So I asked this before and I am now trying to research and figure out what exactly needs to be done for Snapraid to work with veracrypt. If I recall from the FAQ that the issue is VeraCrypt does not change the timestamp when a container is edited. There is a way to enable that. Is that how Snapraid works with syncing and updating?
Does it solely look at if the timestamp changed? If file changes and timestamp is the same it treats it as a corruption and kicks out the error message saying you need to run the fix command?
Am I understanding the process correctly?
What is a good way to test this? Should I make a test container and corrupt it and see what snapraid does?
Using veracrypt and snapraid is very important to me because I want to prevent my containers from getting silient corrptions and i really want my data encrypted.
Is the only thing needed for it to work is turning on modify time stamp when container is edited?
Last edit: DCMAKER 2018-04-14
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Yes, the only thing you need is to enable the time stamp thingy in veracrypt and everything will work fine with snapraid BUT: how do you use your containers? Do you use them as some kind of archives (like you put all the documents from 2017 and keep them in one container) and usually don't change anything in them? That is fine. However if you have your "working drive" with many things that change all the time, with a lot of documents, maybe browser profile and so on then having snapraid include such a disk/containter wouldn't be such a good idea. First of all snapraid won't get any chance to flag the file as corrupted - as long as the file (timestamp) changed ANY change will be accepted by snapraid. Plus it's not a good idea to have files that change (and especially unpredictably) in the snapraid "pool", any changed file reduces from the chances snapraid has to recover when OTHER disk(s) fail. Also snapraid has no idea which part of the container changed so if you have huge containers it'll have to read them whole (might or might not be a big issue, depending how big are yours).
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Snapraid will notice bit rot/curruption of a container just like any other file assuming the time stamping is enabled? Thats all i really care about.
Most of my containers will be of none changing data. (working on encrypting everything OS..data..internet..). Any containers with changing data are very small containers (few GBs in size) and reason i like those being in snapraid is the ability to prevent bit rot from currupting a veracrypt container. Also Snapraid keeping my back up headers and keyfiles from currupting is huge.
lol good point...i would have figured this out fast lol
You do bring up a good point that I should make sure the containers are not large AKA TBs in sizes....any small change would take a day to resync!!!
As much as I would love to have all my data unencrypted and protected from bit rot...I have to take pros and cons into consideration.
Making sure Containers are free from corruption is my biggest worry (one bit flip destroys all my data!), which is why I want to use Snapraid to prevent that.
Eventually, this is how everything will look and tell me what you think?
5 parity
9 data drives
2 drives are unencypted (for now until i figure out a better method) acronis back ups.
4 drives are encypted large files that never change
1 drive is unencypted plex DVR media (static minus new daily recordings (new data/no changing data so doesnt case Snapraid issues))
1 drive encypted small data files that are mostly static (easy to manual sync if i change anything)
1 drive encrypted with archieve data that almost never changes (easy to manual sync if i change anything)
All of my data will be pretty much static so its more about ensuring that containers dont get bit rot.
Most of my working data is in enctyped OS drives so I am not too concerned about that. Its more so static documents, archieves, videos, backups, and so on that are on Snapraid/Snapraid with enctypred containers.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
So I asked this before and I am now trying to research and figure out what exactly needs to be done for Snapraid to work with veracrypt. If I recall from the FAQ that the issue is VeraCrypt does not change the timestamp when a container is edited. There is a way to enable that. Is that how Snapraid works with syncing and updating?
Does it solely look at if the timestamp changed? If file changes and timestamp is the same it treats it as a corruption and kicks out the error message saying you need to run the fix command?
Am I understanding the process correctly?
What is a good way to test this? Should I make a test container and corrupt it and see what snapraid does?
Using veracrypt and snapraid is very important to me because I want to prevent my containers from getting silient corrptions and i really want my data encrypted.
Is the only thing needed for it to work is turning on modify time stamp when container is edited?
Last edit: DCMAKER 2018-04-14
Yes, the only thing you need is to enable the time stamp thingy in veracrypt and everything will work fine with snapraid BUT: how do you use your containers? Do you use them as some kind of archives (like you put all the documents from 2017 and keep them in one container) and usually don't change anything in them? That is fine. However if you have your "working drive" with many things that change all the time, with a lot of documents, maybe browser profile and so on then having snapraid include such a disk/containter wouldn't be such a good idea. First of all snapraid won't get any chance to flag the file as corrupted - as long as the file (timestamp) changed ANY change will be accepted by snapraid. Plus it's not a good idea to have files that change (and especially unpredictably) in the snapraid "pool", any changed file reduces from the chances snapraid has to recover when OTHER disk(s) fail. Also snapraid has no idea which part of the container changed so if you have huge containers it'll have to read them whole (might or might not be a big issue, depending how big are yours).
Snapraid will notice bit rot/curruption of a container just like any other file assuming the time stamping is enabled? Thats all i really care about.
Most of my containers will be of none changing data. (working on encrypting everything OS..data..internet..). Any containers with changing data are very small containers (few GBs in size) and reason i like those being in snapraid is the ability to prevent bit rot from currupting a veracrypt container. Also Snapraid keeping my back up headers and keyfiles from currupting is huge.
lol good point...i would have figured this out fast lol
You do bring up a good point that I should make sure the containers are not large AKA TBs in sizes....any small change would take a day to resync!!!
As much as I would love to have all my data unencrypted and protected from bit rot...I have to take pros and cons into consideration.
Making sure Containers are free from corruption is my biggest worry (one bit flip destroys all my data!), which is why I want to use Snapraid to prevent that.
Eventually, this is how everything will look and tell me what you think?
5 parity
9 data drives
2 drives are unencypted (for now until i figure out a better method) acronis back ups.
4 drives are encypted large files that never change
1 drive is unencypted plex DVR media (static minus new daily recordings (new data/no changing data so doesnt case Snapraid issues))
1 drive encypted small data files that are mostly static (easy to manual sync if i change anything)
1 drive encrypted with archieve data that almost never changes (easy to manual sync if i change anything)
All of my data will be pretty much static so its more about ensuring that containers dont get bit rot.
Most of my working data is in enctyped OS drives so I am not too concerned about that. Its more so static documents, archieves, videos, backups, and so on that are on Snapraid/Snapraid with enctypred containers.