On Tue, 2022-11-08 at 10:04 -0500, The Wanderer wrote: > On 2022-11-08 at 09:36, Nicolas George wrote: > > > Curt (12022-11-08): > > > > > Redundancy sounds a lot like a back up. > > > > RAID also sounds a lot like a backup, and the R means redundant. > > > > Yet raid is not a backup. > > That depends on which sense of the word "backup" you are using. > > No, it's not a "backup" in the technical "back it up to tape" sense of > the word. There are many types of data-loss scenarios in which it will > not protect you at all. > > But it does mean that if one drive fails, you can still fall back to the > copy on the other drive, and thus that copy is serving as a backup to > the copy on the first drive. There are some data-loss scenarios in which > RAID will protect you. > > That more general sense of "backup" as in "something that you can fall > back on" is no less legitimate than the technical sense given above, and > it always rubs me the wrong way to see the unconditional "RAID is not a > backup" trotted out blindly as if that technical sense were the only one > that could possibly be considered applicable, and without any > acknowledgment of the limited sense of "backup" which is being used in > that statement.
RAID is like the incarnation of (having) something to fall back on. Backups aren't.
