machine is both redundant and > unimportant. A 3-2-1 strategy for it would be a waste of time and storage > space. Good point. > > I guess I didn't mention the extra legs of our backups. > > We have DropBox accounts. A lot of the stuff I'm working on right now lives > on my DropBox. That includes our encrypted financial information. Do you encrypt it by having it on an encrypted disk image? This is what I do on my laptop, but I don't have the disk image in Dropbox. (I do put on my iDisk from time to time, but that is disappearing soon.) > The current files are available from anywhere all the time. There are > redundant copies magically on all my machines and I don’t have to worry > about whether that thing I’m writing right now is up-to-date at home and in > my office; I can just sit down and start whacking away at it. True enough. My stuff is not so complex, because I live off one computer---my laptop. > If I were more paranoid about this, I'd have a bona fide 3-2-1 strategy, but > I don’t really have that much stuff to worry about, if the house burns down. > For example, I use IMAP, so all my email is backed up on the various mail > servers. My current projects are all on DropBox. Passwords are stored in > Yojimbo and LastPass, which are redundant across machines. I don’t take a > lot of photos, but the ones I care about are already out there on the 'Net in > various accounts I use to buy prints, or on one or the other of the Grandma's > computers. I don’t have a big music collection, and it wouldn't kill me to > start over again—yet another copy of the White Album! All good points. I'd be more depressed about my albums and CDs getting destroyed than my rips of albums into iTunes getting destroyed. Thanks for all the food for thought. I think I'll go simple and back up via TimeMachine, with a periodic backup of my laptop via SuperDuper!, so that I could get started quickly again. BUT I'll wait until the hard drive prices recede with the flood waters. Cheers, Bill _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
