On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:55:29PM -0500, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:29 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > 
> > In fact, if you lose the *right* set of disks you can lose 50% of your
> > disks in RAID10 and still not lose your data.  :-D
> 
> I don't consider a 1 in 2 chance of data loss to be "reliable".

The odds are much, much lower than that, though you need to figure in
MTBF and the time period over which you're concerned.  If your time
period is long enough, you have a 100% chance of losing your data.
Only not really... because you're a good sysadmin, and you do regular
back-ups, keep your important data in replicated revision control
systems, etc.

It's about managing risk, not absolutely preventing data loss.  You
have to decide how much you're willing to spend vs. how likely you are
to lose data over time period x.  If the data you're trying to
safeguard is important enough, and you have the resources, you can of
course essentially guarantee that you won't lose your data, barring
the case of the Earth actually exploding or some other such
catastrophic event.   You just need to have deep pockets.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.