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

I know many here know the inherent limitations of the current Sooloos Backup and Restore routines. To me these are:

1) It takes WAY too long to occur much longer than 1TB, 2TB or 3TB of Data should take in today's world (30+ hours for Tassie John in a post today and I think that is 2TB of Data?).

2) Not all Backups complete properly, leaving the User with questions about what Albums and Tracks are actually backed up and which are not.

3) The Backups maintain copies of All Deleted Albums so that in the event of a Restore, any time a User has spent deleting these Albums has to be repeated.

Having looked at various solutions, the one that I've decided to implement is as follows:

a) Use the Icybox solution below similar boxes available from StarTech approx �50 for either box




b) Take the 3.5" Drive out of the Sooloos Store and insert into one of the two Slots in the above Device.

c) Insert a Blank (or previously used) 3.5" Drive into the 2nd slot.

d) There's no need to connect to a PC just press a button on the Front and the box will Duplicate the Source Drive on a Sector by Sector basis across to the 2nd Disk thus ensuring that ALL Data is successfully backed up.

e) In tests, a 1TB Drive takes 2 hours to Duplicate; 2TB takes about 4 hours and a 3TB Drive takes about 6 hours.

f) When finished, put the Original Disk back into the Sooloos Store, safe in the knowledge that all your Music has been successfully backed up.

g) The Cloned 3.5" Drive can be left as an offsite backup at your office desk or at a relative's to deal with any doomsday scenario and at less than �100 per typical drive, another Drive can be left at home to install as an immediate backup.

f) In the event of the original Drive going belly up, the Clone can be inserted and you will have your Music up and running IMMEDIATELY you wouldn't have to wait 20-30 hours to restore your data which may be compromised as well as avoiding the Restoring of already Deleted Albums

The above Strategy should work with those using TwinStores and MD600's (in RAID 1 operation only though simply shut down the Store, extract the Disk run the Duplication for a few hours reinsert the Original back in the Store (the RAID copy will be none the wiser that anything has taken place).

The strategy wouldn't work as easily with an MD600 using RAID 0, as the Data will be stripped across both disks. However because the Data is duplicated at a very low level and Sector by Sector, I'd be willing to gamble that it would work, by copying each of the Two Disks in turn I haven't tried it yet but even if it didn't work, your original Disk is still intact and no harm has been done.

Thought some here might be interested in an alternative approach and it's likely that some here have adopted the same approach.
Food for thought.

Hi Ronnie, that is an interesting idea. Indeed large libraries do take several days to run even at USB3.0 speeds. So, this could be a neat solution.

One thing I would like to confirm w.r.t. MD600. Can you take a HDD and put them back in with out them doing any reformat etc? I'm guessing so in that if the unit is powered off fully it should not register a drive withdrawal. Worth being 100% sure though.

Hi Nick,

Disk Cloning and Duplication has been around for quite some time and the "science" behind the low level Sector by Sector Duplication can even by applied to Disks with Operating Systems and Hidden Partitions on them (neither of which applies to a Sooloos Store disk).

In the Duplication, Data is only READ from the Source Disk nothing is written to it, as that would go against the whole design of the idea.

The whole idea behind Disk Cloning is really for High Availability situations where Downtime needs to be absolutely minimized so that if a Disk goes down, a User or Department can have their Machine or Server back up and running within Minutes and not several hours.

I'm not aware of ANY device (unless battery backed up etc.) that would register a Disk Extraction when the unit is powered off and I don't believe that any of the Sooloos Stores would know anything about a Disk being taken out and put back in a few hours later, as long as the unit was powered off.

When you think of the Excel Forensics that you have to do with your 12,000 Album Library Backup to make sure nothing is missing, doing Disk 1 on Night 1 (6 hours) and then Disk 2 on Night 2, with ZERO Editing or Importing in between.

You would then have a Secure and immediate backup available when the time arises in your case, you would obviously have to insert BOTH Clones, even if only one of the original disks failed.

With a One Disk (Ensemble) or MD600 / TwinStore in RAID 1 operation, this Strategy will definitely work with 2 by RAID 0 disks, a little more thought would need to be taken, but I believe that the only thing that would go astray is the Play Count, assuming one was to do 1 Disk 24 hours after the other.

If one did each Disk sequentially, without turning the MD600 back on, then Nothing should go missing.

Hi

Do you think that this would work with an MC200?

I know the disc is not as easy to remove but not at all impossible and then one would not need to return it to Meridian when the disc fails.

Neil

Also could you refit a larger drive in MC200 this way, would it also mirror the operating system? Chris

This looks really good. Then I don't have to wait for ages to make a backup.

I've had a Sharkoon version of the IcyBox for ages. I use it for all kinds of backups, including FTA recordings from my sat boxes (I've re-jigged the HDDs to be external). Very flexible solution. Having two slots also makes copying drives a doddle.

Edit: My Sharkoon is only a dock; it doesn't have the copy feature; I use software to copy.

I for one never suggested putting a larger disc in my MC200 the 500 GB drive is plenty for my purposes. Living in Saudi Arabia makes any potential disc replacement a big time consuming problem. That's why I asked the question.

I'm busy replacing the power supply in my G91 without sending it to Meridian, following instructions on this forum, so what's the difference?

We have had a discussion on here before at some length about the difference between hardware repairs and modifications and firmware copying and changes.

I am unsure if cloning the drives containing the operating system is theoretically forbidden even if you are doing so for fair use backup reasons.

Hi Malcolm

If the Sooloos backup was more robust in operation and quicker, then I am sure people would not need to be investigating alternatives?

Russ

On behalf of the Moderators, I would like to clarify three points:

1) The HDD clone method described in this thread is both a valid and good idea for backing up a user-removable drive from a TwinStore or MD600 Sooloos store.

2) Irrespective of the convenience and peace-of-mind aspects for an individual owner, the removal and cloning of an internal drive from a C10, C15, MC200, probably constitutes cloning a duplicate Sooloos system and is therefore a breach of your Sooloos license.

3) Upgrading the size of the hard drive in an MC200 is a definite no-no as it deprives Meridian of a sale of a higher capacity unit.

Discussion of 2 and 3 is not condoned on this forum.