[Gllug] Terrible weekend

[Mike Brodbelt]

Chris Bell wrote:

>>You can get hold of a couple of external 250-300Gb USB2/Firewire hard
>>disks quite cheaply. If you rotate them, and keep them disconnected and
>>unpowered when not using them, you get a reasonable level of data
>>security without spending a huge amount. It's not as good as tape, but
>>for the data sizes you're looking at you'd need an LTO drive and tapes.
>>If your data doesn't change a lot (e.g. a photo archive or something)
>>you can burn a bunch of DVDs as well.
>>
> 
>    I thought that the thermal shocks associated with power cycling was
> supposed to be bad for hard discs.

Using them as I mentioned quite possibly isn't the way to get the most
life out of the disk, but if you're using it for backup purposes, it's
the data that's important, not the drive. Having the drive disconnected
when not actually backing up to it means that if power problems fry your
machine and your RAID array, your data should at least be safe. Having
it actually off-site is better of course, but my suggestions were aimed
at practical resiliency for most home users.

Replacing a 250Gb hard drive would cost about 100 quid. My photo archive
and other personal data is not replaceable at all, so if I go through
disks a bit faster than otherwise by power cycling them a lot, it's an
expense I can live with.

Mike
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