On 25 May 2004 at 14:11, Shawn K. wrote: > Storing data on multiple hard-drives is the best way to go IMO... Actually, > having a networked computer working as a dedicated server with a RAID array is > the best way to archive anything. Yes, it's expensive... ish.. I built a P3 > 950 from almost nothing for about 250 dollars and I have it networked right now. > I need to spend about 400 more to get a nice RAID array for redundancy purposes > and then I'll pretty much be set for 10 years or so...
Hmm, I've got pretty much what you're aiming for, a dual PIII 800 server with mirror set and large RAID 5 array tethered via 1Gb networking on a large extended power UPS and I still feel jittery until my new data has found its way onto DVD media and is locked away. I expect that the machine will be good for quite some years to come but I still expect to run out of storage capacity well before the machine fails. However optical media is my preferred archive option, I never view on-line data as archive regardless of how robust the system is. Drives are pretty robust if the cooling is adequate, the box this one recently replaced was a dual PPro200 and it had been in continuous service without any failures for over seven years. It contained s RAID consisting of a set of 4GB Seagate Barracuda FW SCSI drives, they still all work fine but their small capacity pretty much makes them redundant. Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
