Where do we go?

One of my online friends (from a bodybuilding forum and Facebook) posted a most excellent video by Miche Braden doing a 1920's-style New Orleans jazz cover of GNR's Sweet Child O' Mine. Now, this has next to nothing to do with data, I suppose, except that the interlude DID give some inspiration to this posting:

"Where do we go now?"

After the previously reported catastrophic HDD crash in a Secret Underground Lair (SUL) computer, I had to ask myself a few questions about the internal security of the SUL's data. After all, there are firewalls, as well as other hardware, software and usage protocols in place to minimize external threats. Equipment failure, however, is another topic altogether. I was quite fortunate to "only" lose a year's worth of exercise data- the daily inputs from my pedometer. Still, I was under the impression that modern HDDs are supposed to have software/firmware that warns the user when failure is imminent- to have taken this for granted was a mistake on my part. So, to minimize future distuptions, I purchased an external HDD with automated backup software. This solves part of my backup issue. The other problem is redundancy.

In my previous blog, I had started to talk about a RAID-5 solution, except that Win7 does not natively support (for some as yet unknown- to me- copyright issue) RAID-5. And, as I do not want to make an investment in a RAID controller or a NAS solution, my next best choice was a secondary HDD dedicated to backup. So, we purchased an external 3TB HDD, which seemed to be the Goldilocks solution for me (2TB seemed anemic, and 4TB seemed a bit pricey). This got me to reminiscing about my days working for a computer reseller.

Back in the day when HP and Compaq were separate companies, I worked for a small reseller in suburban Chicago named Corporate MicroSystems- their logo was a teal 5.25" floppy. I did a lot of Compaq fileserver configuration quotes when I was there; at the time, I could probably put a quote together in my sleep. I distinctly remember wishing for a server that had 1TB of storage; the system that I just fixed has around 6.5TB of storage (for reference, a neat Apollo 11 article).

So, as I write this I'm putting the finishing touches on my backup. An additional, previously unmentioned complication to the backup is that their are multiple original sources. The database currently resides on a flash drive, and my music library is on another external HDD. If I were really intent on creating a bulletproof solution, I would burn all of the data to Bluray or DVD and do offsite storage- its actually fairly inexpensive to do that, and I may consider it some day.

Until then, I am hochsoeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.