Help with implementing a hard drive

QED. And you would suffer a partial or total data loss with that practice, unless your in-laws’ single-drive backup was up-to-date.
If my house burned to the ground, my concerns would go beyond the need to re-rip some CDs or asking HD tracks to queue a purchase or two if timing were bad. Any NAS would be toast in that event.


RAID10 is a too expensive protocol to implement for homes and most smaller businesses.
Not today. As an IT professional I’m well aware of the various flavors.


Excess? You’ll wish you had some excess if that one remaining single drive backup at the in-laws doesn’t spool up.
Perhaps its time for you to read my post again. I maintain six additional copies in the fireproof safe. Remember walking all of thirty feet? The off site copy is for disaster recovery. :)

I am only using one more drive than you are to do this. One.
The obvious differences being that the backups are run about half an hour per month extending their life, reducing noise and vibration. RAID is unnecessary for largely static data. Spin all the drives you want!
 
Lol. Do you know what causes the most wear to a mechanical HDD? Powering them up and down. Do you know when over 80% of all HDD failures occur. On power up. As an IT professional, you should know that.

You and the others can manage your data any way you choose. It's your data, after all. If my house burns down, one thing I won't ever worry about is my data, including far more than CDs and videos. It's all recoverable in hours.

But I won't advise an Internet stranger asking for data storage advice to juggle around six or seven loose HDDs in an ad hoc rotation, or to trust his data to $20 worth of disposable USB thumb drives. That just seems technically irresponsible to me. You feel differently, and that's ok.
 
A single drive solution, no matter how you partition it, is a data loss waiting to happen.

It is, and that's why I have an appropriate backup system, appropriate to the degree of risk exposure I consider acceptable. As I said, I'm not bothered about a small loss of data that I can reproduce with a few minutes' effort.
 
Not today. As an IT professional I’m well aware of the various flavors.

FYI, RAID10 will always be more expensive to implement than a RAID5/6 scheme. RAID10 is a 50% disk utilization protocol. You always use more drives with RAID10 for the same volume size.

Again, as an IT professional, you should know this.

And the OP doesn't need the speed of RAID10 for streaming audio files.
 
It is, and that's why I have an appropriate backup system, appropriate to the degree of risk exposure I consider acceptable. As I said, I'm not bothered about a small loss of data that I can reproduce with a few minutes' effort.

And that is perfectly OK. Whatever level of risk you want vs. the value of the data to you is ok. It's your data, and your scheme.

I just am not comfortable giving advice to a stranger in that fashion, as he may not want to accept the same risks that you or I may want to assume. If the small data lost happens to be something irreplaceable, I would feel badly if I gave him the advice that caused that loss.

I assume an unsophisticated user when someone asks for advice, and err on the side of caution, always.
 
I just am not comfortable giving advice to a stranger in that fashion, as he may not want to accept the same risks that you or I may want to assume.

This is a thread about someone asking for advice on creating a music server for home use.

I explained my opinion that such a server does not contain mission-critical data, and how my backup approach works, and the potential data loss it exposes, and the effort required to recover any such loss.

I assume an OP is able to read my posts, and use the reasoning I have provided to decide for themselves what they wish to do.
 
This is a thread about someone asking for advice on creating a music server for home use.

I explained my opinion that such a server does not contain mission-critical data . . .

My advice does not make that assumption. It is not for me to decide whether someone else's data is "mission-critical" or not. That is subjective to the data owner.

You are correct in that the OP can decide for himself what works best for his data, regardless of its value to him.
 
I have laptop dedicated music player. I connect 2TB USB drive to it that contains 2700 CDs ripped lossless. I rip CDs on different laptop (this one that I am using now). I then copy to backup USB drive and then copy to USB drive on music laptop.
The old sneaker network.

:beerchug:, :thumbsup:
 
FYI, RAID10 will always be more expensive to implement than a RAID5/6 scheme.
Obviously as it for both performance and fault tolerance. We put the OS on one drive pair and split the database across additional pairs for simultaneous accesses across the many tables. It really makes a difference on multi-hundred user systems.

You should know this. LOL!

And the OP doesn't need the speed of RAID10 for streaming audio files.
I continue to agree with others that any RAID is overkill for music storage.

Clearly, my experience of 38 years is different than yours. The reason I have so many drives is well - they won’t die! Two of them are 8-10 year old 500 gb models. As I’ve added video content, I needed more capacity and added 1 and 2 tb drives. And yet, the old ones soldier on a decade later. I’ve already given away two 320 gb drives to friends and family.

As for the practice of keeping them offline, I’ll take the advice Western Digital offers:

“Western Digital recommends that external hard drives be powered off when not in use.”

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1386&lang=en

It’s true if they were power cycled on a frequent basis, life would be shortened. Doing so once a month hardly applies. :)

I find the KISS principle works best for non-IT folks. As most cannot spell “IP address” - much less configure and maintain a wired network in their home, I find external USB hard drives eminently easier for them to understand and use.

To each his own.
 
My advice makes no assumption. It provides an explicit statement.

Whatever. I'm not going to continue down this silly rabbit hole.

If all you took from my long initial post covering many areas is that fault-tolerant redundant data protection is excessive for you, so be it.
 
Obviously as it for both performance and fault tolerance. We put the OS on one drive pair and split the database across additional pairs for simultaneous accesses across the many tables. It really makes a difference on multi-hundred user systems.

You should know this. LOL!

I continue to agree with others that any RAID is overkill for music storage.

Clearly, my experience of 38 years is different than yours. The reason I have so many drives is well - they won’t die! Two of them are 8-10 year old 500 gb models. As I’ve added video content, I needed more capacity and added 1 and 2 tb drives. And yet, the old ones soldier on a decade later. I’ve already given away two 320 gb drives to friends and family.

As for the practice of keeping them offline, I’ll take the advice Western Digital offers:

“Western Digital recommends that external hard drives be powered off when not in use.”

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1386&lang=en

It’s true if they were power cycled on a frequent basis, life would be shortened. Doing so once a month hardly applies. :)

I find the KISS principle works best for non-IT folks. As most cannot spell “IP address” - much less configure and maintain a wired network in their home, I find external USB hard drives eminently easier for them to understand and use.

To each his own.

Indeed. My over five decades' experience differs from yours. The last time I encountered a six or seven volume ad hoc backup scheme like yours was watching secretaries unmount the Colorado tape drives every morning in the late 80s. I thought we had evolved past that kind of slog. And sometimes they forgot to do it.

320gb is newer to me. My first HDD was 20mb. I still remember punch cards. And I've seen what happens when data is lost. It's usually ugly. I'm not going to pre-suppose the importance of someone's audio data vs. other data. I know my audio data is pretty important to me. Some of it I cannot reload again if it is lost.

We do agree on one thing. Non-IT people should be given as simple a regime as possible, or they will mess it up or not do it regularly enough. My experience is that the more that it is automated and performed in the background (with layered alert systems when there is an issue), the better.
 
Indeed. My over five decades' experience differs from yours.
Welcome to the new age of drive reliability!

You continue to make silly straw man arguments. No one is suggesting not having backups. Just employing hot-swappable arrays for static data makes no sense.
 
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Welcome to the new age of drive reliability!

You continue to make silly straw man arguments. No one is suggesting not having backups. Just hot-swappable mirrors for static data makes no sense.

And you keep diminishing the importance, character and value of other people's data with such statements. At some point, it becomes offensive.

Who are you to declare someone else's data 'static'? This is not an unmounted archive. It's a working data volume. Get real.

And we are not living in some "new age of drive reliability". I have no idea upon what empirical data you would base such a statement. I don't get the sense you've ever been in a data center. And I'll tell you right now, even SSDs fail. I just had to replace a Samsung 850 OS drive in the past three months.
 
And I'll tell you right now, even SSDs fail

Maybe they do. but, for what it`s worth, with 11 machines. with both lap tops, and towers, all SSD`s , and three different brand/sizes, including three different makes, and OS`s(7, 8.1, and currently installed 10/w current updates, that I rotate through this lap top, I can say, have had zero SSD failures, because I`m posting on this on site, and whatever SSD/OS SSD in operation runs 24/7, until I swap them internally around 6 months, or so !!

Not saying, it(SSD failure) doesn`t happen, just, hasn`t happened to me, other than a lap tops inherent "UPS" capability, because of it internal battery, "assuming" that it is in good shape, and can carry on, until my whole house generator transfer`s over in a minute, or so, I guess a power blip/dropout could eat a SSD..

Just saying, I guess I`ve been lucky, for my SSD use 6 years, or all my electrical feeds are super well protected from SSD damaging surges/spikes, which are SS killers, SSD drives, or otherwise..

No dog of mine is in this "conference" !!

Just some home based SSD experience, noise from me, FWIW, -. $ .02, I`m sure ..

Carry on gentlemen, using what you believe works for you..

Kind regards, Billy Ferris
 
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Only for “holier than thou” types who believe their opinion rises above all others feel the need to belittle others.

Go figure. ;)

Mercy Sakes Alive !!!,
Or is it Massive Steaks, at Five ?!?! :dunno: HA !!
Carry on Sir., as you see fit..

:lurk:
 
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