[plug] RAID, and what it can't solve

[Patrick Tehvand]

Craig Ringer wrote:

> Hi folks
> 
> I thought I'd drop a note to remind anyone considering RAID that it's
> not total data protection. Backups, backups, backups.
> 
> Why do I mention this now? Because I just had my own paranoia borne out
> by a double disk failure in a 4 disk RAID 5 array. Darn thing was half
> way through rebuilding onto the hot spare when the second disk died. The
> array is only two days old, too - 4x250GB SATA Western Digital disks, +
> hot spare.

My first double disk failure was on a couple of Western Digital 60GB 
disks about 2 years ago. Unfortunatly for us it was on a RAID1 setup :-( 
but luckily and coincidently I had convinced them that a backup was a 
good idea 5 days earlier, the first one they had ever done.

Talk about fortuitous timing.

Patrick