i want use raid mainly for prevention of data lose (tired of crashing drives) i never had a decent system so i never backed it up jus hoped it stayed alright but i building new from scratch and want proformance but not at exspence of making it harder to save my OS and data ECT.... which is best for a newbie??????
2007-07-03 07:52:24 · 7 answers · asked by jjsalas55 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
For a newbie, RAID can be a real pain to initially setup. RAID 1 best suits what you want to do, but I would recommend just buying a cheap external drive and making regular backups with Ghost or MS Backup.
Personally, I use RAID 0 to increase performance, but this does not provide any redundancy...it only writes to multiple disks simultaneously. I use a Western Digital external drive for my backup needs.
2007-07-03 07:56:54 · answer #1 · answered by shoortbuss 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
RAID 0 has no redundancy what-so-ever. If you have two disks of say 250 GB, you have 500 GB of usable storage. Nothing gets backed up. At least, not by the RAID controller.
If backup is your main goal, RAID 1 or 5 is your only option. With RAID 1 those same two disks of 250 GB would give you 250 GB of storage. Everything would be written twice, to each disk.
RAID 5 would require 3 disks however, and probably isn't what you're looking for, unless you can afford it. It offers a performance boost, and redundancy. The best of both worlds.
2007-07-03 15:01:16 · answer #2 · answered by RAM 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
2007-07-03 14:57:53 · answer #3 · answered by ROY L 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
RAID 1 is the most simple form of redundancy, I have such an array too. Hooked up two 250GB disks. Writing to them is not noticeably slower, and rebuilding the array if one of your disks dies is very fast and straight-forward. Plus, even if you don't want to rebuild, the harddisk are also readable on their own, you won't need any special software to get the data back.
I also have a RAID 5 array, which is a very cool thing if you want something more. You can for example hook up 4 disks of 250GB and get 750GB space plus redundancy out of it. If no more than one harddisk fails before a second one dies, you can recover completely, because for every set of "data stripes", one of the disks contains a parity stripe. If the parity stripe is gone, it's just calculated anew, and if one of the three disks with data stripes dies, you can recover the data with the help of the two remaining stripes and the parity stripe.
2007-07-03 15:05:09 · answer #4 · answered by Daniel 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
For a detailed description of RAID levels and their benefits, check out this wikipedia topic (below). Basically going RAID level 0 gives you striping and RAID 1 gives you mirroring. Striping will give you a performance improvement (splitting writes between disk) but does not provide redundancy. Mirroring provides duplication in case of a hardware failure.
2007-07-03 14:59:37 · answer #5 · answered by Jim Maryland 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Raid 1 would be the best route to ro.. or go raid 1/0
As far as controllers go..I use 3ware in an enterprise enviroment and have had no issues.
as far as backups go i would go with this, i use and recommend this to about 10 people a month.. real fast, secure, and redundant.. there are servers located in 2 locations, as well as redundancy at each site.
http://www.virtualtapedrive.com/Default.htm
i believe its 30.00 per month per 1gb of compressed data.. and can be restored anywhere. as long as you have your key and passwords..
bb
2007-07-03 15:13:02 · answer #6 · answered by BRANTB 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You would have to go with RAID 1, as RAID 0 does NOT provide redundancy.
2007-07-03 14:56:26 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋