>"Richard A. Cini" wrote:
> Here's an oddball question. I have a small Windows NT Server network at
> home that frankly I use mostly for storing all sorts of crap -- classic and
> other. It's overkill (Compaq dual PPro200 3U server and 4-drive RAID 5 and
> 10gb DLT) for what I need but the price was good.
> With hard drive densities continuing to increase I was toying with building
> some sort of NAS unit to replace the server. So, I'm looking for suggestions
> on building a stand-alone, small NAS system, maybe using Linux, and it has
> to be more appliance-like rather than a full-blown system. Any thoughts or
> suggestions on implementation?
> On an unrelated note, I'd like to automatically mirror the information on
> the RAID to a cheap 40gb drive (because I'm too lazy to mount the tape and
> do a backup). I have some server-oriented backup probrams but they don't
> allow you to backup to a file -- you can only back up to a physical tape
> drive. Any thoughts on this?
Jerome Fine replies:
I don't think that my reply will be explicitly useful, but it might
help you decide to look at some alternatives.
I dislike Windows 98 SE, but it allows me to run Ersatz-11
and supports my e-mail under Netscape. My son also
provides the support and refuses to support me except
under Windows.
In my case, I initially attempted to use a hardware solution
to the RAID problem. I purchased a RAID 1 controller
and ran a initial test to see if it was working. When I pulled
the power plug on one of the hard drives, the system would
not even boot.
However, I did find that the controller supported UDMA 100
drives which made disk I/O MUCH faster than the previous
system.
The actual hardware is a 750 MHz Pentium III with the
UDMA 100 controller and 3 * EIDE 40 GByte hard drives.
However, I found that I use ONLY about 2 GBytes of file
space on the C: had drive. D: and E: are used ONLY for
backup. I also have access to a DVD burner about 3 times
a year and a DVD reader all the time.
The good part is that I am able to run Ersatz-11 (a PDP-11
emulator available at
http://www.dbit.com/) and I obtain a
speed of about 15 times a real DEC PDP-11/93.
The bad part is that I am forced to chose Windows 98 SE
since I also want to be able to use the monitor n 132 character
mode under KED in RT-11.
Now the backup solution. I have chosen GHOST as the
backup program. Once a day, GHOST is used to make
an image file of the C: drive - which takes about 6 minutes -
on BOTH the D: and E: drives. Actually, I make the first
copy from GHOST directly to the E: drive since it is on a
different channel from the C: and D: hard drives. At the
same time, I am also able to have GHOST make up a
CRC file which contains a 128 bit CRC value for each
of the 11,319 files on the C: hard drive. The CRC file
is about 1 MByte and the image backup file is currently
870 MBytes - which is, unfortunately, too large for a CD.
Which is where the DVD burner comes in handy. Once
every 4 months, I copy 4 end-of-month images of the C:
drive to a DVD for permanent long-term backup storage.
On two occasions due to my own lack of understanding
of what should not be done with Windows 98 SE, I have
used the backup files to restore the C: drive. On one
occasion, I even lost the D: drive as a result of the problem.
Fortunately, with TWO copies of each daily image backup
file, I am reasonably able to recover.
Because the D: and E: drives can hold so many image files,
I normally can "rotate" the image files by keeping the last
3 backup images on the E: drive while I delete all of the
current backup images for the month on the D: drive.
I then repeat the process with the E: drive. Each copy
of each image file takes about 1 minute and the compare
takes about 2 minutes. I spend less time each day
making the copies and running the compares than it
takes to type this e-mail.
In addition, if I ever consider that a defragment of the
C: drive is needed, I do a complete recovery using
GHOST instead - just after I have done a backup.
To check that the recovery is correct, I then compare
the second CRC file with the previous CRC file. As
long as both are identical, I am able to conclude that
the "recovery" produced a set of files which are identical.
So far after at least a few dozen recoveries, I have never
found the two CRC files to be different, i.e. after I make
a backup, then do a recovery, then make a second backup,
the CRC files are identical. NOTE that GHOST requires
a boot of DOS from a floppy when GHOST is being run,
but the actual GHOST program may be on the hard drive
to which the backup is being written.
I have no connection with GHOST other than as a user.
Additional questions are invited.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
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Received on Sun Nov 16 2003 - 15:03:21 GMT