Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming An Alternative Way to perform Sooloos Backups

Ronnie - that's a brilliant idea but can I ask a stupid question or two? Can you confirm that you have loaded a cloned disc into a TwinStore and confirmed that it works? Do you have to format the new drive in TwinStore before inserting it into the Icybox to be cloned or is formatting an automatic process within Icybox? I'm guessing the answers are the obvious ones but just wanted to be sure before I go out and buy the unit and extra drives.

Just a thought. If you have an error on your disk, for example an error in the file allocation table. The same error will be copied to your backup disk.

Sorry Altus, But I'm unable to offer any "guarantees" here about what will or won't work in individual systems.

However, what I can say is that these Cloning Devices are used by many companies the world over for Time Critical Applications where the Consequences are FAR greater than someone not being able to listen to music.

In addition, even if you assume a "worst case scenario" for your situation and the Icybox Device somehow "mangles" the Data on one of your TwinStore Drives.

a) You still have the other TwinStore Disk safe and sound in the TwinStore and that will Rebuild the Array when a fresh disk is inserted.

b) You would also have your normal Sooloos Backup to fall back on.

A 3Tb Drive is ~�100 and the Clone Box ~�50 i.e. about �150 for any User to see if he can get the results that he wants from using such a solution.

While not being flippant about �150, it's still a small outlay by comparison to most Meridian Unit Prices never mind the hidden costs of Music Downtime and Peace of Mind.

I'm sorry that I can't give you a more definitive response, but I think every user should think about the "Risks" and decide for themselves if the potential "Rewards" are worth it.

At the risk of showing my technical ignorance ... why do you have to clone the disc at all? Couldn't you just remove one disc from, for example, MD600, and then put a blank one back in. Unit would reformat the new drive drive and you'd have a 'cloned' spare.

Although I have not needed to replace a disc yet, given the unit is running as RAID 1, presumably it would continue to play music as requested even as the second disc was being reformatted?

Simon-see initial post items 1 to 3.

Hi James,

I believe Ronnie's points relate to using the Sooloos backup to an external device, not swapping a drive in the RAID 1 store.

Swapping a drive in a RAID 1 TwinStore, MD600 or MC600 should achieve the same results [as using this Icybox], but I would still like to have an external backup as well, just to be safe.

Regards,
Carl

Carl

I don't like the idea of regularly removing and replacing drives in my MD600, it is not really what it was designed for, as I would always want an external backup anyway I prefer that solution, also the backups are incremental where as the cloning is a complete re-write as I understand it? I can see an advantage if you are running in raid 0 as it would enable you to be back up and running quickly after a disk failure.

Cheers

Russ

Not looking for any guarantees - just trying to establish whether you had got it work in your situation or whether it was just a theory.

Russ,

Don't disagree, not sure but one benefit ought to be that deleted albums aren't reinstalled from a cloned back up.

Looking at this from a mechanical point of view, pluggable devices should have minimum mating cycles stated for the included connectors.

If a user removed cloned and replaced a device once a month in pursuit of data security, it is reasonable to expect 10 years (250 mating cycles) without failure due to degradation of connector performance in a domestic installation. 20 years (500 mating cycles) would not be an unreasonable expectation.

By careful planned alternate removal of drives from say MD600 for cloning this mechanical limitation is not an issue to the proposed back up alternative.
Hector

Does anyone not simply backup their store as an SMB/NAS device?

Depends if user error deleted a whole loads of albums and this not noticed until after a backup taken.

Just tuned into this discussion - a great idea Ronnie thanks. The quote of 30 hours is an underestimate. Backing up here takes days, not hours and yes, it bugs me a complete backup is required after a few deletions.

A question: is the Sooloos system (I have given up on MDMS) still operable with only one of the RAID drives inserted into the TwinStore or does it throw a fit and demand you insert a drive?

And I'm wondering what is against the suggestion of replacing one of the RAID drives with another as a backup measure? For sure it would take some time to settle down and do all the copying but that would really not be a bother. Anyone tried it? If so the drawbacks?

John