External Hard Drive

[Sean Troy]

Hi all, my external hard drive acts like it's getting ready to fail. It's six years old and a WD 250 gig. I've moved everything on it to my computer and need to get everything back on an external. I've been reading the WD's are not the brand to go with any more because of the hoops needed to go through to use them. What's a good brand to go with for a replacement?

[Chuck Wintle]

Hi all, my external hard drive acts like it's getting ready to fail. It's six years old and a WD 250 gig. I've moved everything on it to my computer and need to get everything back on an external. I've been reading the WD's are not the brand to go with any more because of the hoops needed to go through to use them. What's a good brand to go with for a replacement?

I like Seagate hard drives.

[Michael Peet]

I use one of these for external storage:

160897

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=3

My two favorite benefits are:


Mirrored drives so if one fails you don't lose your data.
Device plugs into your network so all your computers at home have access to the storage.

Not affiliated with netgear, I just like this product.

Mike

[Prashun Patel]

We had a fatal error on our Buffalo Terastation here at work. We were using it as our primary storage device. Had it all nicely configured for RAID5. Drives are hot swappable. We were protected!

Then the NIC on the box failed. The NIC of all things! I have 12 yr old PC's that still have functioning NIC's.

Now, we use our server's internal HD as the primary storage device (as God intended ;)) and only use a replacement NAS as the backup device. For us, that's actually neater, because we also have an automated cloud backup which only covers one machine, so it's neater, cheaper, and nicer to have the domain server and all the data on a single machine.

My philosophy is now belt and suspenders: Use either a NAS as the primary, and yr internal HD as a daily backup, or vice versa, or 2 NAS's.

If you really want protection, look into cloud storage - like Google Docs.

[Joe Chritz]

Mine is a WD and all the hoops I had was to plug it in and run the set up. There may be some issues with the terabyte drives but that is a rumor that I have never checked out.

I use it primarily for back up purposes and to run music from my laptop in the home bar.

Next time I upgrade I am going with a smaller internal for windows, a large internal for programs and storage and an external for back up.

Joe

[Bryan Morgan]

Hi all, my external hard drive acts like it's getting ready to fail. It's six years old and a WD 250 gig. I've moved everything on it to my computer and need to get everything back on an external. I've been reading the WD's are not the brand to go with any more because of the hoops needed to go through to use them. What's a good brand to go with for a replacement?

Nothing wrong with WD's, you just plug them in and use them. Your best bet is to look through the reviews at Newegg and see what has the most returns or failures. Even with the "best" drives everyone gets a DOA once in a while. Hard drive brand loyalty is almost a religious war. :) I've been through thousands of drives here at work and in *my* experience WD stuff seems to last the longest. Seagates seem to have a high failure rate in our environment.... but guess what I use at home? Seagates (1 TB internal drives, 2 TB external drives). I put Samsung into my 6 TB home server. Brand really doesn't matter, you need to check out the particular model you are interested in. Supposedly the current batch of 1-2 TB SATA drives from WD have an extremely high failure rate. I have 4 in a RAID at work that have been running for over a year with no issue... so go figure...

[Ken Fitzgerald]

We were given a WD 1 Tera. No hoops. Works fine.

[Matt Meiser]

I had one of the MyBook drives fail last year after 2 years of use. I have another I've had almost as long that's still fine. And I have a Maxtor we use for our weekly backups, almost as old that has been fine. I also have one of the WD passport drives that I use constantly and carry with ime whenever I travel so it hasn't lived a peaceful life that is also good.

My beef with the NAS units last time I looked into them anyway, is that you can't stick the drive in a PC and get the files if the NAS unit fails. And after a few years, finding the same NAS unit might not be simple. This is probably also true of the USB drives, but they are a lot lower investment.

After looking at the NAS options, I went with a Windows Home Server because it gives us a lot of other nice features in addition to acting as a NAS.

[John M Wilson]

+1 on Windows Home Server. A little more work, a little more money, a lot more functionality. Been using one since they first came out, several years ago. Every PC in the house backs up to the WHS box every night. Saved my bacon a couple of times... YMMV :)

[Phil Thien]

My beef with the NAS units last time I looked into them anyway, is that you can't stick the drive in a PC and get the files if the NAS unit fails. And after a few years, finding the same NAS unit might not be simple. This is probably also true of the USB drives, but they are a lot lower investment.

Most of them use some IX variant and ext2 or 3 filesystem. So you can typically pull them and stuff them into an internal PC and use some (relatively) inexpensive software to get your data onto your Windows machine.

Where you run into trouble is multi-drive NAS. In those cases manufacturers take an awful lot of liberties w/ filesystems.

[Sean Troy]

I'm just using it for pictures and some documents as a secondary backup. I just picked up a Seagate 500 gig portable that will do automatic backups for 59.00 at Office Max.

[Bill Huber]

I dumped all of my ext drives and have gone to Carbonite and have never looked back.

I don't have to worry about it, it just does its thing and all the files are backed up.

Another thing that is nice is when I was at my sisters I needed some files so I installed Carbonite on her PC and just restored them.

It is well worth the money to have it all backed up and I don't have to worry about a fire, flood or lighting.

[Eric DeSilva]

+1 for Netgear's ReadyNAS. I've got a 6TB ReadyNAS Pro, and I'm a lot happier with it than the prior Buffalo Terastations. Easier to use/configure, hotswappable drives, easily supports streaming syncing w/my iTunes lib.

If you are just looking at drives, I've also had good luck with the Seagate NS-series (I gather people have had bad problems with AS drives).

[David Epperson]

Office Depot had their 500gig and 1Tb drives on sale this week - or it was in their sales flier.

[Greg Portland]

Had it all nicely configured for RAID5If I had one piece of advice for people it would be to avoid RAID at all costs unless you plan on performing continual maintenance. RAID is not a "install and forget" system. Your best bet is to setup a system as JBOD (just a bunch of discs) and have everything mirrored to another physical drive (or set of drives). In other words, to store 2 TB you'll need 4TB of drive space. If the machine dies you can pull out the drives and stick them into any other machine and your data will be there. If one of the discs die, you just swap it out and have the machine re-sync the data.

Most of the NAS systems mentioned in this thread are capable of running JBOD. Alternatively you can buy a cheap tower, stick your drives in and run Windows Home Server.

[Eric DeSilva]

Curious as to why you say RAID is a maintenance pain, then go on to advocate RAID 1 (mirroring)?

I've run several RAID 5 arrays--couple Buffalo Terastations (4 x 250MB drives) and a ReadyNAS Pro (6 x 1TB drives). I hardly have any maintenance issues. I've had to update the firmware twice in two years on the ReadyNAS, and have hotswapped two drives that seem to be having increasing SMART errors. Not what I'd call maintenance intensive, and that drive is on 24x7.

My "failure" rate on drives is 2 of six in two years, so one every six years. If I was running a JBOD set up, I would have needed 10 drives,(*) which means I probably would have replaced 3 drives by now. And, unless you are talking about some software RAID, mirroring drives can be a hassle as well.

(*) With RAID 5, your effective efficiency is (N-1)/N, where N is the number of drives. With 6 drives, I realize 5 TB of storage. With RAID 1, your efficiency is 50%, so you would need 10 drives.

[Prashun Patel]

After my incident, I agree with Greg.
The price of entire drive arrays - let alone individual disks is so cheap (relative to the time spent troubleshooting) I believe it's best to just mirror everything - perhaps even more than twice. If yr primary breaks, just scrap it, switch to the backup, and buy a new backup.

For a data center, I guess you need to worry about 30% vs 50% vs 75% efficiency of storage usage. In my world, the simpler the back up solution, the better it is.

[Chuck Wintle]

not to hijack this thread but how long will the average hard drive last in hours. One of my drives has 17000 hours and the other is at 26000 hours. Thats almost 3 years of continuous running. :D I know it depends on some factors, heat, voltage stability and just plain luck sometimes.

[Eric DeSilva]

After my incident, I agree with Greg.
The price of entire drive arrays - let alone individual disks is so cheap (relative to the time spent troubleshooting) I believe it's best to just mirror everything - perhaps even more than twice. If yr primary breaks, just scrap it, switch to the backup, and buy a new backup.

For a data center, I guess you need to worry about 30% vs 50% vs 75% efficiency of storage usage. In my world, the simpler the back up solution, the better it is.

Again, I don't understand the logic. If you depend on the user to mirror, it is subject to huge problems with pilot error. If you depend upon a software or hardware solution to implement the mirroring, you have a potential single point of failure, just like RAID--although typically recoverable. Not sure why that argues against RAID?

[Bryan Morgan]

I dumped all of my ext drives and have gone to Carbonite and have never looked back.

I'm not too keen on having my data floating out there on the interwebs....

[Prashun Patel]

Not sure why that argues against RAID?

All my data is mirrored now. I can go to my second drive and look daily to see if it's there. I can see the timestamps and browse them just as if they were live. No uncompressing to mess with. My 'RAID 1' is just the server HD, and a NAS.

My mirroring happens automatically. It's just simple file copying, which a lot of scripting programs can handle. It's easy to make mods when machines or directories change. I realize that scripting is another point of failure, but I've discovered that FOR ME, the most important thing about a backup solution is being able to look at and check the data periodically to verify the latest stuff is there.

Anyway, it works for me. I am sure there are better, more elegant solutions. After years of tweaking, though, this one lets me sleep most soundly.

[Greg Portland]

Curious as to why you say RAID is a maintenance pain, then go on to advocate RAID 1 (mirroring)?

I've run several RAID 5 arrays--couple Buffalo Terastations (4 x 250MB drives) and a ReadyNAS Pro (6 x 1TB drives). I hardly have any maintenance issues. I've had to update the firmware twice in two years on the ReadyNAS, and have hotswapped two drives that seem to be having increasing SMART errors. Not what I'd call maintenance intensive, and that drive is on 24x7.

My "failure" rate on drives is 2 of six in two years, so one every six years. If I was running a JBOD set up, I would have needed 10 drives,(*) which means I probably would have replaced 3 drives by now. And, unless you are talking about some software RAID, mirroring drives can be a hassle as well.Eric, I am NOT advocating RAID 1, I am advocating JBOD + SW mirroring via Windows Home Server. RAID 1 is mirroring using a different protocol and requires a RAID controller (SW or HW based). If a RAID 1 controller fails then you just can't take one of the drives and drop it into another computer... some amount of IT work needs to be done. JBOD is simply a clump of discs that can be setup in different ways. Windows Home Server allows you to setup a JBOD array and setup a mirroring scheme if you so choose. The big benefit over RAID1 is that if the system dies you can take the HDD and drop it directly into another computer and read off the data. It is not as fast as an enterprise solution (RAID) but IMO it is a far better solution for the average home user. You are talking about SMART failures and firmware updates with your RAID box... the average home PC user has no idea what you're talking about & does not want to learn either. Windows Home Server was developed to meet the needs of the home user who requires a lot of storage space (digital videos, high resolution photos, music & movies, etc. etc.). It is one Microsoft product that works very well and is quite stable. If you need your drives spinning 24x7 (i.e. can't wait a second or two for the drives to spin up) or require very fast I/O then you'll need to stick with RAID. A single HDD can saturate the typical house network connection so high HDD bandwidth is usually not a concern for the typical home user.

As an example, I am running a Windows Home Server machine with 8x 1TB drives (plus a small OS drive). I have 3 partitions setup by the OS: two 1TB and one 6TB. The 1TB partition is continually mirrored onto the other drive by the OS. I use this for items I can not lose (pictures, etc.). The 4TB partition stores ripped CDs and DVDs that I can re-rip if I suffer a total loss.

All of this assumes very cheap storage media which is the case today.

[Eric DeSilva]

Eric, I am NOT advocating RAID 1, I am advocating JBOD + SW mirroring via Windows Home Server. RAID 1 is mirroring using a different protocol and requires a RAID controller (SW or HW based). If a RAID 1 controller fails then you just can't take one of the drives and drop it into another computer... some amount of IT work needs to be done. JBOD is simply a clump of discs that can be setup in different ways. Windows Home Server allows you to setup a JBOD array and setup a mirroring scheme if you so choose. The big benefit over RAID1 is that if the system dies you can take the HDD and drop it directly into another computer and read off the data. It is not as fast as an enterprise solution (RAID) but IMO it is a far better solution for the average home user.

Depends. Some software RAIDs (like Win7) will create mirrored drives portable to other hardware. But even with hardware, a controller failure is a very rare event, and you could simply replace the hardware controller.


You are talking about SMART failures and firmware updates with your RAID box... the average home PC user has no idea what you're talking about & does not want to learn either.

I get an email that says new firmware is available. I go to the web interface for my NAS RAID and hit a button to install new firmware. Done. No different than doing a windows update.

As far as SMART errors, not a whole lot to learn there either. I get emails when the SMART errors increase. You see a trend of increasing errors, you get a new drive and perform a hot swap. The RAID rebuilds automatically. Again, not difficult.

I did what you talked about. Back in the day, I bought four external Lacie 250 GB drives to back up about 450 GB of data. I wrote the stuff off my machine onto one pair, then the second pair. Immediately afterwards, I went back and did a check and all four drives had bad sectors with data loss--and there was no monitoring, so if I hadn't bothered to check, I never would have known. I've also had two external 250 GB Maxstor drives fail. I firmly believe external drives sold for the "average home PC user" are junk and I won't trust my data to them again.

A point that should be made, however--RAID (or mirroring with JBOD, if you want to make that distinction) offers some protection against hardware failure. That protection is not absolute. Nothing is. People who do backups will also tell you a RAID is not a backup--if you write corrupt data to a RAID, you will have multiple redundant sets of corrupt date--same with any mirrored array. If a user deletes a file accidentally, that file with be deleted from the array. So, you should never rely on a RAID as a sole back up in any event. There are people who will tell you that no mirroring array, whether RAID or JBOD, is a backup.

[Phil Thien]

Windows Home Server allows you to setup a JBOD array and setup a mirroring scheme if you so choose. The big benefit over RAID1 is that if the system dies you can take the HDD and drop it directly into another computer and read off the data.

Concatenated JBOD volumes (where data is spread among two more more drives) are not easily ported to a foreign host.

RAID-1 (mirroring) of single drives is actually much safer, as member drives of a RAID-1 set can be mounted on a foreign host.*

*The only exception is drives used on controllers from manufacturers (like 3Ware) which password lock drives. But 3Ware also password locks JBOD members, so the problem is really 3Ware**, not RAID.

**They password lock drives to prevent well-meaning IT personnel from screwing the pooch by temporarily connecting member drives to a foreign host. This can really complicate things if data recovery becomes necessary, as well-meaning IT personal can rarely tell you everything they did when attempting to diagnose a problem. Front-end damage to the filesystem can get pretty hairy.

[Greg Portland]

Concatenated JBOD volumes (where data is spread among two more more drives) are not easily ported to a foreign host.I agree with you if we are speaking generally. Windows Home Server does not have that problem though (no file is "split" across drives, etc.). Again, this SW overhead comes at a performance cost but we're talking about home use.

[Neal Clayton]

not to hijack this thread but how long will the average hard drive last in hours. One of my drives has 17000 hours and the other is at 26000 hours. Thats almost 3 years of continuous running. :D I know it depends on some factors, heat, voltage stability and just plain luck sometimes.

generally, 5 years, barring any other factor.

as for external small NAS appliances, i recently built one to replace a readynas. i very nearly lost about 6 years of data due to one. here are my issues, after admittedly having 5 good years out of one...

a) they have a HCL for drives? this is silly. a sata drive is a sata drive, except for the fact that those readynas appliances are using the cheapest of the cheap drive controllers and have unaddressed issues with certain drives that can't be fixed. i had issues getting an 'unsupported' drive to work in one about a year ago. the drive was fine.
b) linux software raid is, well, pretty bad. the filesystems used have issues and the recovery process from a single drive failure is slow and poorly designed ZFS (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/ds/zfs.jsp) is in every way better. there's a BSD based alternative called freenas that uses ZFS (in the nightly builds, ZFS is just recently tagged stable in freebsd 7.3 and up) that i find pretty much superior in every way to my old readynas box.
c) the readynas doesn't run from a flash drive, it copies the OS to the drives being used when it's first set up. this is a terrible design. the OS should be independent from the array. otherwise a drive failure brings the OS down too. and we know that ext3 can wind up with a corrupt journal during power failures (http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&q=ext3+power+failure&aq=f&aqi=g1g-o1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=280187d6f0589da0), so pulling the plug to get the array back up introduces potential data corruption.
d) the readynas is using non x86 block sizes in the array. that means, in short, if the hardware in the readynas dies you can't plug those drives into your regular PC and get the data off. you'd need a sparc workstation to do so. or another readynas. this is also a terrible design that ZFS overcomes. ZFS doesn't care what the hardware is, it stores all the array information on the disk, not in the OS. if you lose the OS your ZFS array is running on as long as you replace it with another OS that ZFS is supported on (in a version equal to or greater than the version you started with) it's a simple "zfs import" command to get the array back up and running in about 10 seconds.

here's a post of mine from another forum detailing my issues and building of a small NAS appliance to replace a readynas...


i've used an infrant readynas for a few years but apparently the old sparc models have issues with new SATAII drives, or their firmware blows, one or the other. it fails to recreate an array that died with brand new drives that all test ok so i'm done with it, basically. i found throughout its failures that their box loads the OS on to the array rather than running it in memory, too, very bad design. the result is the box locks up when a drive fails and you wind up having to yank the power to get it going again, which results in ext3 issues (http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20070518.134838.52e26369.en.html).

parts and comparison to comparable NAS appliances...

1gb DDR2 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146571) - $20
intel atom mobo/cpu combo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121399) - $80
4gb CF card for the OS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134514) - $13
4 port sata card for the extra sata ports (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815280003) - $22
SATA -> CF adapter for the OS flash card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186099) - $22

and the case was the kicker. i had quite a time finding a case that i liked. there's no need for a giant case with a giant PSU, i'm trying to build a small box to replace a small box. the best option i found is this...

mini itx case with 4 hot swap tray backplane (http://www.e-itx.com/cfi-a7879.html) - $200 shipped

i find it hard to belive that there aren't more mini itx cases designed around NAS use, but there aren't. there's a chenbro one for about the same price but it's much larger. those are really the only two options outside of rackmount NAS cases, which increases the price quite a bit.

total cost 357 dollars.

note on the sata PCI card...

there are lots of options, from 20 bucks on up to hundreds for true HW raid, all with different levels of features. i think the only thing that matters from my searching around is that you stick with intel, marvell, silicon image, adaptec, or promise chipsets, since those are the most widely *nix supported.

comparison to other devices...

sans digital, 700 dollars (http://www.amazon.com/Sans-Digital-MobileNAS-MN4L-B2G/dp/B001VEI0N8)
synology, 660 dollars (http://www.flash-memory-store.com/synology-cs407-nas-enclosure-server.html)
intel, 612 dollars (http://www.eworldsale.com/intel-ss4000ena-diskless-4-bay-external-nas-storage-system-sata-raid-gigabit-ethernet_8641_18927.html)
netgear, 385 dollars (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/524517-REG/Netgear_RND4000_100NAS_ReadyNAS_NV_4_Bay_Gigabit.h tml)
thecus, 522 dollars (http://www.eworldsale.com/thecus-n4100pro-diskless-network-storage-server-amd-geode-lx800_8641_27799.html)

i figure the performance will probably be similar to what you see on the low end netgear model (~25 to 30 MB/sec assuming gigabit network). not really concerned about this since it's network attached only, it can't surpass gigabit transfer rates anyways, and i don't even run gigabit, just 100, since all i need to serve is video files to my HTPC, none of which will ever approach 100mbps let alone typical gigabit speeds of 400-500mbps (HDTV mpeg2 tops out around 25mbps, bluray maybe 55mbps).

if that was a concern, though, performance could be greatly improved on an ITX board with a PCIe slot that you could put a PCIe drive controller in, or 5 SATA2 ports on the mobo, or better yet if someone made an ITX board with an eSATA capable port, i know of none.

PROS



array not tied to hardware that can fail and be expensive to replace, you could move the array and controller to any other machine, boot your flash card, and save the data in event of a hardware failure (serviceable)
not limited to software from the vendor, run whatever your *nix runs, or even run windows if you can get it to run read-only from a flash disk
no crappy linux filesystem (goodbye 59 hour fsck downtimes)
expandable with 2.5" drives internally, if you build with a card that has eSATA on the back, expandable externally as well
higher end hardware than most pre-configured boxes (dual core CPU, extra sata ports on the mobo, etc)



CONS


using nightly freenas builds (*updated 9/15/2010, no stability issues) so might be minor bugs until 8.0 is out



if only someone would make a decent sub cheap dollar ITX case designed for nas use this could probably be done under 300 bucks, but 360 bucks is still not bad.freenas isn't as "plug and play" as the ready made solutions are, admittedly. but it's not far from it. the install consists of booting to a CD, pressing one button to install it on a flash drive, pressing one more button to tell it your want DHCP for your box's network card, and that's it, the rest is set up in the web interface. the only bugs i see in the web interface in the nightly builds of freenas that include stable ZFS is minor display issues for cpu/memory usage. they're attempting to properly implement a GUI that shows CPU usage with multi core CPUs that have hyperthreading turned on and it doesn't work yet. about as minor an inconvenience as you can get ;). everything else seems to work fine for me after a month or so of use.

i'm actually in the process of migrating all of the small office servers and webservers i'm responsible for to ZFS as well. those high end raid cards look nice on ebay, and no more worrying with hardware compatibility and hardware vendor support (the bane of x86 *nix OSs since day one) is a godsend.

[Bill Huber]

So now we have our 50TB of drives in a Raid 5 setup and are backing everything up and doing it very fast at that, nice to have it all backed up.

Oh, no we had a fire and its all gone, we had a flood and its all gone, we got hit by lighting and smoked it all, we were broken into and they stole everything.

As to my data floating around on the internet its just not that big of a deal. There is nothing in it that isn't already out there some place.

But I have 60,000 pictures and a lot of them could never be replaced. So I have found for my data it is best to do an off site backup.

[Chuck Wintle]

So now we have our 50TB of drives in a Raid 5 setup and are backing everything up and doing it very fast at that, nice to have it all backed up.

Oh, no we had a fire and its all gone, we had a flood and its all gone, we got hit by lighting and smoked it all, we were broken into and they stole everything.

As to my data floating around on the internet its just not that big of a deal. There is nothing in it that isn't already out there some place.

But I have 60,000 pictures and a lot of them could never be replaced. So I have found for my data it is best to do an off site backup.

The problem Bill, as I see it, is now your personal data are on some remote server storage completely out of your control. Yes we all have a lot of personal information floating around in cyberspace. But suppose you want to close your carbonite account and remove your data. How can you ever be absolutely sure that your data has been removed? Can this company really be trusted to safeguard it?

[Bill Huber]

The problem Bill, as I see it, is now your personal data are on some remote server storage completely out of your control. Yes we all have a lot of personal information floating around in cyberspace. But suppose you want to close your carbonite account and remove your data. How can you ever be absolutely sure that your data has been removed? Can this company really be trusted to safeguard it?

How do we know that the drive manufacture didn't put a backdoor on their drives so they can come in and get your data.

I guess the way I look at it, it is better to trust them then to loose everything I have.

I guess I have worked on to many computers that have been hit by lighting and everything was gone. I have only worked on one computer that was in a house fire and when I pulled the drive out and set it in for recovery the company could only get a very small amount of data and it cost $700 to get what we got.

So I guess as some point you have to trust someone and again I would let Carbonite have all my data they wanted if I could also have a copy.

[Chuck Wintle]

How do we know that the drive manufacture didn't put a backdoor on their drives so they can come in and get your data.


Bill,

That sounds a little paranoid, even yo someone like me. On that note who is to say the government would not access your personal info on a data mining trip?

[Bill Huber]

Bill,

That sounds a little paranoid, even yo someone like me. On that note who is to say the government would not access your personal info on a data mining trip?

I agree but I am not that paranoid and that is why I use an off site backup.

The one point is that no matter what type of backup you use, CDs, DVDs, Ext Hard drives, tape or what ever, you should never have your backed up data at the same location as the data.

You can have a backup of the data on site as long as you have it backed up some other place.

You can use ext drives or what ever but you should have one on site and rotate it with one off site. Take one to the office, keep it someone elses house, a safe deposit box what ever but don't think that you are safe just to have a backup on site and that is it.

[Neal Clayton]

So I guess as some point you have to trust someone and again I would let Carbonite have all my data they wanted if I could also have a copy.

you should hire yourself out as a consultant to all of the people who got fired or wound up in jail for sending incriminating evidence in an email or text message ;).

[Bill Huber]

you should hire yourself out as a consultant to all of the people who got fired or wound up in jail for sending incriminating evidence in an email or text message ;).

I guess I am not doing anything incriminating or criminal so I don't worry about it.

Now if you are I guess I won't even backup those emails, I would just delete them with some shredder software so no one could see them.

[Curt Harms]

I guess I am not doing anything incriminating or criminal so I don't worry about it.

Now if you are I guess I won't even backup those emails, I would just delete them with some shredder software so no one could see them.

As i understand it (not an IT pro) the problem is that a copy of incriminating stuff also exists on the ISPs servers or backups of company mail servers. I heard fax machines made something of a comeback in the wake of Oxley-Sarbanes;). In that case shredders do work.

[Neal Clayton]

yeah, that's what i was getting at. if you stop and think about how the whole process works for a few minutes you soon realize that "you have to trust someone". yet people who make millions of dollars inevitably wind up testifying before congress or a judge about what they wrote in an email or text message, as if they didn't know that digital communication never goes away.

[Bryan Morgan]

As i understand it (not an IT pro) the problem is that a copy of incriminating stuff also exists on the ISPs servers or backups of company mail servers. I heard fax machines made something of a comeback in the wake of Oxley-Sarbanes;). In that case shredders do work.


Don't even get me started on that... There are SOX auditors here now as I type this. If we even hinted at off-site storage we better be prepared for getting drilled about it for a month. We can use it, of course, but there better be mountains of "proof" that it is secure, access lists, etc... You should see what happened when we said we use a VPN to connect one of our locations... talk about an inquisition... Problem is they have non-technical people auditing things they have 0 understanding of. I document the crap out of everything and its still never enough.