On Thursday, 06.03.2008 at 16:05 -0800, Aaron J. Grier wrote: > On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 08:29:03AM -0500, Chris Hoogendyk wrote: > > My own preference is to configure the system with separate drives > > for holding disk. There is no reason for them to be raid. > > all backup data passes through the holding disk: doesn't it follow > that the holding disk should be as reliable as possible? and doesn't > that imply at least a mirrored holding disk? MTBF may be lowered, but > failure of a single holding disk will not affect backups.
I'm quite happy to use a fast, RAID-0 bundle for speed and size. The data is transient, spending at most a couple of hours on the disk before being flushed to tape. Remember that this is a *backup* - the 'real' data being elsewhere - so the increased likelihood of disk failure resulting in a failed backup is not really very important. On the other hand, having a fast enough disk system with a high capacity helps tremendously. Dave. -- Dave Ewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computing Manager, Cancer Epidemiology Unit University of Oxford / Cancer Research UK PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370 Get key from http://www.ceu.ox.ac.uk/~davee/davee-ceu-ox-ac-uk.asc N 51.7518, W 1.2016
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