<snipped>
Stan Starinski wrote:
> By the way,
> Avoid RAID0 configuration by all means - it was invente dfor God
> knows what reason.
> The only benefit is speed increase as data is striped across two
> drives writing at once, but it's only important for certain
> circumstance/certain file sizes & fragmanetation.
>
> Why is it terrible?
> It is for people who do NOT care about data reliability.
> I failure of ONE harddrive in RAID0 ("fallout") causes catastropic
> data loss - as data is split between two drives, rather than
> mirrored as in RAID-proper
> The irony is that RAID was meant to increase data reliability + be
> 24/7 available to servers/networks, etc. enterprise environment.
> But RAID0 is exactly the opposite - simply awful, because 2
> harddrives means 2 points of failure i.e. the probability is fault
> is double roughtly speaking. Mathematically it may not be in all
> cases, but often it is.
> Never configure RAID as RAID0 unless you need some minor speed
> increase if you pump very large files daily (MultiGigabyte movies
> or music).
> If you bother with RAID, the least you should is RAID1, the higher
> levels are even better.
>
> Let me tell tou this, though:
> It is a waste of money & effort for mnost human users. Nothing is
> better than regula backup and in my case it's 3 storages - local at
> home, local harddrive at my x-garage (no longer can afford it) 60
> miles away, and rmeove server in accross country (by Godaddy.com,
> which offers world's best rates for website hosting & storage)
>
> It's that simple:
> Don't bothger with RAID.
> Use a single, reliable harddrive at home, periodically back to
> another also at home, and also once in a few weeks or whatever you
> choose, dump it to a remote server if your life depends on data (so
> to avoid risk of fire/flood/theft), or any other method. Backup is
> a simple old-fashioned solution.
> DO you know what RAID is for enterpirse, besides reliability?
> Because it fixes itself on the fly which is paramount for 24/7
> availability for Server, Networks, etc when it is NOT permitted to
> take systems down to restore data from some slow tape or whatever,
> RAID is self-correctable, but for an average home user - more
> trouble than benefit. I just read a story in IEEE Spectrum magazine
> (subscirbed as part
> of my engineering society), the author was sad because his computer
> has outsmarted itself and digged own grave for his valuable data
> and RAID was the reason: Several years ago he succombed to the
> fashion & fad about home-user RAIDS and did install one. This week
> his compute rhas finally died after years of good serbice. He
> didn't worry because it was Motherboard which died, the harddrives
> were OK... until he realized they were RAID with RAID controller on
> motherboard. The Data Recovery company has disocvered that
> Motherboard contained a controller with some proprietray stuff that
> was impossible to recover striped data in an economical way - it
> would cost plenty. He had to give on that data which was like
> severla weeks of letters/articles, etc since last backup. Now imagine if
> instead of RAID he was doing what i do - a daily
> quick dump to a portable 2.5" incher diskdrive of anything I wrote
> or emailed that day. Backup is in my blood, it's like brushing
> teeth - thanks to decades of experience using computers.
> You don't need RAID for that at home, look at how he was screwed up
> with proprietary comntroller....
> But if he had a proper backup schedule implemented, he'd not be
> sorry today.
> Patriot Memory makes excellent fast and gigintically sized USBflash
> devices, available cheaply at ZipZoomFly.com and AMAZON - another
> quick solution, although for proper, massive backup I use this:
> Western Digital WD5002ABYS 500GB RE3 type harddrive. RE3 means
> "Reliability Class3" - this is a special, RAID-edition,
> ultrareliable drive, which unlike consumer class drives costs amost
> double , and capacity doesn't go over 1TB as of today, while
> consumer drives are already in 2-10TB range. It's got 2
> microcontrollers & 2 spindle supports, and vibration-proof with
> numerou ssensors. A fanastic drive, costs #79 at ZipZoomFly.com today
> If you build RAID's - this is the drive for that.
>
> Other leadeing mfg's offer Enterprise/RAID class drives, like
> Seagate's "ES" series (as opposed to cheaper consumer version "AS")
> but their quality has dropped. I used to swear by Seagate, but not
> anymore - guess every large famous company goes thru "periods of
> decadence", and Seagate has fallen out of my favs. Now it's
> Western Digital. ANY mfg can sell you a dead drive - just return it, it
> happens
> nowadays often due to extreme capacitirs and speeds/heat ==> people
> want more capcity, and here's the result, reliability has dropped.
> But overall:
> WD5002ABYS is a blockbuster.
> Good for RAID, read reviews at Amazon or ZIpZOomFly or even Newegg
> which is notorious for people posting negative reviews only.
Wow - that was a lot of nothing.
The OP really didn't need a overabundance of partial information on RAID or
vituperated opinions - just facts on what they were using/trying to figure
out.
RAID0 --> great for processes where speed is important (video editing/etc) -
but yes - you should store (longterm) the files elsewhere. Not everything
centers on the data sticking around though - some things just need fast
read/write speeds.
RAID1 (what the OP has) --> in its simplest/oldest form, it can be slower.
In some implentations, reading can be faster. Generally a worthless
practice - but in the OPs case - it makes pretty good sense (maybe not
economically, but for the reliability of the data already deemed to be most
important to the OP by the very act of backing it up.)
RAID increases data reliability and/or increase input/output performance.
It's that simple. In some cases it's just a good way to combine a bunch of
disks into a larger size for some specific purpose (JBOD.) That's why there
are so many different levels of RAID out there.
If you had done any research before posting (or read the other replies
first) you would know that this external storage box (used and clearly
defined by the OP) only gives two real RAID choices and another two it 'made
up' to allow for a mixture of the techniques for more speed and reliability
mixed.
Backups are necessary no matter what - RAID or not. Anyone not backing up
is doing themselves a disservice.
For the OP - if this was meant as a BACKUP drive - where it is not the only
copy of the data... It's not a bad idea. You end up with possibly three
copies of your important data at any time (original, drive and mirrored
drive in the box.)
Last bit of advice - for STAN anyway - type up your tirades in Word or
something that can tell you when you may have let your fingers get ahead of
your brain... ;-)
Just link them to something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
Saves time and typos.
--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
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