Backup strategy: Drobo, JungleDisk & Time Machine

November 29, 2008 10:42 am in technology

Back in March this year our home was burgled. They took lots of stuff including my iMac and week old MacBook Air. Thankfully they left behind an old iBook and all my external backup disks even though they had all been in the same room as the computers they took.

Still, getting back up to speed in my work and homelife was a slow process. Thanks to an ad-hoc strategy (when I remembered basically), my backups were a week old so I did lose some work however relying on server-based IMAP mail meant email was ok.

Whilst waiting for the replacements to come (and I have to say the insurers were great in getting everything) I put some thought into a better backup strategy. I already had two 1TB LaCie external Firewire hard disks that were mirrored using software RAID. My first step was to schedule SuperDuper to backup a full system image to the LaCies every other night.

I got a third, smaller, LaCie drive also on FW800 so that I could use Time Machine as a more fine-grained incremental backup, but of my home folder only. This wouldn't let me do a full restore but could recover from file corruption and deletions in error.

Finally, to cover the scenario of fire, flooding or another burglary I set up JungleDisk as a remote backup system of my home folder (less music and movies). This uses Amazon S3 as a low cost reliable online storage system 'in the cloud'. The Mac client was a bit flakey originally but now is superb and I can highly recommend it though I have turned off encryption to prevent lock-in improve speed. The initial backup took an extremely long time, days, but now nightly backups only upload changes. This plus a move to 20MB broadband has made JungleDisk completely practical.

Back to those LaCie drives... Unfortunately, while the 800MB connection was fast, the many drives and RAID software meant initial access after they had gone to sleep or on a reboot was painfully slow... minutes in fact. I also found the software RAID to not be particularly reliable if one of the disks experienced problems. This may have been compounded by each LaCie 1TB disk actually having two hard drives inside it. Throw in the cables and three power adaptors involved and I wasn't happy about the setup or its power consumption.

Enter the Drobo, a clever drive system which uses RAID-like features to store your data across up to 4 drives which are removable and upgradeable. Even better this was all handled on the Drobo, no software was needed on the computers accessing it. I had been watching this for a while, aware of my growing storage requirements however on launch it had been USB 2 only and I knew only Firewire 800 would meet my needs.

Lo and behold they released an updated version with FW800 and I was tempted. When one of my LaCie drives started to have trouble I quickly resolved to buy the Drobo. To be fair to LaCie I've used many external drives and I personally have found LaCie drives to be excellent, quiet and fast. They also come with all the cables you need which I find to be a very decent touch, especially when there are three or four types they include for all the possible connectors. Yet drives do die and comparing the cost of a new LaCie, or the wait on warranty, versus getting a new 1TB drive for the Drobo only further makes the case for Drobo. I bought the very quiet and low energy Western Digital Caviar Green Power 1TB drives. The price on Amazon seems to keep dropping giving an excellent cost per GB.

The Drobo and Green Power drives were extremely easy to set up. The Drobo was nicely presented in a Mac-like fashion. The only minor quibble was that the provided software didn't alert me to new versions being available despite saying it had checked. A manual download from Drobo resolved this and now I'm delighted with how fast, quiet and painless using the Drobo has been. With two 1TB disks formatted as a single Drobo partition I have SuperDuper backing up to a sparse image every other night. I also have Time Machine continually backing up to a sparse disk image thanks to Erik Barzeski's investigations' which I came to via the always excellent Jon Gruber.

One thing worth noting that I didn't see mentioned on Erik's post is that you can't restore from your Drobo Time Machine backup via the swishy star warp interface (for want of a better name!). You need to manually mount the disk image and use the Finder to copy over the files you need. Not as cute but I've tested it and it works fine.

So now I have one local gadget, the Drobo, and JungleDisk in the cloud for all my backup needs. Less cables, less power adaptors and less hassle. I certainly don't want to see any more burlars but I'm glad I rethought my backups. Please have a look at what you're doing to protect your data too.

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Overdue Links 20/11/08

November 20, 2008 5:06 pm in current affairs

Too many things, too little time... apologies for the slow rate of posting recently. I have lots of blog post ideas, just no time to do them justice, I have been Twittering though. Here are some links I've been sitting on for ages which are still well worth a read:

• If They're Too Big To Fail, They're Too Big Period
  Robert Reich makes the point I've been continuously making to anyone who's interested... Merging huge companies into bigger ones makes no sense if they're all "too big to fail". It only makes the problems much bigger and much worse. There should be consequences to errors and boundless greed. His blog is packed with excellent comment on US fiscal policy.

• My farewell plea to MPs: defend liberty
  Simon Jenkins' valedictory column for the Sunday Times was an absolute corker, ripping through the heart of this government's ever more intrusive surveillance plans. He finishes by attacking the spinelessness of elected representatives in the UK when compared to judges, peers or even journalists. I agree, which is why Greens so urgently need to get into Parliament. For example I've been speaking out on issues like ID cards and privatisation of the NHS in the face of silence from the other parties.

• Food waste on a staggering scale
  This dates back to May but still shocks me... The average UK household throws away 18% of all food bought, families with children throw away 27%. 60% of food thrown away is 'untouched' (which I assume means unopened or unused). We urgently need to change people's attitudes to food, to understand that it is precious but also so that anything which does need disposal (e.g. peels, apple cores) gets composted and not burnt or stuck in landfill.

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Pre-Nov 4th e-voting roundup

October 31, 2008 6:41 pm in voting, Related Articles

Comment and speculation around the US voting system is quickly reaching fever pitch. I really fear for election day, I hope we don't see any disasters which undermine the result or even prevent it being declared. However I fear that is what we will indeed see. Regardless everyone needs to work in a spirit of openness to make sure all problems are understood and resolved in the fairest way possible. Such an attitude isn't on show in my first link...

• Russell Michaels and Simon Ardizzone, the producers/directors of "Hacking Democracy" have produced an excellent new, short documentary highlighing some more of the serious problems in the US electoral system, particularly in Florida. For the first time they show how any election administrator can manually alter the vote in the Premier (aka Diebold) GEMS system. Part 1 and Part 2 are on YouTube. I believe a Hacking Democracy DVD is now available too.

• There is now an iPhone application 'Twitter VoteReport' to help you report problems on polling day. It's a great idea to increase the number and consistency of reports. via TUAW

• I recently participated in a short radio interview for PRI's "The World" on e-voting around the world. You can listen online here

• I've found Barack Obama's online campaigning insprirational, though I certainly don't agree with all of his politics, there's plenty to admire. His story is a remarkable one, as is his campaign's purchase of air time for a 30 minute television programme on the major US networks. Unimaginable for us Europeans really. You can watch what the money went on via YouTube.

• It wasn't a surprise, but Michael Wills MP has confirmed that there wil be no e-voting in the UK next year. My TheyWorkForYou alerts flagged this up as effectively as ever, and ORG have blogged it.

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Nuclear: No kind of solution

October 23, 2008 11:41 pm in notes from JK

This week I was delighted to read a new argument against an expansion in the use of nuclear powe. I've long opposed nuclear power and certainly am very much against the so called 'pragmatism' of expanding atomic energy to help meet climate change targets. The arguments against have always been clear-cut in my mind:

• Nuclear power is hugely expensive, and is usually subsidised at eye watering tax-payer expense. Even with such subsidies there is debate whether it is truly price competitive if one factors in all the costs of extracting, transporting, processing and disposing of the uranium used in nuclear power stations.

• Nuclear waste is an unsolved problem, most countries are using temporary facilities whilst a laborious process of trying to find a place to leave the waste long enough to let it stop being dangerously radioactive. This is a growing problem that will hang over generations to come. Why create such a risk for our children's children?

• Nuclear power as a whole is a safety and health risk to workers and us, the public. Furthermore continued development and production of nuclear power technologies only serve to further the chances of a proliferation in nuclear weapons.

• Nuclear power stations take a long time to build and come online. They perpetuate the centralised, long distance transmission model of electrical grids which waste huge amounts of energy through transport. They are the wrong type of approach to solve our clean energy needs and we could never get enough online in time to significantly reduce global emissions anyway.

• Uranium is not a renewable fuel. It's dug out of the ground... Why depend on a fuel like that when the sun, wind and waves are free and never ending?

Further to this final point, Daniel Botkin wrote "The limits of nuclear power" a comment piece in the International Herald Tribune. In it he argues that if we could build enough nuclear power stations to replace all fossil fuels then on known available uranium reserves we would run out in less than five years. Including all known sources of uranium, even those deemed not viable for mining, Botkin says we would run out in 29 years.

To a more realistic scenario, increasing nuclear energy yearly so that by 2050 50% of world energy was nuclear. Botkin calculates that uranium would run out in 2019 (using available reserves figure) or 2038 (all known uranium).

He also notes that 'breeder' reactors, which generate more fuel than they use, are not viable yet and are dangerous.

So even if we run headlong to nuclear power it barely gives us any breathing room. And there are carbon costs in the construction of these behemoth stations. Much better to stick to renewables which can generate local electricity without the costs and inefficiences of distribution.

Nuclear power still isn't, and never has been, any kind of answer.

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