Archiving DVDs...

cram said:
Hmmm you're saying that you are keen on RAID for redundancy but you are using it for backup - these aren't the same thing though often confused.

RAID is primarily aimed at availability ie you can continue working even though you have lost a drive and the array is being rebuilt. It's purpose is not really backup. The only thing you are protected against is hard drive failure, whilst this is a biggie there are also lots of other things threatening your precious data (theft, fire etc.) And any external event that could cause a single drive to fail could have the same effect on other drives in the array, in which case you are not protected.

I'm just not sold on the use of RAID within a home setup I think it gives people false comfort.
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Hmmmmm. Yes and no.

Lets take a home environment, not a corporate banking environment as an example.

You want to protect you data, eg your rips, against the not very likely event of hard drive failure. So what do you do?

Use Raid 1, which is two hard drives mirrored!!!!! In the unlikely event one breaks then the other has a perfect copy.

Why raid 1? Because its a simple mirror. If a hard drive fails you can take out the working hard drive and stick it in your pc and read the data. If you use any other form of raid you might not be able to do this. For instance most other backup boxes, eg drobo etc use proprietary file systems. So you cant take the hard drives and read them on your PC.

What can go wrong with raid 1?

1) Your box gets stolen etc. Solution use another external hard drive to backup your raid 1 of the same size as each individual hard drive. Do a synch backup each week and leave the external hard drive locked in a safe in another location. I have a friend who does this.

2) The Raid 1 box breaks, eg the controller explodes one evening. Not a problem as the raid 1 discs are readable in your PC.

The disadvantage of raid 1 is wasted disc drive space. I.E. you need to double your drives. But drives are so cheap these days that this IMO is irrelevant.

If you wanted to be really anal, you could have an array of raid boxes, each using different hard drives of different manufacturers sourced and bought from different vendors. You could double this protection by using different raid boxes with different chip set controllers. Then you could spread your boxes over different locations etc.

But then again, for your dvd rips, I would just go with a raid 1 backup option and maybe the added protection of a external hard drive.
 
entireweb said:
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Unless RAID has moved on since I last looked at it, Im sure you are aware of it already - but you can only move a disc previously on a RAID 1 onto a different machine if it has the same RAID controller in it, and althought I dont have any experience of it, I have heard nightmares working in IT for the last 20 years about even similar RAID controllers failing to read a mirrored disc
 
entireweb said:
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The place for RAID is in the workplace where it is implemented to minimize downtime. Having people sat twiddling their thumbs whilst the techies restore a backup is costly. RAID implemented correctly is never a subsitute for backups.

One of the things you look at when devising redundancy and backup strategies is how highly available a piece of data is ie in the event of a problem how quickly do you need to be up and running. I'm not sure that a DVD collection qualifies as something that needs to be highly available, well it doesn't to me.

If I was to go RAID at home I absolutely wouldn't go RAID1 all that achieves is a straight doubling of storage costs (and a halfing of storage capacity given that you can only ever fit a finite number of drives inside a machine or enclosure). You would really feel this if you get into ripping blu rays in lossless where you can store circa 23 or 24 on a 1Tb drive. That would be £7.5 per film assuming you are purchasing 2 1Tb drives at £90 each.

In your proposed solution the RAID doesn't really add anything for the expenditure. The external drive is providing a backup and as it happens is also highly available.

There absolutely is a place for RAID but I don't think it is in a home setup. I would spend the pennies on something else.
 
I have about 350 DVD's and about 40 Bluray discs backup up to my WHS:-

new1whs.jpg


I use DVD Shrink for DVD, for Bluray you just need to find the largets m2ts file, that's usually the film ;)

Use Popcorn Hour 110 or HCPC to play them back.

HEADRAT
 
tagging onto the RAID debated above..

ive had RAID controllers fail and every time they have nuked all attached disks entirely. the only way to get the data back was to restore from a nightly backup tape. so personally i would NEVER rely on RAID to safeguard your data, you should have a backup in place.
 
Ooo, I wasn't really hoping to start an argument over RAID. I should probably clarify - I was never intending to use RAID as my only, or even primary backup solution, and totally understand the potential risk of the entire array being hosed through fire/theft etc. I have a couple of external terabyte hard-drives which I use for backup purposes currently, both of which live away from my main machine, one of which is offsite.

@cram - I totally accept and understand what you're saying and agree a DVD collection doesn't require high availability. Especially with HD Content, you're probably right that the cost trade-off isn't worth it. I guess I was just trying to minimize the frustration of a hard-drive going down. When I really think about it though, I guess this isn't actually all that common an occurrence and probably the time spent rebuilding is okay. Maybe those saved pennies should go on a HTPC instead after all.

Is home server a worthwhile investment? I guess I need to do some research, is that performing any sort of mirroring under the hood?

Also, so many suggestions for DVD ripping software - are they all pretty much comparable? I've yet to achieve a real consensus on a preferred format, which is interesting. I think the x264 sounds good though.
 
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