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I just wanted to say this topic has been a great read. I currently have 700GB of data mirrored across three 1TB drives. Each night the data is rsynced through my DNS-323 box, and then each week I swap out the backup disk with the offsite backup disk so there is an offsite copy of at most a week old should something happen.
I've been thinking about how to handle expansion though and this topic has sold me on unRAID. Using a single disk as a parity disk seems so simple yet so smart. Eventually now I'd like to move to an unRAID setup with a box handling at least eight drives to allow for expansion in the future. I'd also have an offsite backup of all data on 2TB drives as needed.
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As I've been reading more about NAS, RAID, Backups and Drive Failures it really is intimidating seeing how certain people are that drives will fail. Do drives fail because they get old or because they are used so much? I realize that anything is possible so I'm asking about generalities here.
Basically if I backup my data on a drive and place the drive off site and it is never touched, is there still a reasonable likelihood that when I first start it up that it will have failed? By reasonable I mean a similar percentage as if the drive was used regularly.
I think I read somewhere that a general number is that there is a 5% chance that a drive will fail in 3 years. If that is the case, I would expect that there would be a significantly smaller than 5% chance in a longer than 3 year time period (maybe 5 or 10 years) that the same drive sitting in a storage bin would fail. Is this correct? I'm obviously not talking about the drive being lost to external factors (fire, theft, etc), but simply when connecting it 5 years after it has been sitting in a box if it will start up.
Thanks for the help.
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Kode
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Unraid has a preclear script which also allows you to "burn in" the drive, basically what happens is it runs the drive through intensive usuage for x amount of cycles and using smart you can see if any arrors occured, if there are any bad sectors, if data had to be reallocated, if a drive successfully completes this process you can be fairly confident using the drive.
HD's are mechanical devices and so the more they are used the quicker they are likely to run out, however, when a drive spins up it causes more stress than a drive constantly running. In a home setting though, this is likely to be less apparent, and the power savings are probably of more benefit.
All harddrives at some point will fail, its just a matter of when, 1 year, 5 years, 20 years? Also remember parity protected is not a replacement for backups, it should be used in conjunction.
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So based on your response, if a drive is working and then stored in a closet for 10 years (without ever having been powered on), it is very likely that it will work the next time you reconnect it.
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Kode
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I'd probably run it through its paces before trusting important information to it, but yes, barring things like fire or water damage etc, it *should* be fine
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what is the best to buy ? an etrayz or sheevaplug?