HTPC - stripe or mirror?

[^misantropia^]

That's not true. I've had to replace drives 3 times in servers in the last week and a half, and in two of those cases I replaced them with drives that were from a completely different manufacturer. To any decent modern RAID controller, all that matters is that the disks are the same size and have the same performance specs.

Bet you a sixpack that there is still more than enough high-end RAID gear out there that won't work properly unless the disks are identical (and I mean identical). =)

EDIT: I concur with your other points, though. I was thinking more of a server setup where the disks never spin down.

[l0g1c]

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Home-burned CDs and DVDs aren't good backup solutions because they go bad. You can prolong their lifespan, but you have to take quite a few hassling precautions, and even then it would be hard for me to really have confidence in them.
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CD's and DVD's "going bad" is a myth from when the technology was still new. If you buy quality media, you shouldn't have a problem. I wasn't sure if I could post about our client that uses this, but I found it on the internets, so I'm not giving away any trade secrets or anything.

http://www.daxarchiving.com/en/company/ ... SCOLA.html

It's an interesting read, and a really neat setup. Obviously, this is on a much bigger scale, but a similar solution can be scaled down and viable for consumer-level stuff.

[Fender]

If Drobo had eSATA, I'd be tempted to give it a try. Just keep adding drives of any size when you need more capacity and it automatically redistributes data for maximum usable space and maintains redundancy.

[R00k]

CD's and DVD's "going bad" is a myth from when the technology was still new. If you buy quality media, you shouldn't have a problem. I wasn't sure if I could post about our client that uses this, but I found it on the internets, so I'm not giving away any trade secrets or anything.

http://www.daxarchiving.com/en/company/ ... SCOLA.html

It's an interesting read, and a really neat setup. Obviously, this is on a much bigger scale, but a similar solution can be scaled down and viable for consumer-level stuff.

Haven't had a chance to read your link yet, but I did a quick bit of googling. I read on one site ( http://www.optical.com/optical_storage/blu-ray.php ) that home burned BR disks have a 50+ year shelf life, so I may be wrong.

The last time I used home burned CDs for archiving was probably 10 years ago, and the reason I stopped using it was because my disks started going bad a few years later, and I wasn't able to get some data that I needed. I've had a hard time placing much confidence in them ever since.

I guess if you're careful in the way that you store them (to prevent scratching and such), they can be useful for archiving. They still aren't very durable, but it looks like a more viable option than it was several years ago. It still seems like a pain to keep multiple plastic disks instead of a single, hard-cased drive, but that would be a matter of personal preference.

[Fender]

Ripping optical media to HDD then backing it up to optical media sounds really stupid.

I get it. No backup solution is perfect. But for my purposes, I still think RAID5 is a good balance if I'm going to do it myself. Alternatively, I could use carbonite or mozy for $5/month.

[Foo]

Bet you a sixpack that there is still more than enough high-end RAID gear out there that won't work properly unless the disks are identical (and I mean identical). =)

Seems to be much less of an issue with SAS/SATA kit than it is with SCSI/IDE

[l0g1c]

Ripping optical media to HDD then backing it up to optical media sounds really stupid.

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

Edit: to be clear, the blu-ray discs in this equation are only acting as backups in case of HDD failure. By doing an incremental backup, you're only backing up the changes and shouldn't go through too many discs after your initial backup. You can set up a directory to hold the movies you rip and exclude it from the backup process, since you obviously already have a backup for them.

Have fun with your RAID, though.

[Fender]

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

No, I need to work on reading entire posts.