Protecting library with NTFS permissions

[amcluesent]

So, although I have RAID1 I was worried that a foolish deletion could blow-away my music library.

After some trials, I figured out this protection scheme using NTFS permissions. Has anyone come up with a better approach?

In essence, I logged in as Administrator and went to the top folder of the tree(s) to be secured, then for 'Everyone' added Deny permissions applied to the Folder and its subfolders. The Deny permissions are for Deletion of Subfolders and Files and Delete.

Now these Deny permissions are in place, you can't delete/rename any folders in the library or the root folder. However, you can move/copy folders into the library and change/delete individual files (i.e. change meta-data). Files can still be deleted as the Deny permissions weren't applied to files, only folders; you could change this by selection a different Apply To if you really wanted to lock down everything.

If you really need to delete a leaf folder, you need to change it's permissions by copying down all the inherited permissions, then delete the specific Deny permissions for Everyone. Not something you can do by accident.

Testing suggests that even if the top folder isn't in the drive root, NTFS will check and prevent a delete cascading down.

Try it yourself with a *test* folder structure

[Mark Lanctot]

Has anyone come up with a better approach?

Have you tried backing up to an external drive? :-)

[amcluesent]

1.5Gb library! ;-)

[aubuti]

1.5Gb library! ;-)

Even easier: 1.5Gb would fit on a USB flash drive. Unless you meant 1.5TB, in which case Mark's suggestion could be amended to "...external drives". But seriously, you do have a backup (ideally offsite), don't you?

[Goodsounds]

You must like living dangerously

The biggest risk to your files is drive failure. Period. The bigger the collection, the bigger the risk.

Storage is cheap. Buy some and sleep well. Good luck to you.

[jncraig]

Protecting library with NTFS permissions

> Storage is cheap. Buy some and sleep well. Good luck to you.

Carbonite.com and Moxy.com do what they do quite nicely. About $50
bucks a year and you have offsite backup that you don't have to
manage.


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Joe

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Join me August 8-10, 2008 in Charlotte, North Carolina for
InvestEd 2008 (http://www.investor-education2008.org)

[andynormancx]

Good though Mozy is, it took me 6 months to get my 100GB dataset backed up with them. I hate to think how long 1.5TB would take.

I wouldn't personally recommend Carbonite, if you are using it make damn sure it is backing up the files you think it is. It has all sorts of rules on what it will and won't backup, like for example if you have a large video file that isn't in "My Documents" it won't back it up*.




* this was 12 months ago, it is possible that they have tweaked their backup rules since

[amcluesent]

We'll I did say I was using RAID1 as TBH an exernal backup regime for 1.5Tb isn't really tractable...

The NTFS permissions were set to prevent operator error trashing the library!

[Robin Bowes]

Protecting library with NTFS permissions

amcluesent wrote:
> We'll I did say I was using RAID1 as TBH an exernal backup regime for
> 1.5Tb isn't really tractable...

Sure it is.

Here's a couple of ideas:

1. Copy everything to external drives - 4 x 500Gb external drives would
only cost around £200; 1GB drives might be a bit more pricey.

2. Backup to tape - LTO3 is 400GB/tape; this options is more costly than
using external hard drives.

> The NTFS permissions were set to prevent operator error trashing the
> library!

You're probably better of making everything read-only, including files,
and changing permissions explicitly when you want to change anything; I
don't imagine you change your library all that often - I certainly don't.

R.