Update: I stopped imaging drives onto spinner backups last month after one died mid restore at a client in Boise | Computer Technicians - Babble Community
Update: I stopped imaging drives onto spinner backups last month after one died mid restore at a client in Boise
For years I did it the old way, one image onto a spinning external drive, cheap and simple. Then last month a 1TB drive died 40 minutes into a restore for a dental office, and I had their whole server on a 4 hour clock. Now I clone to two SSDs and keep one offsite, costs about $180 extra per job but I sleep at night. The old way wasn't wrong, it was just slow to notice the risk. How are you all handling image backups these days, one copy or two?
Tbh I read a piece on Backblaze's blog a while back about how they track drive failure rates and the one thing that stuck with me is that drives tend to die way more often in the first few months or after a few years, not evenly over time. So a drive that seems fine for ages can just quit on you out of nowhere, which is pretty much what happened to you. I started running two copies after hearing a guy on a podcast say his rule was one is none and two is one. Sounds cheesy but it's true, a single copy is not a backup, it's a hope. The extra cost stings but you can't put a price on not having to tell a dentist their whole server is gone.