Definition: "A Backup Plan"

sphardy wrote:
zamboni wrote: Why is the first "a backup" and not the ReadyNAS? No-one has ever claimed otherwise Your argument fails when you you use terminology inconsistently & indiscriminately leading to straw man statements like this. "ReadyNAS" and "RAID" are not interchangeable terms

No one made that claim in this thread, but I'll support it.

The statement was:

So, though everybody considers a 2nd copy (same physical location) as "a backup" -- the ReadyNAS is *better* since it self-monitors and warns of anticipated failures. Why is the first "a backup" and not the ReadyNAS?

Storing your data on ReadyNAS, or storing it on any single system with some type of RAID is not a "backup". The ReadyNAS and RAID will prevent you from having data loss in the event that a drive fails. What if:
1) files are deleted
2) files become corrupted
3) the raid controller breaks
4) a virus messes up your files
5) your device is stolen
6) readynas or your raid controller has a problem and wrecks your drives

In all of these situations, having an actual backup will save you. One of my clients didn't think they needed to worry much about backups because their server had RAID 5 and they'd get warnings if there was a hard drive problem. Then the raid controller failed. Guess what, now you have a bunch of disks that you can't read. There is your single point of failure. In reality it would have been the same thing if the server itself failed. There was no way to read those drives w/o the raid controller, just like you'll be SOL if your ReadyNas dies, until you can get a replacement ReadyNas and pray to god that it recognizes your drives correctly when you put them in.