Need suggestions for a USB external hard disk
On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:41:42 -0700, ray
I'll second this advice. I have had good luck with USB 2.0 drives from Western Digital. Recently, the Seagate drives were on rebate, so I'll give them a try, too.
I don't know what OpenAFS is, so I can't comment on the specifics. Below, I explain how I use these drives for general backups. You will need to decide if a similar approach would work for you. This is nothing fancy- it won't capture open files or databases. It will simply save a snapshot to your external disc. The snapshot must have already been acquired by some other means.
Unruh OK. Sorry. I was just answering the question about whether it could see anything. The output is: Interface doesn't support scanning. I don't think anything...
1. An external drive is selected for today's backup from the drawer. These drives are cheap enough that more than one drive can be buttigned to a given job. More drives give more insurance against any type of drive failure.
Richard Kimber Your very much in luck, you see I have the exact same laptop. First check the...
1.A. Safety feature: When these drives are not being used, they are turned off and stored in a drawer.
1.B. Safety feature: When these drives are being transported to a job, they are kept in a padded box.
My experience (very limited) with setting up my daughter's wireless laptop when she is home from school. I discovered that the Dell Inspiron laptop defaults to shutting off the...
1.C Safetey feature: cryptoloop (kernel module)
Dances With Crows Thx for your answer. Automount was off already and this is my supermount config looks like: config SUPERMOUNT tristate "Supermount removable media support" help Supermount gives you the ability to access CD...
2. The selected drive is physically connected on the same network with the data for today's backup, then it is mounted.
3. rsync is used to mirror the important data which is being saved. Note: in the example below, you should fixup variables to be appropriate for your system.
CAUTION: This method uses rsync, a command that can do great damage if used improperly. Experiment with directories where you can limit the damage until you have it down pat. It is picky about trailing slashes and dots on pathnames, so make sure you are clear about your intended source and destination before starting rsync. Obviously, the --delete option can be dangerous.
DEST=-mnt-sda1-job BSRV=backup.server SOURCEDIR=snapshots-2006-After2006-01-06 (cd $DEST && rsync -lptrv --progress ${BSRV}:${SOURCEDIR} .)
3.A. I use a network transport because the backup server lacks a USB 2.0 interface. If the USB drive can be connected directly, then see 3.B.
3.B. If the USB drive is connected directly to the backup server, then no network transport will be necessary. rsync can still be used by simply omitting the colon. Be clear about specifying your directory names (absolute or relative paths).
4. The drive is unmounted and returned to the storage drawer.
Here is one more note about performance. I think USB 2.0 in combination with gigabit ethernet speeds up this operation. The example above works quick enough for me, even with the added overhead due to encryption (ssh.) I don't have the fastest computers, but I am able to save data to the disc at between 5 and 6 MB-s. I guess rsh could be used to omit encryption, but that raises some security questions. Also, I may actually be running into the upper limit imposed by the hard disc write operation (that is, its sustained data transfer when writing.)
-- Douglas Mayne
Linux groups from Newsgroups