cambridgehank Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 12 minutes ago, kumakuma said: One solution would be to partition a single physical drive into two virtual drives. I will try your suggestion it seems cheaper than buying another drive or two. Link to comment
Popular Post kirkmc Posted August 22, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted August 22, 2020 If that drive crashes, you lose both backups. AudioDoctor and kumakuma 2 I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville. Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps. Co-host of The Next Track podcast. Link to comment
cambridgehank Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 Thanks for reminding me. I have two dead Western Digital drives in the closet. I took another of your advice columns and ordered a NAS . That should let me use cloner and time machine. AudioDoctor 1 Link to comment
kirkmc Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 How many drives can the NAS hold? Mine has two, one fir my Plex library, and another for backups. I didn’t set up any kind of RAID, which is the default for many NASes. But RAID does offer extra protection. I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville. Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps. Co-host of The Next Track podcast. Link to comment
cambridgehank Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 Two. I will google RAID, so I know how to answer you, thanks . Looks like I only need to have the NAS act as a backup for my documents and music. I will not be streaming or watching video. Link to comment
mwheelerk Posted August 22, 2020 Author Share Posted August 22, 2020 I actually use three drives for backups. One for Time Machine and two different ones for Carbon Copy Cloner. The Time Machine drive backs up everything Mac and also an external drive that houses my music library. The first CCC drive is used specifically for a bootable backup of the Mac system. The second is a dedicated backup of the external Music Library drive. Maybe a little overdone but I have peace of mind as much as possible and have both my computer and my music library with two back ups. "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open." Frank Zappa Link to comment
AudioDoctor Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 I have always used Time Machine, and have found it to be very helpful when the inevitable happens. The only time I had a problem with it was my fault and I had set it up to not backup a drive that I wanted backed up. Deleting the ignore of that drive and all was well again. I have it set to backup to my NAS, which is also backed up to an identical offsite NAS. Its simple, I am not relying on any cloud providers, and if it all goes sideways I have only myself to blame. No electron left behind. Link to comment
Jud Posted August 22, 2020 Share Posted August 22, 2020 4 hours ago, kirkmc said: But RAID does offer extra protection. Of the widely used types of RAID, RAID 2, 4, 5 and 6 provide extra protection. RAID 2 is slow and RAID 4 is slow with regard to writes. RAID 5 and 6 provide extra protection without much if any speed penalty. RAID 5 requires at least 3 drives and provides protection in case one fails. RAID 6 requires at least 4 drives and provides protection even if 2 fail. Edit: When I say slow, I mean relative to the typical speed of 1 drive. Also have a look at hardware vs. software RAID, since software RAID makes use of CPU resources. cambridgehank 1 One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature. Link to comment
bluesman Posted August 23, 2020 Share Posted August 23, 2020 16 hours ago, kirkmc said: RAID does offer extra protection. RAID is not backup. A physical event (fire, spilled drink, etc) can take out out all the drives at once. If the data on one drive become corrupted, RAID 1 will simply duplicate the damage. If you accidentally delete a file or unknowingly alter one, RAID will follow suit. Malware remains a constant risk, despite the best available protection - and RAID will just add it to the mirror image. A big surge can take out both disks and the NAS they rode in on. RAID is also a performance hog. Read-write speeds are lower in any mirrored RAID array than straight to disks. If you’re using RAID on multiple internal disks, it’ll suck computer processing power. You’re only using half the total storage space on the disks in a mirrored RAID array. Capacity may be cheap now, but many of us have far more than a TB of music plus photos, videos etc. An 8 TB WD Red Pro is about $300. If you use a NAS with 4+ drives, doubling its capacity gets costly quickly and one event can wipe out a thousand dollars worth of drives in a flash. I’ve had to replace a drive in a NAS about once every 3 to 4 years, and I’ve always used 2 bay units. Unlimited, automated online BU costs me about $90/yr, which is cheaper than doubling my drives for RAID 1. RAID is a convenience for continuity - you can keep on listening with one failed disk. But not all NASs allow data access while rebuilding a fresh disk, and even writing 1 TB can take many hours during which you may not be able to access the good disk(s). There are many many web posts about this, and I experienced it with a WD My Cloud Mirror. No, RAID is not backup. cambridgehank 1 Link to comment
kirkmc Posted August 23, 2020 Share Posted August 23, 2020 RAID is not a backup if it’s your primary storage device. RAID is helpful on backup devices, if only to duplicate your stuff. If you use software like Carbon Copy Cloner, you can set it to keep deleted files in a special folder so if a file is accidentally deleted, you syllabus have copies. cambridgehank 1 I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville. Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps. Co-host of The Next Track podcast. Link to comment
AudioDoctor Posted August 23, 2020 Share Posted August 23, 2020 You guys know they have these things called versioned backups these days and these versioned backups can be stored on a NAS/RAID device... Tell me. What drawback does a NAS/RAID have that a single disk with a backup doesnt? Furthermore, the NAS/RAID device I linked below is water and fire resistant. And finally, I have my own off site backup on an identical NAS/RAID device. SO tell me again how a NAS/RAID can't be a backup?https://iosafe.com/products/1019-nas/ No electron left behind. Link to comment
cambridgehank Posted August 23, 2020 Share Posted August 23, 2020 Tell us more about versioned backups Link to comment
Jud Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 14 hours ago, bluesman said: RAID is also a performance hog. Read-write speeds are lower in any mirrored RAID array than straight to disks. If you’re using RAID on multiple internal disks, it’ll suck computer processing power. Depends. As noted above, RAID 5 and 6 offer data duplication without impacting read/write speeds. And hardware RAID controllers run RAID arrays without significantly impacting CPU resources. But as you say, disks (and a good hardware controller) get expensive. And these arrays are subject to the various other hazards you mentioned. (Edit: Note FreeBSD and some Linuxes have filesystems that offer protection against data corruption.) I have unlimited online backup for $60/yr. I keep two duplicate sets of music files on external HDs plus a third duplicate on a set of SD cards. The latter allows me to take all my music with me when I travel. One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature. Link to comment
Jud Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 3 hours ago, cambridgehank said: Tell us more about versioned backups It's what Time Machine does. Carbon Copy Cloner does too. And you can do it with your Windows machine also. It just means you take multiple dated backups or snapshots, so for example if something went wrong yesterday you restore from the 2-day-old version. AudioDoctor 1 One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature. Link to comment
Jud Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 By the way, I haven't seen anyone refer to it here, but most music file sellers are very good about allowing you to re-download. (HDTracks wasn't, so I stopped using them.) coke 1 One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature. Link to comment
Bob Stern Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 Carbon Copy Cloner's versioned backups are difficult to restore because of the way they are organized. Each day CCC stores the most recent previous version of a file it backs up in a folder with that day's date. The only way to see what backups exist of a given file is to do a Spotlight search, which is fine for a directly attached backupvolume that's indexed by Spotlight, but would not work if you were backing up to a NAS. ChronoSync has a browser that allows you to see what backups exist of a given file, but it's much slower than CCC and has a somewhat confusing interface. HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7 Link to comment
Bob Stern Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 43 minutes ago, Jud said: most music file sellers are very good about allowing you to re-download. (HDTracks wasn't, so I stopped using them.) eClassical is good in that respect. What are the other classical music vendors that allow you to re-download? HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7 Link to comment
Jud Posted August 24, 2020 Share Posted August 24, 2020 9 hours ago, Bob Stern said: eClassical is good in that respect. What are the other classical music vendors that allow you to re-download? They aren't classical-only, but Qobuz, Nonesuch and Bandcamp all come to mind offhand. One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature. Link to comment
AudioDoctor Posted August 25, 2020 Share Posted August 25, 2020 On 8/23/2020 at 9:46 PM, Jud said: It's what Time Machine does. Carbon Copy Cloner does too. And you can do it with your Windows machine also. It just means you take multiple dated backups or snapshots, so for example if something went wrong yesterday you restore from the 2-day-old version. Jud pretty pretty much covered it. It is exactly what Time Machine does. It isn't bootable, but it will keep history of items for as long as it can depending on your disk size. Time Machine only copies new files as well, meaning the backups after the initial one are a lot smaller. No electron left behind. Link to comment
kirkmc Posted August 25, 2020 Share Posted August 25, 2020 Time Machine is bootable, if you don't exclude system files from backups. Pretty much all backup software only copies new or updated files, so the first backup is always quite long, and subsequent backups don't take too long. That's another reason why talking about RAID performance for backups makes no sense. I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville. Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps. Co-host of The Next Track podcast. Link to comment
AudioDoctor Posted August 25, 2020 Share Posted August 25, 2020 8 hours ago, kirkmc said: Time Machine is bootable, if you don't exclude system files from backups. I didn't know that. I figured that what was booting was the recovery partition and the Time Machine data was used to bring your data back to the state it was in at the backup point. No electron left behind. Link to comment
kirkmc Posted August 25, 2020 Share Posted August 25, 2020 Read the very last bit on this page, under Learn More. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250 I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville. Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps. Co-host of The Next Track podcast. Link to comment
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