remote parity disk?

[MilkSomelier]

I know probably someone already have done that , so my take is a copy of the existing parity drive but in a remote location . Is there anny way?

[itimpi]

What are you trying to achieve?   I cannot see why you would want this?

[MilkSomelier]

If phisically anything happens to the parity disk i have a copy in another location

Edited March 28, 2022 by MilkSomelier

[JonathanM]

Parity disk by itself is worthless, you must have all remaining data disks as well to rebuild a failed drive.

https://wiki.unraid.net/Parity

Please read.

[MilkSomelier]

Sooo... there is no maner right?

[JonathanM]

25 minutes ago, MilkSomelier said:

Sooo... there is no maner right?

I don't understand.

[MilkSomelier]

If there is any way to have a copy of the parity disk in a remote location 

[ghost82]

You mean a 1:1 copy of the parity disk disconnected and stored in its box somewhere?

Just clone it as you can clone any disk, you can use dd command.

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY

Where X is the source drive and Y is the target drive.

You can append to that command also bs= to specify block size (no option defaults to 512 bytes)

[itimpi]

50 minutes ago, MilkSomelier said:

If there is any way to have a copy of the parity disk in a remote location 

I do not see any benefit to this as the moment the data on any of the array disks changes then the parity disk contents will no longer be valid.   As I said before what is it you are actually trying to achieve by doing this?

[ghost82]

9 minutes ago, itimpi said:

I do not see any benefit to this as the moment the data on any of the array disks changes then the parity disk contents will no longer be valid

With a lot of imagination I think he thinks to have a 1:1 backup of the parity drive in case it's the parity that fails, so to be able to swap it soon: never had a parity so I don't know if it will work to change the parity drive with another with the same content.

But if it's the parity drive that fails he can rebuild from valid datas on array...anyway, if he wants to have a backup...

 

oh and yes I see now what you mean, the moment you add a file or modify something into the array the parity backup will no longer be valid...so 100% useless

Edited March 28, 2022 by ghost82

[JonathanM]

1 hour ago, MilkSomelier said:

If there is any way to have a copy of the parity disk in a remote location 

As ghost82 said, yes, you can copy the disk just like any other disk.

 

Let me rephrase the question, that I think you really are meaning to ask

 

Quote

Is there is any way to have a copy of the parity disk in a remote location that will allow me to recover a failed drive if I put it back in the server?

The answer to that is NO, parity is continually synced to the rest of the data disks, and as soon as it is out of sync, ANY recovery using it will be corrupted beyond use.

 

Parity holds no data, it only completes the set with the data disks, so when any single disk is removed, it can answer the equation formed with the rest of the data disks. It is useless without the rest of the data disks.

 

All this is explained in the link I posted.

[ChatNoir]

If you can have a remote backup possibility, why not backup your actual valuable data instead of Parity ?