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Pool of duplicated data and failed drive


Bradleyb

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I'm wondering what would the best use in my situation.    I have 15 drives in a pool and don't have any data duplicated at the moment.   A drive failed recently but Drivepool was able to move all files off that drive when removing it from the pool so no harm done.   But, this got the thinking - what if I'm not so lucky in the future and a drive dies.   

If I had duplication turned on and everything in the pool was duplicated, if a single drive died, it could be forcibly removed from the pool and no files would be lost - since everything is on at least two-drives at a time?   Am I correct in thinking this?

Thank you for any advice.

 

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5 minutes ago, Bradleyb said:

If I had duplication turned on and everything in the pool was duplicated, if a single drive died, it could be forcibly removed from the pool and no files would be lost - since everything is on at least two-drives at a time?   Am I correct in thinking this?

Yes, that's correct.

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3 hours ago, Bradleyb said:

what if I'm not so lucky in the future and a drive dies.   

If I had duplication turned on and everything in the pool was duplicated, if a single drive died, it could be forcibly removed from the pool and no files would be lost - since everything is on at least two-drives at a time?   Am I correct in thinking this?

Thank you for any advice.

Duplication is a strategy to protect against drive failure in a pool. That should not be considered the same as a backup plan where you have the data stored safely away somewhere else. Duplication and backups serve different purposes.

One of the great advantages of DrivePool is that you have folder level duplication. RAID systems and Windows Storage Spaces only offer pool duplication of the entire pool. I use my DrivePool as my home media storage server. All my media files are backed up on other HDDs that are stored in my closet. I don't have any need to set 2X duplication on those media files in DrivePool because a loss of files from a HDD failure in the pool could be rebuilt from a backup, if I wanted.

About 95% of my home media data on my DrivePool is stored on backup HDDs, so I chose not to duplicate those folders in DrivePool. I do have some folders that I have marked for 2X duplication, but not very many. The end result is that DrivePool allows me to duplicate only those folders I want and therefore I save lots of money by not having to duplicate the entire pool.

I came from a RAID background, then used Windows Storage Spaces for many years, but now use DrivePool. At first, I was more concerned about duplicating the pool in case of a HDD failure. Over time, I realized that my limited money was better spent on a good backup system instead of trying to duplicate all my data within the pool. DrivePool offers you many more options than other systems, but we each have to decide where to spend our money to protect our data. 

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I thought about doing the same thing - backing up media from the pool on external hard drives but couldn't figure the best way of doing that.    Do you just copy files to external hard drives?   How many external hard drives are necessary in your situation?   I currently have about 32 TB of media and would have to buy one new drive but have many smaller drives that I've accumulated over time that would be ideal for this purpose but I really couldn't find a program that would help manage and organize the files on the external hard drives so if I needed to restore something - it wouldn't be searching for a needle in a haystack.  

 

So, if you can share more about how you handle this, I would find that very interesting.  

 

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20 hours ago, Bradleyb said:

Do you just copy files to external hard drives? 

Yes, but when I copy files to the backup HDD, I use TeraCopy with the verification feature turned on. Yesterday I was copying a chunk of files to a backup HDD and TeraCopy said the files failed to verify. For some reason, my backup HDD directory became corrupted and unreadable. I suspect it might have something to do with my CineRAID docking station that I use for the backup HDDs, so I sent off a support request to them about the issue. Anyway, TeraCopy gave me a head's up that the files failed to verify and that allows me to go back and look at the problem.

 

20 hours ago, Bradleyb said:

So, if you can share more about how you handle this, I would find that very interesting.  

I use a file manager called SuperCat to catalog my discs, drives, etc... It's an older program (last updated for Windows 7) and has not been updated in many years, but it still works. Recently, I have tried WinCatalog 2020 but have had issues with it. WinCatalog has many more features than SuperCat, but it did not work very well for me. So I would not recommend it at this point. I am still looking for a file manager replacement to SuperCat.

My DrivePool is sitting at 74 TB, and I have more than that on my backups. I don't know if my backup strategy is the best method, but in general I can search SuperCat to find any files I need to restore from my backups. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do if my backup HDD fails if I don't also have that data on DrivePool to make another copy for backups. In general, I could live with the loss of media files in the rare circumstance that a storage drive might fail. But I would like a better option for my backups just the same.

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