[OT] Friendly warning - BACK UP TODAY!

J

jmcgill

Richard said:
Well that's your mistake. Don't do years of work.

The stuff I'd go to jail, into debt, or get fired for losing, easily
fits on the smallest of media.

The stuff I get paid to create, resides on carefully managed storage
devices which are backed up in a fully accountable fashion, by people
who get paid to do that.

My personal stuff, I manage to not get myself in a situation that I
could not duplicate. There is relatively little data that must be cared
for to any special degree. I do make an effort to avoid software that
is tied to a specific piece of hardware, or which must be
"authenticated" with a finite authentication resource, largely for this
reason.

A fire or a flood destroying any of my computers (both of which I have
experienced), or the airport security breaking my notebook (happened in
Oakland), simply does not concern me beyond the credit card damage
involved in replacing the hardware.

Now, a major fire or quake or similar disaster at my office, would be
annoying, but then, we put a really large amount of money into ensuring
that such a disaster is recoverable. As for less-disastrous recovery,
we routinely request, and receive, snapshots of various things.

My point is, most people have one or two levels of things they really
should backup, and they should not allow the daunting task of backing up
hundreds of gigabytes of garbage, or readily replaceable data, to
dissuade them from backing up the couple hundred kilobytes or the couple
megabytes that would really be a problem if lost. But I see people in
this situation all the time. Practically everyone I have ever heard
bring up the whole question of "backup", seems to have been of the
opinion that if it is difficult or expensive to backup *everything*,
then *nothing* gets saved.

I usually point out that every document they have ever written in their
entire life would probably fit on much less than a CDR. The works of
Shakespeare fits in 5 Megs, for crying in a bucket.

But people will fail to backup their business records because they
cannot also backup their Spongebob Squarepants collection?
 
W

websnarf

Ben said:
RAID and backup serve different purposes. RAID saves you from
occasional, uncorrelated disk failure. Backup saves you when you
accidentally delete all your files, or when someone breaks in and
intentionally deletes all of them.

That's why he said he uses CVS too.
 
J

J. J. Farrell

Keith said:
Tom St Denis said:
jacob said:
I lost a hard disk drive last week.

I think the heat wave doesn't do to sensitive electronics and
specially to hard disks any good. In general, each time there
is a heat wave I see a LOT of equipment failures, not only
at home but all over the place.

Here's the solution that works well [if you have the space and don't
mind the funny looks you'll get]

1. Take a side off the case, ideally the side that faces the front side
of the board

2. Go to Walmart, Zellers, Kmart, Target, Home Depot, Monoprix,
whatever, and get a 12" (30cm) desk fan

3. Point fan at open case

4. Turn fan on

5. Watch computer temp drop.

I have four SATA drives in my box and two Opteron 285s as well as 6 1GB
DIMMs. Without a fan the case gets fairly hot [but manageable] with
the fan it stays really cool.

So for the price of a stupid desk fan you can cool your expensive
hardware.

Be sure you know what you're doing before following this advice. I'm
not saying it's wrong (Tom likely knows more about this stuff than I
do), but my vague understanding is that computer cases are designed to
circulate air properly over the parts that need cooling, and opening
up the case and blowing a big fan into it bypasses this design, and
might happen to miss some components.

I presume Tom isn't offering to reimburse you if you follow his advice
and it fails.

Oh, yes. I've more than once seen development systems fail and be
diagnosed as component damage through overheating. S/W dev (or whoever)
says "I can't understand that - I had the case covers off and was
blasting it with a huge fan". Airflow and cooling engineers respond
with "Well what the Hell do you expect to happen if you take the covers
off and blast it with a huge fan?".

A professionally designed *system* (as opposed to group of components)
whose insides have only ever been twiddled with in ways approved by the
manufacturer should do better in the heat with all its covers on (as
long as it's within the supported ambient temperature and humidity
ranges). If it doesn't, you've got a badly designed system.

A "white box" created by an integrator taking a random case and
sticking things in it, or a "professional" box with unofficial mods
(particularly ones which involve internal cables), will probably do
better opened and blasted as Tom describes.
 
L

Len Philpot

Those of you who are bright enough to back up regularly can chortle happily
at my panic, of course.

No laughing here. I have a second hard disk to which I run scheduled
differentials Mon-Sat and a full each Sunday during the wee hours. It's
saved my bacon more than once. Of course, I'd like a pair of SDLT320x6
Sun L100s like I administer at work (attached to my own Sun Fire V880,
of course), but I'm a little short of $185,000 right now... :)
 
T

Tom St Denis

J. J. Farrell said:
Oh, yes. I've more than once seen development systems fail and be
diagnosed as component damage through overheating. S/W dev (or whoever)
says "I can't understand that - I had the case covers off and was
blasting it with a huge fan". Airflow and cooling engineers respond
with "Well what the Hell do you expect to happen if you take the covers
off and blast it with a huge fan?".

A professionally designed *system* (as opposed to group of components)
whose insides have only ever been twiddled with in ways approved by the
manufacturer should do better in the heat with all its covers on (as
long as it's within the supported ambient temperature and humidity
ranges). If it doesn't, you've got a badly designed system.

This isn't supported by reality. My Titan 550 is a "server case"
designed by "professionals" and the airflow of the case [even with the
cables tucked away] is less than adequate for the design.

I can readily observe the temperature of the devices going down. How
exactly is this bad? I agree it doesn't scale and a better solution
would be required if you had a farm of these. But for the lowly
individual it's an economical and very effective solution.

I've seen pro 1U and 2U boxes die of heatdeath in air conditioned rooms
too.

I think the moral of the story is you have to monitor temps actively
and not just when things die.

Tom
 
M

MQ

Keith said:
Tom St Denis said:
jacob said:
I lost a hard disk drive last week.

I think the heat wave doesn't do to sensitive electronics and
specially to hard disks any good. In general, each time there
is a heat wave I see a LOT of equipment failures, not only
at home but all over the place.

Here's the solution that works well [if you have the space and don't
mind the funny looks you'll get]

1. Take a side off the case, ideally the side that faces the front side
of the board

2. Go to Walmart, Zellers, Kmart, Target, Home Depot, Monoprix,
whatever, and get a 12" (30cm) desk fan

3. Point fan at open case

4. Turn fan on

5. Watch computer temp drop.

I have four SATA drives in my box and two Opteron 285s as well as 6 1GB
DIMMs. Without a fan the case gets fairly hot [but manageable] with
the fan it stays really cool.

So for the price of a stupid desk fan you can cool your expensive
hardware.

Be sure you know what you're doing before following this advice. I'm
not saying it's wrong (Tom likely knows more about this stuff than I
do), but my vague understanding is that computer cases are designed to
circulate air properly over the parts that need cooling, and opening
up the case and blowing a big fan into it bypasses this design, and
might happen to miss some components.

I presume Tom isn't offering to reimburse you if you follow his advice
and it fails.

Most computer accessories stored won't offer you this either,
especially if you set it up yourself. I agree, a desk fan is cheaper
and more effective than some fancy cooling system

MQ
 
J

J. J. Farrell

Tom said:
This isn't supported by reality.

I assume you're saying my experiences weren't real. I wasn't lying.
My Titan 550 is a "server case"
designed by "professionals" and the airflow of the case [even with the
cables tucked away] is less than adequate for the design.

You miss the point. A particular case doesn't make it a designed
*system*. I don't know what is meant by a "server case designed by
professionals"; the case is just one of many components, and not any
more or less important than other aspects of the system. A system with
designed airflow has tight constraints on what goes where, including
cables, baffles and heatsinks designed for where the components are,
with cables routed to fit the overall *system* airflow design.
I can readily observe the temperature of the devices going down. How
exactly is this bad?

It isn't, of course.
I agree it doesn't scale and a better solution
would be required if you had a farm of these. But for the lowly
individual it's an economical and very effective solution.

Exactly as I said in the paragraph you snipped - if the system isn't a
professionally designed and integrated one, it's probably going to be
better off opened and blasted with air.
I've seen pro 1U and 2U boxes die of heatdeath in air conditioned rooms
too.

Then they're not professionally designed systems being operated in an
approved way (or if they claim to be you should get your money back).
I think the moral of the story is you have to monitor temps actively
and not just when things die.

Of course, though you should only need to worry about a fully and
properly designed system if the ambient temperature and humidity are
outside the supported range.
 
G

goose

<snipped OT stuff>

I'm not generally one to bemoan the topicality
of anything, but debating computer-cooling methods
in such depth on clc is certainly pushing it, isn't
it?

I'm sure there are better (more informed) groups
for such things.

goose,
 

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