Little linux backup box - wisdom required

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 05:37:36PM -0500, Stewart Russell wrote:
> All this talk of drive features has got me questioning my backup strategy,
> which is somewhere between ad hoc and none at all. I'm considering setting
> up the following box:
> * QNAP TS-419P II 4-bay NAS: <
> http://www.qnap.com/useng/?lang=en-us&sn=862&c=355&sc=688&t=695&n=3888>
> * 4x WD Red 2TB drives.
> * Crashplan cloud backup for all my (cross-platform)  machines and the NAS
> itself. Anything that can't run Crashplan (not sure how well the Java
> client would run on a Raspberry Pi ...) would rsync to the NAS box, which
> itself would be running Crashplan.
> 
> The QNAP is a little ARM Linux box. I'm not really looking to build a
> custom box unless it's cheaper, quieter and uses less power than the QNAP.
> It supports a bunch of RAID levels, so could in theory could be a 6TB
> RAID5, or a 4TB RAID6 (less the usual system and marketing overhead). I'm
> more interested in data integrity than flat-out transfer speed.
> 
> If a single drive failed, would either of these RAID levels be able to
> realistically carry on without data loss until I replaced the faulty unit?
> 
> Is it really worth going for non-sequential serial numbers on the drives?
> Apart from buying a single drive from different stores, how would one do
> this?
> 
> Wisdom appreciated, thanks. Point-and-laugh is also okay, as long as you
> say why, and what you'd do better.

Anything other than RAID0 can handle a single disk failing.  RAID6 can
handle two disks failing.  The performance might drop while a disk has
failed depending on the implementation.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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