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For example. say I have a website, and people can create users. My server has a hard drive, that stores the data from each user. If one of my hard drives fails, how do I ensure that the data on it doesnt get erased? I was thinking of making a backup/duplicate of each user, but that would mean I have to have 2 times as many hard drives, and thats too much.
user578653
Posted 2016-04-04T01:48:54.657
Reputation: 1
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Whether it's remote or local, backups are the only way to significantly reduce the chances of data loss due to drive failure or otherwise. If you don't want to manage the additional drives needed for backups yourself, there are plenty of services willing to accept your money to provide you backup services and the associated drive maintenance.
Ouroborus
Posted 2016-04-04T01:48:54.657
Reputation: 2 549
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You say "I was thinking of making a backup"... Yes! That is the way to handle this.
Then, you said, "but"...
Well, the only decent way to address this potential problem is to make a backup. If backups are inconvenient... well, so be it. That's still what needs to happen if you want the data to be rather protected.
However, you also have this question tagged as "webserver", and mention a website. Who is operating this web server? When I worked at an ISP, the ISP backed up the websites that were hosted on the ISP's equipment. If you are using an organization to host your web servers, then backing up the (customer's) data might be a service provided by the whatever organization hosts your web servers, perhaps especially if you are paying for the service. They might even provide that service for free. It is probably worth asking about. If they say they are taking care of this, then that might be okay enough for rather informal needs.
Otherwise, your only respectable option may be to invest in the work/expense/both of getting a higher quality solution in place.
TOOGAM
Posted 2016-04-04T01:48:54.657
Reputation: 12 651
Cloud backup like Crashplan? Also you don't backup each user, just the entire drive. – cybernard – 2016-04-04T01:50:59.747
If your hard drive fails, then the data that is on it will be lost. There isn't anything you can do to prevent a hard drive failing, so you need to ensure the data is also somewhere else. For high availability, this is RAID, and for recovery, this is backups off the machine, and a plan to restore. – Paul – 2016-04-04T01:55:24.563
Backups. Backups in many locations. At least one separate from the main system. Yes it isn't free. But if your data is valuable you need to pay to protect it. – Zoredache – 2016-04-04T02:23:07.737
RAID isn't a backup solution it, if the RAID fails, you still need a backup of the RAID. While having RAID does address availability it fails to address redunancy. – Ramhound – 2016-04-04T02:30:23.430
@Ramhound Hence, Paul's comment (which is the only time "RAID" appeared on this page before your comment) was precisely correct. – TOOGAM – 2016-04-04T02:51:37.693