DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Have you ever stopped to consider what the acronym means?

Originally it was Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks and it has since been changed to Redundant Array of Independent Disks - either way - it's Redundant .... Disks.

What I will say is this - RAID - I don't care which level, was not designed to do what you're asking - I will leave it up to you to figure out if the DNS-323 will do what you want - suffice to say that if you have to ask, you're already behind the eight ball - good luck with your crazy idea.

Thanks for your responses.

fordem, I'm asking before I purchased DNS323 and the two 250G hard drives. So you letting me know that it's not going to work saves me some money. Thanks.

I'll research other topics that talk about USB backup.

index monkey wrote:

are you baiting fordem deliberately with a topic title like this?

You know - when I saw the subject and read the post - the thought did cross my mind

NASuser wrote:

RAID 1 is good for Back-up your Data.

Do you have a safe place to hide? You better do.

gnugu

takoma asked a pretty similar question recently - in the middle of a thread, so tricky to find ...
http://dns323.kood.org/forum/p11820-200 … tml#p11820

sjmac,
thanks a lot for those links!

Now I see what you mean. I guess I'm going to scrap my idea and have only one drive (for now) in DNS and back up to USB enclosure.

Can anybody suggest what is the best standard to use (which RAID) so I can easily insert new disk in the future without losing data?

Thanks.

NASuser wrote:

RAID 1 is good for Back-up your Data.
But there isn't a solution, wich is 100% safe.

E.g. a fire can destroy the NAS with both drives in it.
But probably the risk isn't too high.

Have you considered risks to the data - other than a fire?

May I suggest a few?

In no particular order (as they say when announcing the finalists in a beauty pagent)

Theft of the NAS
Damage to the NAS due to a power surge
Corruption of the data due to a power surge
Corruption of the data due to an improper shutdown
Corruption of the data due to an improper shutdown due to a power failure
Accidental deletion of one or more files
Deliberate deletion of one or more files
Corruption or deletion of files due to a virus

I like this forum! I'm learning a lot here!

Thank you all!

gnugu wrote:

yes I was hoping that fordem would reply. Now, how is rotating the hard drive once a week different from having a drive failure once a week? Isn't RAID1 supposed to save a day? Of course if something bad happens I wouldn't stick my backup hard drive from safety deposit box into the unit. I would try to get the data from USB enclosure.

Does it still sound crazy?

Anyway, I'm picking up my unit today and will test the scenario.

Thanks.

I chose not to respond in my usual fashion - you've already read the reasons why RAID1 is not a backup - so why repeat myself?

I'm not going to tell you that you can't do what you're trying to do - because you can - as you will find out when you try it - it will work, it can be done!!  What I am also not going to tell you is why you shouldn't do it - I will let you find out that for yourself, and sooner or later, in my opinion, sooner rather than later, you will have run into trouble and you will find out for yourself - why it's not a good idea - if you're unlucky, you'll lose a bunch of data and feel the pain for yourself - that way, you'll remember it.

I've been working with RAID for over fifteen years - I've learned some things along the way, like what works and what doesn't, and that hardware RAID works better (and is more expensive) than software RAID, and that software RAID - which is what this box has, is generally a pain in the behind when you start swapping disks around - if you want to read the posts and then go out and learn for yourself, I can't stop you.

So - again - good luck with your crazy idea.

sjmac wrote:

sjmac wrote:

"Standard" ... I've never seen anyone on the forum complain that it isn't working as expected...

Uh - maybe I have - does the DNS323 sometimes format the wrong drive by mistake if you add a second?

fordem says not: http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t1335-Form … -disk.html

But maybe you could make sure you only have the new disk in the device when you do your format, and put the original in after?

Actually - depending on the circumstances - it may format the wrong drive, I have managed to do this - about a week ago.

Also you can only remove one drive and format the other if you are running separate volumes - I would not suggest you try this if you're running RAID - I could tell you what would happen, but I don't want to prejudice Gnugu - besides - that information is already in the forum, and he's probably already read it

Like I said swapping drives with software RAID is generally a pain in the behind - and I'm going to guess that someone is going to become intimately familiar with mdadm before too long.

First of all, thank you everyone for your responses.

Here is what I ended up doing:
- DNS-323 has one HDD formated as "Standard".
- Installed SVN on DNS-323 to have my "time machine".
- Have two Vantec Nexstar USB enclosures. One of them is sitting in the safety deposit box in the bank, one of them is at home. At the end of the day I manually run my xcopy script that copies all new changes from DNS-323 to USB enclosure. Once a week I rotate the two enclosures. I have no desire to automate the backup. Anything deleted on DNS-323 will still remain on USB enclosure because I use xcopy for backup.

Last edited by gnugu (2008-05-15 20:12:47)

sjmac, that is an interesting suggestion. Never heard of such service. I'll look it up. Thanks.