External USB2.0 HDD disconnect

[Madison Kelly]

Hi all,

   I am looking into alternatives to tape backup after my last little 
fiasco and I am ready to settle on an external USB2.0 chassis with 
removeable HDD carrier trays. Now, I know that with other USB devices 
like digital cameras and keychain memory sticks I can dismount and then 
physically disconnect the filesystem from the machine while the computer 
is on. I am *assuming* I can do that with an external HDD chassis as 
well but I thought I best turn to TLUG for sage advice lest I be greated 
by the humbling effect ;).

   Any experiences/comments/horror stories?

Madison

PS - My plan is to use drives the same size as the server and to have a 
script mount the drive and then 'dd' the server's data to the backup 
hard drive thereby hopefully allowing for baremetal recovery if it 
becomes so needed in the future. Do I need LVM/snapshot to ensure data 
consistency or is 'dd' sufficient so long as the users are gone for the day?

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