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Backing up drivepool to USB-based drivepool


shrimants

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Hello,

I currently have 5x 8TB drives (3 of which are nearly full, using ordered file placement plugin) and I'm hoping to back up the data on them and be able to keep backing up data moving forward.

 

I have bought 3x Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB. My plan was to use a USB3.0 hub to connect all of them up, have them assigned to a pool. Then use ordered file placement plugin to manage that pool. Then i'd use something like robocopy or some other utility to start the backup.

The data i'm backing up is movies and tv shows and music. Sometimes the files get replaced with higher quality versions (same file name) and sometimes just the metadata changes (like fixing mp3 tags). I'd like to make sure these changes are synchronized weekly, and have the ability to connect additional drives as time goes on.

Am i doing the right thing? are there any caveats I should be aware of? Or is it pretty much exactly as i describe? I honestly dont even need to use ordered file placement, I just figured it would make the transfer faster/easier on the OS if it was only reading/writing to 1 drive on the hub at a time.

 

I have a secondary question about leaving all those drives plugged in/powered on. Is that safe? How can I ensure the drives will park and be suspended if there is no disk activity required of them?

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I was reading that i could potentially create 1 pool thats my main storage, create a second pool of my external drives, and then create a third pool with those 2 pools contained within. and then i could use drivepool's mirroring capability and tell it to only run the mirroring job once a week or whatever. I assume drivepool wont cause the disks to remain spun up. this would also enable stablebit scanner to keep an eye on things, as far as i know.

Does that sound correct? the data changes i make generally arent huge sweeping changes. i add 2-5 big files per week and maybe once or twice a month MAX i might have some files getting replaced with different versions or have some metadata stuff getting changed.

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One other question: Does Drivepool offer some sort of file verification/checksum? I could use a schedule teracopy job, which offers file verification, or i could do a set-and-forget in Drivepool with my "pool of pools" strategy but id like to make sure that files are appropriately verified with some sort of checksum for mirroring/duplication.

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Mostly.  It wouldn't be once a week, but it would be immediately. 

If you want manually, then don't create the pool of pools, and use a sync tool instead (such as SyncToy, Free File Sync, GoodSync, etc).

 

And no, it doesn't. It may check this in some cases, but not "actively" (eg, it doesn't go out and compute them)

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for now ive made the "external" pool and i used teracopy to move things over. I did this because when it was time to start, i realized i had no idea how to make drivepool look at the 2 pools as one if one already had a bunch of data on it. From my understanding, when you add a drive to a pool, anything already existing will be flagged by drivepool as "dont touch this" and any empty space will be used for the drivepool stuff.

I assume there is some way to get drivepool to realize that pool 1 has data that i want to duplicate while pool 2 needs to get that data replicated to it. As i had no functioning backup (hence this whole exercise) i elected not to experiment with it.

funny/concerning/unrelated side note: i realized all the externals came with bulky power adapters and wouldnt actually all fit quite right together. so i had to do some questionable electronics practices (surge protectors hooked into surge protectors hooked into outlet splitters) to get it even remotely functional. Now i have a series of 1 foot extension cables but im waiting on teracopy to verify the backup integrity before I finalize the disk setup lol

Not a huge deal backing up 5TB of data. 21TB becomes rather unwieldy rather quickly though lol

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Mostly correct.  For the data, you'd want to do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4142489

And you can set the duplication per pool.  

But using TeraCopy is just fine!  Though, I'd look into something a bit more automated, personally.  There are a number of products out there that will.  But, if what you have works for you, then by all means. 

19 hours ago, shrimants said:

funny/concerning/unrelated side note: i realized all the externals came with bulky power adapters and wouldnt actually all fit quite right together. so i had to do some questionable electronics practices (surge protectors hooked into surge protectors hooked into outlet splitters) to get it even remotely functional. Now i have a series of 1 foot extension cables but im waiting on teracopy to verify the backup integrity before I finalize the disk setup lol

if that's questionable, you don't want to see my setup..... :D

 

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i initially used teracopy because of its file verification via md5 sum. but that seems to take about as long as the data transfer, so its been chugging away for about 5 days now, and that is not a process i want to repeat once a month.

I was initially planning on doing a robocopy /mir type of command, and i figured teracopy had something similar but it does not. Robocopy doesnt verify that the source data is identical to its copy target, which sort of sucks. Due to stuff like files being replaced with identically named (but for example, fixed video) files or files having their metadata updated, i figured robocopy was not the right option unless it is able to copy when "last modified" attribute is set.

im also unsure if i want to be leaving all those external disks plugged in 24/7 or if i just want to power them on right before the monthly backup task runs. im very iffy about seagate drive reliability.

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