RiverElf

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  1. Yes, as far as I recall SyncBack also gave a warning when you chose that setting - just to make sure you knew what you were asking it to do. However, at that time what I wanted was a mirror of my folders. I might do it differently today. When Windows XP no longer was supported I installed Ubuntu on the laptop, and I didn't bother to look for a backup/sync tool which could do the same. I wasn't using the computer that much anymore, I thought. However, last year something happened whereafter Ubuntu could no longer boot. And on that laptop I just happened to have the only copy of a spreadsheet with information on who was on the photos I took at a conference and what they were saying. Fortunately over the weekend I learned how to create a rescue drive on a usb stick, which was then able to fix the startup issues. Boy was I relieved. I've also lost some images due to a failing card reader corrupting the photos at both ends while they were being copied to the computer. And on one occasion last year my computer wouldn't read an SD card and wanted to reformat it. After trying out different recovery software I finally found one that was able to recover the images and videos. So these days I'm all for dual card slots in cameras and servers with redundancy. So I ought to implement a proper backup scheme as well.
  2. Ah, such a fully automated backup system sounds very nice. Yes, I remember SyncBack to be quite flexible, although I only learned to use the features I thought I needed at the time. I have a laptop with two drives and had SyncBack copy certain folders from C -> D just to prevent data loss if I had a drive fail. I remember I could set it up so if I deleted a file in the source folder, it would also delete it in the destination, which is what I wanted. I also had it run as a scheduled task every two hours or so. As far as I remember I copied files manually to an external drive. I'm not sure why I didn't semi-automate that as I could have made a shortcut on the desktop to a profile that would have done that for me when clicked. Perhaps the drive letters changed if I happened to have a usb stick attached before the external drive, well I can't remember right now. Yes, ideally I would want to backup all my data as well. I do a bit photography and video, and those files take up a lot of space. I'd also like to upgrade to a camera capable of 4K sometime in the future, so that will only increase file sizes. If I chose to not backup all my files it would be because of the cost of building a second server, but I'll look into that. I guess one of them could be built as a dedicated server, and the other could be less so. Thanks for your input @garycase By the way, do both of your servers run unRAID?
  3. @garycase: Thanks for pointing that out. I may have overestimated what these error correction features are able to do. Yes, I do know that backup is important, but I must admit, that I'm not very good at it. Perhaps it's because I've only done it fully manually. I really should get back at it again, and perhaps limit my backups to the most important data, so I won't frown over the cost of having to buy twice the drive space for all my files. Do you have a some kind of semi-automated backup system that works for you? I'll need to learn more about backup solutions and see which one might be suitable for me. I remember using SyncBackFree for quite a while.
  4. @garycase: Thanks for reminding me of the checksum plugins for unRAID. As you mention they appear to only detect corrupt files, not correct them. The data integrity systems of ZFS and Btrfs and SnapRAID also use checksums for detecting errors, but they appear to also be able to fix these silent errors before they are carried on to parity, and before they could be copied to a backup. I can see that I didn't mention this error correction part of the data integrity system used by some of the other NAS solutions in my original post, although I intended to. The silent error correction feature is what arose my initial concern about bitrot in unRAID vs these other systems. The link in my first post shows a comparison table made by the author of SnapRAID were he points out some of these differences. And yes, I am aware that RAID or parity only protects against drive failure, not theft, fire, user error and so forth - only an off site backup would help in those scenarios. I'm very, very pleased to hear that you haven't heard of any cases of bitrot in your time on this board garycase. It does appear to be somewhat overstated then. @Frank1940: Thanks for pointing out that error correction features are also built into hard drives. Being new to NAS it's not always easy to know how critically important each feature of the different NAS solutions are. Although I must admit I like the idea of data integrity checks through checksum and silent error correction as used by ZFS, Btrfs and SnapRAID, I am more drawn to unRAID as it has many of the other features I desire, like: to read a single file in unRAID only the storage drive where it is saved must spin up. In ZFS and Btrfs all drives must spin up as all files are striped across the drives. And if redundancy should somehow fail only the data on the faulty drive(s) is lost in unRAID where all data is lost on all drives with ZFS and Btrfs. And then there is the ability to use drives of different sizes in unRAID which is very nice feature for a home user like myself who already has a stack of drives and likes to add drives incrementally. Only SnapRAID appears to have some features similar to unRAID while also having data integrity through checksum and silent error correction before parity. Come to think of it, SnapRAID is also open source, perhaps unRAID could adopt a few of its alluring data integrity features in a future upgrade? Thanks for adding to the choir of happy unRAID users Frank ---------------------------------- Thanks to both of you for taking time to comment! An active forum with users happy to help and welcome newcomers into the flock is so valuable! PS: I'm working this weekend which is why I'm a bit slow to reply.
  5. Hello there! I'm new to NAS and I'm currently looking into the different server software solutions that exist. In my research thus far unRAID looks very appealing to me. After having read about it, one thing I'm a bit concerned about are silent errors - the so called bitrot. As I understand it, solutions that checksums data before it is written to parity have more protection against this type of data corruption? In a worst case scenario I guess one could also unknowingly copy bitrot to ones backup drives? However, I'm not sure how big the risk of bitrot is? I don't think I've ever encountered it on my desktop PC, and I'm not sure if the problem is overstated? I mean, if a high percentage unRAID users experienced bitrot, then these forums wouldn't have so many happy and active users, would they? If you could help me understand how unRAID's data security compares to solutions which use checksums before data is written to parity and use the so called scrubs - I would very much appreciate it. I found this comparison: http://www.snapraid.it/compare.html Thanks for your help! PS: If this thread is in the wrong forum please feel free to move it.
  6. Sounds good! unRAID looks very appealing to me. Being new to NAS one of the things I'm trying to learn more about, is how data integrity and data safety in unRAID compares to other solutions like ZFS and OpenMediaVault with the SnapRAID plugin - both of which appear to run a checksum before data is written to parity which should help protect against silent errors / bitrot. I'll probably start a thread about that in the relevant forum. It sounds like you haven't had any problems with bitrot, which is reassuring
  7. Ha! yeah, it sounds quite advanced to someone like me. I'll try not to get cut if I ever dare go there. Nice to know that with this plugin there appears to be a way to run both ZFS and unRAID on the same system - if one has the knowledge and experience to do it safely
  8. Thanks for your reply! When you write: " so if you want to export your pools to nfs or samba you need to do it manually." I suppose you mean by command line interface? I've got so much to learn
  9. At the moment I am learning about NAS basics and the different server software solutions that exist. I am trying to understand what this ZFS plugin adds to unRAID. Does it allow one to run an array of drives with ZFS in a system which otherwise runs unRAID? So you could run 4-6 identical drives with ZFS in RAID-Z2 and the rest of the drives in the system with unRAID?