Hard drives: Data preservation. Do you have questions about RAID systems?

Question

Hello everyone.

Current situation:

I have been running a storage of about 11TB with TrueNAS (FreeNAS) for several years.

All hard drives run as single drives, not in RAID.

Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that some data loses quality or is sometimes even corrupted.

MP4 files (video) are mainly saved.

Ask:

What's the best way to back up my data without having to stack a mountain of Blu-ray discs in a cabinet in case something breaks?

Is RAID 1 good for preventing data from losing consistency so quickly, or can it also lead to data loss?

I would like to run the data live, I have a system that allows me to access it at any time, but also allows the data to check itself and maintain itself automatically…

So according to the motto;

"Oh, video XYZ has errors, quickly update the sectors from the backup!"

Is a simple RAID 1 sufficient and is it better to use SSD or HDD?

Is it even possible to store data on hard drives permanently without loss over time?

Greetings Dice

notting · Answer

Can't it be that the mistake has already happened during ribbing?

Sometimes the software in the NAS has stupid mistakes.

And if you don't see if the plates are in the spring. Log file reporting more and more errors, you're your fault.

Notification

luffy123777 · Answer

First you should see what these MP4 containers are now. Probably your perceived deterioration is that H.254 encodings are now known for small file sizes and not for quality. Apart from that, I prefer Personal .mkv containers because they have no license and support endless tracks.

Next, I'd get the records on btrf's format, if they're the net.

And I don't think that you're doing no backup of your files so far. You should either have a RAID with at least 2 records or a regular backup via eg rsync at any time. RAID will naturally slow down the read and write processes, but your system is also more available.

datarescue · Answer

You should once clarify whether the deteriorations actually originate from reading errors on the hard drives, that is to say there is a read error on one of the hard drives every time in problematic videos?

On the other hand, a RAID would already be an improvement, as this creates redundancy at the physical level.

However, you must not confuse a RAID with a backup, with the additional copy on (for example) an external hard drive you will also receive a redundancy on the logical level. Always attach this backup for the moment of backup and otherwise leave it offline!