Re: Protecting audio files from bit rot?
Reply #25 – 2016-05-30 18:17:48
Things go wrong with computers. When things go wrong with hard disks, it can cost us our data. If that data is primarilly music, well... it's music. If you loose important data because you drive goes bad. your backup methods is wrong. If you loose you important data because you house goes on fire. you backup method is wrong. almost anything less than total annihilation of earth, you can do a proper backup against Completely agree.My ordinary data is on a raid5. one drive can go wrong and i can recover it. really important data that i can never retrieve again i also have on a removable USB HDD, in case the house goes on fire and i need to grab it quickly with me, or if 2 drives should fail i have a backup to recover it I have it on a optical media roughly 7400 KM/s away away that i update roughly once a year. If my house get nuked and the entire state of Texas is a burning inferno. my important data is still intact. if I remember rightly, what the books say is RAID is about availability and not about security. There are probably a number of reasons for that which I have forgotten, as such things have not been my trade for over 13 years, but you can loose an entire RAID setup to an electrical glitch or even a system fault writing bad data over your good files. If your HDD is connected when that lightening strikes the next block, your RAID, internal disks and external disk are probably now as good as dust. Possibly, even if the USB drive is not connected, everything electronic in your house might be dead. I sometimes reflect that if I had the pass the system audit (and it wasn't exactly tough or bullshit-proof) that I did have to pass every year, with the backup system I have at home, it would fail miserably. I'm afraid yours is worse. I have two (three, most times) off-machine backup copies of my operating system and all my data. Once a week, an off-site disk comes home and the onsite disk goes away. --- the once-a-week is subject to human failure, and is sometimes every three weeks. Back in working days, not getting a backup tape off-site every day was a big deal. --- I know I am not protected against the creeping corruption that is unlikely but not impossible. My system would not pass muster professionally, even with me! I rate it good enough for my data, and my exposure to data loss of one to three weeks is actually acceptable. Even in the face of my laziness, a substantial acquisition of new data, such as photos from a holiday, will be backed up and send off site much sooner rather than later. There is another thing about backups. No backup is actually known to be good until it tested --- and I have never, not even in work, been able to have a duplicate system just to test backups with. Life as an IT manager: long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear