Removing filled disk(s) (for fysical archiving) possible?

[jowi]

Just wondering, i am collecting a lot of tv series, some of which are cancelled, or complete and discontinued, and i don't want to delete them. I collect them, even if i never see a series for the 2nd time, i don't want to delete it

 

Now, would it be possible to move all those shows/movies to a specific (physical) disk, remove that disk from the array (and store it in a safe or elsewhere) and rebuild parity again for the remaining disks?

 

Once that is done, could i in the future, slide the archived disk in the server again so it can be read? I assume i need to rebuild the parity disk again at that moment for protection, but still, is that possible? Or is it only possible to add zero-ed (precleared, empty) disks?

 

The reason for this is that i have 3x 4TB disks full of tv shows and series i watched once or twice, don't need to be 'live' but also don't want to delete.

Or should i better build a 2nd server for this, a server that is not switched on 24/7 but only for archiving?

 

[mr-hexen]

you can remove a physical hard drive by using the initconfig button in the GUI. this will IMMEDIATELY invalidate parity and require complete parity reconstruction.

 

you can only add zero'd drives to an array that has valid parity. you could, again, run initconfig, add the old drive back into the array and recalc parity.

 

 

OR

 

 

you can mount the drive outside of the array and read from it as required.

[garycase]

i don't want to delete it

 

If you don't want to lose the data, simply storing the disk it's on somewhere else does NOT provide a backup.  Remember that ALL hard disks will fail ... it's just a question of when.

 

You can, of course, hope that yours won't, and just store the disks that contain the TV series in an off-line storage location (I use the WiebeTech DriveBoxes to store my backup disks:  http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/WiebeTech-DriveBox-3851-0000-11-Hard-Disk-Case/5792263/product.html ]

 

But if you don't want to leave this data both on your system and saved on a set of backup drives; then it's a much better idea to simply build a 2nd "archive only" server that you don't leave running except when you're updating the archives.    While this still wouldn't provide backups, it would at least be fault-tolerant, so a single drive failure wouldn't result in lost data.    That's much better than data that's not backed up at all.

 

Remember:  Any data you don't want to lose should always be backed up, so you have the data stored in at least 2 different places [and RAID is NOT a backup ... fault-tolerance is nice; and does provide some mitigation against data loss; but it is NOT a backup]

 

[jowi]

Yeah i know, but money is key here. I can't afford another 32TB server to make a real backup of the primary one. I don't even have room for it...

[garycase]

In that case I'd just buy a box of DriveBoxes, and archive what you want to a bunch of 4TB drives that you store in the boxes when full.

 

Just be aware that if any of these fail, all of the data on them will be lost.  Fairly low likelihood ... but Murphy almost guarantees that your most-treasured series will be on the one drive that does some day decide to fail