Topic: Raid 1 Question

[JD]

I'm thinking of getting something like this...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198046... to create back up harddrives of my masters.
Plan is to set it up as Raid-1, fill the drives, then store one here at home and one off-site.  Then later, when data is needed, just plug one of the drives into a dock like this...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817986001&cm_re=5.25-_-17-986-001-_-Product

Question is,will the data be written in a way that any enclosure or dock will be able to read it? Or does it need to go into the original type of enclosure to be read?

[Brian Skalinder]

If I were you, I'd skip RAID entirely -- it's generally overkill for our purposes and with cheaper, consumer-grade RAID I (and others) have experienced problems re-building the array when it fails (though in this regard RAID1 is safer than RAID3 or 5).  If I were you, I'd simply get a couple drives and use SyncToy or some such to schedule automatic, periodic backups.  (I do mine nightly.)  Then keep one drive off-site, as planned, and refresh it regularly.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I haven't finished messing around with mine, but I just picked up a Pogoplug ($40). You plug your drive(s) into it and can either place it remotely, or locally. Pretty sure it will keep 2 drives cloned, but haven't messed with that either since I only have a single drive for it.

I plan on putting this one I just picked up over at my brothers for remote backup. I might pick up another to just be a local media server.

Doesn't sound like you can serve it to a Sonos though, which would make it idea for me.

http://www.adorama.com/COCPOGOE02.html?utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Shopping%20Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=gbase

[H₂O]

One thing to note is that RAID should not be considered as a backup technology.   It can be used for realtime failover such as in an SLA tied environment but even in those environments a raid volume should not contain the only copy of a file.

I have seen many raid environments completely fail over the years (heat causing multiple drive failures, raid controllers losing config and due to poorly written firmware basically making the data unrecoverable, etc) - so definitely keep multiple copies of your masters on different technologies/formats or drives.  There are alot of good online options and programs that can "sync" files as mentioned above.

RAID 1 should be a bit safer than striping RAID technologies (RAID 0/3/5/10/30/50, etc), so you may be able to recover data from a volume in a failure situation - but be careful.

[Gordon]

If I were you, I'd skip RAID entirely.  If I were you, I'd simply get a couple drives and use SyncToy or some such to schedule automatic, periodic backups.  (I do mine nightly.)  Then keep one drive off-site, as planned, and refresh it regularly.

agree 100%. 

[rastasean]

If I were you, I'd skip RAID entirely.  If I were you, I'd simply get a couple drives and use SyncToy or some such to schedule automatic, periodic backups.  (I do mine nightly.)  Then keep one drive off-site, as planned, and refresh it regularly.

agree 100%.

I also agree. RAID is nice but no reason to make it complicated. Check out rsync for windows/linux:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

Also forgot to mention unison would be a nice choice if you're going to be reading/writing from both drives:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unison_%28file_synchronizer%29

[it-goes-to-eleven]

No need to make it too complicated.   I agree - screw RAID.  Rsync rules.  Although some windows versions have poor performance (mostly those built on cygwin).   Proprietary forms can cause grief down the road, especially if you're stuck looking for windows support.

And eSata is Great..  I'm typing this on a t61 laptop that is a few years old (linux, of course).  I have a $20 eSata card stuck in the side.  It's connected to a 1 TB WD1001FALS drive that is sitting on the desk, bare.  The drive is powered by a power supply cable (like a laptop supply).  I just read this drive at 110 MB/sec.   Screw USB!

I could spend money putting these drives in an enclosure... Or I could just use it to buy more drives and have more redundancy.

[JD]

Thanks for the input guys, I just figured that raid-1 would be a convenient way to make a pair of cloned drives.
I intend to write to these drives one time, shelve them when full, then occasionally put one in a dock when/if data is needed.
They wouldn't be actively used.

So if I got a dual enclosure and set it up JBOD, the above mentioned softwares could be set to automatically keep the two drives the same?

Any suggestions on an enclosure?
I would prefer one that is fan cooled and can load the drives without using any tools. Speed isn't real important for what I am doing.