Is bit rot really a threat that I should worry about?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨mouse@midwest.social⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I have recently become interested in mini PCs, but one thing that is stopping me is a feeling that bit rot could cause me to lose data.

Is bit rot something to worry about when storing data for services such as Git, or Samba. I have another PC right now that is setup with btrfs raid1 and backups locally and to the cloud, however was thinking about downsizing for the benefit of size and power usage.

I know many people use the mini PCs such as ThinkCentres, Optiplex, EliteDesks and others, I am curious if I should be worried about losing data due to bit rot, or is bit rot a really rare occurrence?

Let’s say I have backups with a year of retention, wouldn’t it be possible that the data becomes corrupt and that it isn’t noticed until after a year? for example archived data that I don’t look at often but might need in the future.

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dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Wait, what’s wrong with issuing “ZFS Scan” every 3 to 6 months or so? If it detects bitrot, it immediately fixes it. As long as the bitrot wasn’t too much, most of your data should be fixed.

If you’re playing with multiple computers, “choosing” one to be a NAS and being extremely careful with its data that its storing makes sense. Regularly scanning all files and attempting repairs (which is just a few clicks with most NAS software) is incredibly easy, and probably could be automated.

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- markstos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  You don’t define bitrot. If you leave software alone with no updates for long enough, yes, there will be problems.
  
  There will eventually be a security issue with no fix, or a new OS or hardware it doesn’t work on.
  
  Backups can also fail over time if restores are not tested periodically.
  
  This recently happened to me. A server wouldn’t boot anymore, so we restored from backup, but it still wouldn’t boot. The issue was that we’d introduced change that caused a boot failure. To fix that by restoring from a backup, we’d need a backup from before that change. It turns out we had one, but didn’t realize what the issue was.
  
  The other moral is to reboot frequently if only to confirm the system can still boot.
  
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  - dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That’s not what storage engineers mean when they say “bitrot”.
    
    “Bitrot”, in the scope of ZFS and BTFS means the situation where a hard-drive’s “0” gets randomly flipped to “1” during storage. It is a well known problem and can happen within “months”. Especially as a 20-TB drive these days is a collection of 160 Trillion bits, there’s a high chance that at least some of those bits malfunction over a period of ~double-digit months.
    
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- mouse@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I guess, my primary concern was if I didn’t have the computer with ZFS(in my case btrfs but similar thing). Maybe it is for the best that I keep the raid setup to scrub and make sure important data is safe, and use the smaller single disk mini PC for services and data that isn’t as important.
  
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  - dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If you have a NAS, then just put iSCSI disks on the NAS, and network-share those iSCSI fake-disks to your mini-PCs.
    
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- iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Does the smart thing in omv take care of this? Anyone know? Obviously I’m a novice haha.
  
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synthsalad@mycelial.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Nightly automated runs of the chkbit script is the only thing that alerted me to the fact that either the SSD or disk controller in my Mac Mini had issues and was corrupting data. I was very thankful to have already had the automation in place for that exact scenario.

It theoretically shouldn’t be necessary for filesystems that have built-in checksumming.

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- RoyalEngineering@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Can you post your scripts?
  
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  - synthsalad@mycelial.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This is what I use, will work with any filesystem (it writes hashes in hidden/dot files) and on any OS as long as Python is available: pypi.org/project/chkbit/
    
    It runs ahead of my nightly backup. If it fails, the backup won’t proceed.
    
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NullPointerException@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
honestly I don’t think it’s really a significant issue but if you’re worried just use a fs that can repair itself like zfs (not sure if btrfs can do that too but it might)

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- hedgehog@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  And if you’re really concerned about data integrity then you should also ensure that your server has ECC RAM.
  
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SheeEttin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
How life-or-death critical would it be if you lost one of those files?

Resilient filesystems/raid/multiple backup points should be more than enough.

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- mustardman@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Resilient filesystems/raid/multiple backup points should be more than enough.
  
  A word of caution on relying on backups without the other types of error prevention: If it takes you a while to notice that bitrot has ruined a file, then it may have already propagated through your backups. The only type of backups that would account for this is archival backups, such as on tape or quality bluray discs.
  
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  - mouse@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah, that’s kind of what I expected and I am now thinking of keeping my setup how it is currently and getting a mini PC for less important data and services to tinker with.
    
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- mouse@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That is a very good question, it makes me think of better organization for my data. Data such as task lists, and daily notes aren’t necessarily very important, while family photos and documents would be more important.
  
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  - SeriousBug@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    For any family photos and documents you can’t afford to lose, make sure you have backups of it. A RAID array does not mean you don’t need backups: you want at least 3 copies, at least one offsite.
    
    The copy in your RAID array is one copy. You can back that up to an external hard drive or something as a second copy. Then have an offsite backup on something like Backblaze as your third copy.
    
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  - thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Save yourself a headache and use btrfs/zfs with periodically checks as suggested in another post.
    
    Who cares if it is a problem or not when it has a simple and inexpensive solution.
    
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

NAS Network-Attached Storage

RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage

SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

[Thread #102 for this sub, first seen 1st Sep 2023, 18:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
RAID	Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage