Wipe-out

[Jose]

I stored my working files in my computer that is set-up with two 400 GB hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration plus and extra 500 GB where I again stored a duplicate copy of the RAID array. About two weekk I suffered a malfunction in the RAID 1 array and a "blue screen of death". It informed me that one of the RAID 1 hard drives have failed that the information was being dumped.

What happen was that unkown to me the RAID 1 would automatically search for another available hard drive in the computer and dump the data there. It dumped the information into the 500 GBb and overwrote all the information on it but the data dumped was all corrupted. I lost 4 years of digital work. Fortunately I make a first copy of the images from the cards into a 4th external hard drive, so most of the original RAW images were saved. I have recovered some of the imges from one of the 400 Gb hard drive using recovery softwares but none of the ones tried did a 100 % recovery.

Is there a "fail system" using hard drives? I do not want to use CDs because it will be very cumbersome to catalog and retrieve images. A RAID array is not a solution.

[jfrancho]

What happen was that unkown to me the RAID 1 would automatically search for another available hard drive in the computer and dump the data there. It dumped the information into the 500 GBb and overwrote all the information on it but the data dumped was all corrupted.

That is very strange and unfortunate.

[metalstorm]

Make sure your system doesn't do a dump when it blue screens.* Unless you are actually going to send the dump in for analysis, it's worthless to you.* Secondly, a dump is the same size as your RAM.* it should write to free space on your drive and not over anything.

[Jose]

No, it dumped the whole 400 GB in the RAID 1 into the 500 GB hard drive and also corrupted the additional 100 GB. The RAID 1 will use any free disk to replace a failing disk automatically. The 500 GB unknown to me was set as the support Hot Spare drive. Fortunately it did not dump into the C drive that holds the operating systems. I am using a Promise Tech Fastrak TX2300 Raid controller card.

[brian.austin]

Your RAID controller was set up incorrectly. Hot spares should not be visible to the OS at ALL for just this reason. The controller takes care of the "dump". The OS should never know it went down except via driver messages to the Event Log or a monitoring agent/service running in the background.

I don't know your configuration (obviously) but it almost sounds like there were two RAID configs here: one hardware and one software via Dynamic Disks at the OS level. The software RAID would have done the "dump".

[Jose]

You are correct. But the installation instructions did not mention that the default setting wa set-up that way. In fact I did not find out until later when reading instructions about this setting that was written "in small lettering as a footnote". Still, my original question is: Is there a redundant way of using hard drives for safe storage of images? Is RAID 1 really the safest way still?

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by Jose

You are correct. But the installation instructions did not mention that the default setting wa set-up that way. In fact I did not find out until later when reading instructions about this setting that was written "in small lettering as a footnote". Still, my original question is: Is there a redundant way of using hard drives for safe storage of images? Is RAID 1 really the safest way still?

Yes, RAID 1 is still the safest way for ACTIVE redundancy. It's not a full blown backup solution, however. Too many things can still go wrong and an offline backup, via external hard drive, tape, DVD, whatever, is still critical for archival purposes. More so if you rely on the system for income.

[metalstorm]

Originally Posted by Jose

No, it dumped the whole 400 GB in the RAID 1 into the 500 GB hard drive and also corrupted the additional 100 GB. The RAID 1 will use any free disk to replace a failing disk automatically. The 500 GB unknown to me was set as the support Hot Spare drive. Fortunately it did not dump into the C drive that holds the operating systems. I am using a Promise Tech Fastrak TX2300 Raid controller card.

I've never had a RAID 1 array go corrupt and dump the whole partition to another partition. That's not the way they are supposed to work. RAID 1 is just a mirror and if 1 disk fails, the other disk just goes on as usual with an error report to the admin. The bad disk is replaced and the system syncs itself back, whether manually or automatically depending on the controller.

As Brian said, no one array can be trusted 100%. Duplicate copies need to be maintained elsewhere.

We typically use RAID5 with several hotspares for our larger arrays. We still maintain tape backups of all our data through robotic tape system.

At home, i use two larger external drives and just make backups to each so I have two copies(of my photos not archived to DVD yet). As I get 5 to 8 gigs worth I then just burn 2 copies to DVD. So I have 1 disk containing all my photos, 1 other disk containing photos not backed up to DVD, and then the rest on DVD. Does that make any sense?

They are on external disks because I can just pull them and get out of the house in an emergency and leave the computer system if I had to.

[skrubol]

Have you tried using each of the 400GB drives separately? Preferably not plugged into that RAID adapter. One of the beauties about RAID1 over other levels is that you can break the array and generally use one of the drives stand alone, often without even being connected to a RAID controller. It is the only RAID level that can be used in software on a system drive.

[joshranwest]

I hate to hear this. However, an external hard drive is a route I have never trusted. A hard drive is still a hard drive, external or not, and it can still crash like this one did. I dont trust hard drives after I had 5 fail me over time. I just burn to 2 DVD's one on site one off, in fire proof safe's. And I also put those files on internet storage places, smugmug (they back up every file, you can also order CD's of your images through them at any time) and various photo storage companies online. You can never have too many back up places online. You never know if one will go bankrupt.

[Sidebyte]

Originally Posted by joshranwest

I hate to hear this. However, an external hard drive is a route I have never trusted. A hard drive is still a hard drive, external or not, and it can still crash like this one did. I dont trust hard drives after I had 5 fail me over time. I just burn to 2 DVD's one on site one off, in fire proof safe's. And I also put those files on internet storage places, smugmug (they back up every file, you can also order CD's of your images through them at any time) and various photo storage companies online. You can never have too many back up places online. You never know if one will go bankrupt.

A well intended plan but "do not trust burned CD's" They will delaminate and I have many to prove exactly that. Commercial CD's are pressed, not burned, that's why they last longer. Redundancy is your only protection, I ran an 8 SCSI HD bank in redundancy.

[Jose]

After 1.5 months I was able to recover 400 GBs of the 500 GBs lost by using various file recovery software packages.

I am still using hard drives; do not see CDs as a viable alternative due to the number that would be required and the difficulty of cataloging and keeping track of them. I am no longer using the RAID configuration but I am backing up the data in 3 separate hard drives, not counting the working hard drive. I update one daily and the other 2 weekly. That means that I have the same data in 4 different hard drives---extreme redundancy.

[metalstorm]

good to hear that you were able to recover 80% of your data.

[TonyK]

Reminds me of using 5.25 floppies and later 3.5 floppies. Every time I made a change to something I had to make 3 copies plus the original. Somewhat tiresome yet I never lost any data either.