[cobalt-users] Re: Need to buy a new Raq

[Johan-Kristian Wold <jkwold@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In cobalt-users digest, Vol 1 #1101, Tim wrote (shuffling the quoting 
a bit here to repair the broken context):
>  > I want the the raq  to have
>  > an additional hard drive so that I can backup to it in case of the primary
> >  hard drive failing. Is this possible with a raq 3/3i? Should I go for the
>  > raq 4 that supports raid 1 preinstalled?
>
> Raid would be the best. You can lease this unit for under $160 a month.

Raid is not an adequate substitute for a good backup. While a raid 
will protect (to a certain degree) against a broken drive, it doesn't 
protect against the failures between the keyboard and the chair 
(user/administrator errors), which are far more common than a drive 
failure.

If you or one of your users mess up like this:
# cd /
# rm * .o
.o not found

Note the space between * and .o - Your entire filesystem is gone 
(Don't try this at home... ;^)
If this happens, you'll have to reinstall/rebuild everything, and no 
raid would help you there. (nor would a backup to a separate drive on 
the same box, for that matter...)

In short to get the best protection:
A raid to protect against a broken drive, PLUS
A backup system, that either backs up to another disk on another box, 
or to a tape drive, to protect against user/administrator errors.

As a side note, since Cobalt uses standard IDE drives, the 
reliability on these drives is not too good - Mirroring the drives in 
them is a good idea...

> <snip>From: "Mid America" <internet@xxxxxxxxxx>

Ah, and Tim - your _name_ is supposed to go in the field labeled 
"name" in you email clients setup. The company name should go in the 
field labeled "Organization".

Also, if you quote something, the quoted text should come _before_ 
the answer (because we tend to read downwards from the top, and 
reading the answer before the question is not very helpful...)

Kind regards

Johan-Kristian
--
Johan-Kristian Wold, M.Sc.     |
Computer systems administrator | Recursive: Adj. See recursive.
Nor-Trykk Narvik AS            |
jkwold@xxxxxxxxxxx             |                            SAM007HM02