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Corrupted Drive?
So, I noticed I couldn't SSH into my Linux Ubuntu dedi or ping it. Submitted a ticket with my host, and they tell me that the dedi was corrupted and that this is relatively routine and that they can normally restore it. Unfortunately, my host is telling me there are "troubles" restoring the f-disk. I've lost a ton of data, and I know I should have created backups but I thought this issue would never happen. What's your guys' views on the situation?
Comments
Should create backups.
But should restoring the dedi be something that's hard for a host with a professional staff team to do?
Depends on how corrupted it is.
Guess your right.
No RAID?
You shouldn't expect this with a VPS host, but a dedicated server that doesn't have RAID configured could easily have drives fail and cause loss of data. Next time back up your data, it isn't the fault of the DC if they can't restore it.
It depends on whether the host offers you a managed service or unmanaged. If its unmanaged then its your headache. If the disk failed, they should pull it and replace it.
But ultimately you need to have RAID (and monitor it for failure) and imperatively backups!
Just for future reference, RAID controllers do die, so please don't solely rely on that either.
Thanks guys. Do you guys know of any programs that store window server backups externally?
Jungledisk
Looks interesting.
Not only that raid controllers die, but they might not die completely and corrupt the data while in a coma. If it dies suddenly, it is usually recoverable, if it chugs along writing nonsense data or only on some drives, then you are f-ed.
While we do keep disaster recovery copies for our biz and ssd selected services, we opted to give out free space to all customers to backup their data, both inside the DC as well as outside. Nobody knows better than the owner when the data needs backup and what to backup.
Software RAID should be used at a minimum. Better than HW raid for most things imho. Also install smartd, have it do non-destructive long tests weekly and email you if any smart errors. These are all relatively simple things you can do to drastically increase the long term reliability of your service without adding much cost.
RAID is not the same as having backups though. They are 2 different things imho. RAID is basically protecting you against HW failure but not data corruption.
Is there any free way to automatically create external backups on windows?
Do you only have files or databases or something else?
There are free software if you only copy files but one could probably do everything with a little coding.
Files and mysql database. I need a program to automatically store everything externally so that in case the server corrupts, I'll have the data.
Depending on how you connect the two servers, different ways to do it.
First of, mysqldump to create a backup file, then transfer the files to your backup server.
If it is two windows servers you could look at Deltacopy.
If you store the backup on a ftp server you could use ncftp or the builtin ftp program.
Tell me here or via PM how what your thoughts are or if you already have the infrastructure to use ans I'll help you out.