Hello,

 

I am trying to work out a way to keep part of my backups off-site, so that the data is safe in case of a fire.

Would unraid be able to do something like that? The basic idea is to keep a set of disks at my office, and swap them now and then with drives in the storage server.

 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

unRAID is a type of NAS, but with better data protection, using a parity drive with a specific group of drives.  As such, it is not well suited for hot-swapping drives, because the parity protection would be lost each time you 'broke' the array to swap drives in and out.  There are tools (UnMenu) that can help with that, help mount and share drives *outside* of the unRAID protected array, so that you can use file management and backup tools, between both your unRAID server and your desktops.

 

unRAID is still an excellent solution for the on-site part of your backup strategy.  I and others use tools like Mozy and JungleDisk for offsite backup of the most important data.  I believe there are a few users who do something similar to what you want, although probably not using unRAID data drives.  Hopefully one of them will see this, and provide some ideas.

 

Some discussion of backups and unRAID:  UnRAID Topical Index, Backups

Thanks!

 

I had not really considered that.

 

So a better way would be to set up an unRAID array, then add one or more drives outside the array as you suggest, and take these drives to the office. Seems a workable solution for me, although it does require some work every few weeks or so. Purely work-related stuff can be rsynced daily to the office, and valuable personal data like photographs will go on the "mobile disks".

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

I setup my unRAID server with an external 2 port sata adapter w/power so that I can use it for a backup.  This is roughly my process:

1.  Powerdown the array

2.  Plug in my bare sata drive to the adapter sata and power cables (these are internal type cables but used outside the case).

3.  Poweron

4.  Mount the drive, but do not add to the array (via unmenu)

5.  Copy the data I want to backup

6.  Unmount the drive

7.  Powerdown

8.  Disconnect the drive

9.  Poweron

10.  Take drive offsite

 

Thanks guys,

 

I have built a small test server. If all goes well. I will build a larger one, which will for starters house all my older and smaller harddisks  .

 

Just a bit off-topic from the original question, I ran into the situation where I needed to reload the network configuration of the unraid server, which can be done in e.g. ubuntu with /etc/init.d/network restart. How would I do that in slackware?

 

Mark

 

2.  Plug in my bare sata drive to the adapter sata and power cables (these are internal type cables but used outside the case).

 

What is your experience with the SATA connectors on external/hotswap bays? Will they still fit snugly when you plug the drive in after many, many of these "external backup sessions"?

 

Mark

 

Thanks guys,

 

I have built a small test server. If all goes well. I will build a larger one, which will for starters house all my older and smaller harddisks  .

 

Just a bit off-topic from the original question, I ran into the situation where I needed to reload the network configuration of the unraid server, which can be done in e.g. ubuntu with /etc/init.d/network restart. How would I do that in slackware?

 

Mark

 

It is very similar.

 

You would type:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe. A quick re-init beats a full reboot any day.

 

Let's go back to the original question. I'm aiming for the situation where I can plug in a SATA drive, or two, into a hotplug slot in my case. I then give a backup command (on either Tower or some other machine) and specific directories get backed up to the drives I just plugged in.

 

This would require at the very least some way for the system to know where to mount the hotswap drives. I am ok with linux, but this goes a little over my head: how would I make sure that these drives always get mounted at the same place? Any pointers or hints would be greatly appreciated!

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

 

Thanks Joe. A quick re-init beats a full reboot any day.

 

Let's go back to the original question. I'm aiming for the situation where I can plug in a SATA drive, or two, into a hotplug slot in my case. I then give a backup command (on either Tower or some other machine) and specific directories get backed up to the drives I just plugged in.

 

This would require at the very least some way for the system to know where to mount the hotswap drives. I am ok with linux, but this goes a little over my head: how would I make sure that these drives always get mounted at the same place? Any pointers or hints would be greatly appreciated!

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

 

Install the unMENU package I wrote.  It has the ability to mount/un-mount share/un-share disks that are not part of the unRAID array.  You can then use anything you like to copy the files to the backup drives.

 

You can read about it here in the wiki: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Add_Ons#UnMENU

Its drive management page looks like this:

 

I've mounted a USB drive (The un-mount button says "Mount" if the drive has a file-system and is not currently mounted, the "Share" button shows itself once the disk is mounted.  Disks are mounted read-only by default, but that is configurable.

 

Joe L.

I didn't know you could mount USB drives -- that's handy. Can I mount an xfs drive?

I didn't know you could mount USB drives -- that's handy. Can I mount an xfs drive?

No, because xfs is not one of the file-system types supported by unRAID.

 

The USB drive I mounted in that screen print has an NTFS file-system.

 

You can only mount MSDOS/FAT, NTFS, EXT2, or REISERFS file-systems.

...Altough, as I found out, once you get a development environment, it's pretty easy to add additional modules to the kernel and load them at startup, via the go script. I had to that in order to support a USB cdrom (cdrom.ko, sr_mod.ko, udf.ko and isofs.ko, plus a couple of other I can't remember at the top of my head) to move some data back to the NAS from dvd backup, and ext3 filesystem as most of my external usb drives are using that.