Is their any way to have UnRaid automaticly keep an extra copy of a Share?

 

I know with the parity drive and all you can loose a drive and not loose data. But just for extra security I would like to have my Pictures Share, which is all family photos that aren't replacable... Stored on 2 seperate drives. Right now the share is set up to use only Disk 1, I would like and exact copy also kept on Disk 2 just in case.

 

Or does a product like Norton Ghost work for backing up UnRaid drives at all.

Is their any way to have UnRaid automaticly keep an extra copy of a Share?

 

I know with the parity drive and all you can loose a drive and not loose data. But just for extra security I would like to have my Pictures Share, which is all family photos that aren't replacable... Stored on 2 seperate drives. Right now the share is set up to use only Disk 1, I would like and exact copy also kept on Disk 2 just in case.

 

Or does a product like Norton Ghost work for backing up UnRaid drives at all.

Easiest method is to simply create a folder with a different name, on a different physical disk, and then copy your photos there.

Then, to protect yourself, and probably just as important, burn them to a CD or DVD, take it to your bank, put it in your safe deposit box.  Or send the CD or DVD copy of the family photos to a family member living elsewhere.  Or save a copy at work in your desk or locker. If you want, you can put them all in a zip archive.  (It won't compress much, since images are already compressed, but it is one file instead of many and it could be password protected) 

 

so...

if the photos are on disk1/photos

create a folder disk2/archive_photos

 

A unix command to copy the all the files (and subdirectories) under the /mnt/disk1/photos directory would then be

cp -av /mnt/disk1/photos /mnt/disk2/archive_photos

 

Just copy the files to the archive_photos folder, then they will be on two disks, and both will be protected from failure.  You'll be fine unless all three disks fail. 

 

Al three disks  can fail if your server is involved in a  fire/flood/direct hit from lightning/tornado/massive power surge, etc.  If any one of those catastrophic events occur, the off-site copy will let look through the family photo album once you recover.

 

No RAID software/hardware is a replacement for a backup copy stored off-site.

 

Joe L.

The manual method is what I have been doing now, I was just hoping for a more automated way when I have new pictures that they would go to both drives at the same time.

 

I do also keep a copy of our photos on my work PC, that is also backed up twice a week to a Removable drive that is kept in a safe.

The manual method is what I have been doing now, I was just hoping for a more automated way when I have new pictures that they would go to both drives at the same time.

 

I do also keep a copy of our photos on my work PC, that is also backed up twice a week to a Removable drive that is kept in a safe.

 

How about a once a night "cron" task to do the copy for you to the alternate disk?  Would that help?  You would have to add a line to your "go" script to invoke it each time you reboot, but it would make the archive-backups on the other disk for you every night at midnight.

(Modify the "photo" folder names in the line with the "cp" commands as needed...  It must match the actual directory names and it is case sensitive. If you type:

ls /mnt/disk1 and the folder for the photos has a leading capital "P" then the "cp" command run by cron must also use the same capitalization.)

 

Something like this:

contents of "archive_photo_cron.sh" follow:

#!/bin/sh

crontab -l >/tmp/crontab

grep -q "Archive Photo Hierarchy" /tmp/crontab 1>/dev/null 2>&1

if [ "$?" = "1" ]

then

    echo "# Archive Photo Hierarchy" >>/tmp/crontab

    echo "0 0 * * *  cp -a /mnt/disk1/photos /mnt/disk2/archive_photos" >>/tmp/crontab

    crontab /tmp/crontab

fi

 

Assuming you named the script "archive_photo_cron.sh" and it was on the top folder on your flash drive, you would then add a line like this:

/boot/archive_photo_cron.sh

 

to the end of your /boot/config/go script.

 

Note: you must use an editor that saves the file with only linefeed characters, not carriage-return/linefeed pairs as in most DOS or windows programs.  Or, you can pass the program through the "fromdos"  command to get rid of the extraneous CR characters as in this example in the wiki:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Why_do_my_scripts_have_problems_with_end-of-lines.3F

 

Joe L.

I would place them on an external hard drive and then leave the hard drive at the bank.

That is what I do. I then visit the bank with my laptop, and update the photos every so often.

I also give my parents a copy every year on dvd 8GB, so there is a good chance of not loosing the data.