Best RAID-1 external enclosure (for 2 drives)? or should I use 2 separate drives?

[Maverick2002]

Hi,

I'm looking to get an external enclosure that supports RAID-1 for a couple 1TB drives. This will be for backing up multiple computers. I'd like RAID01 so if one of the backup drives fails I still have the other. I understand it's highly unlikely that both the main computer AND the backup drive will fail, but it will still be a PITA to get, set up, and populate a new backup drive with data from multiple computers.

It doesn't have to be a NAS as I plan to only plug it in once a week to do backups. Is there a "best" / recommended one for the job? What kind of price am I looking at for the enclosure? Do any non-NAS enclosures support RAID-1?

Another option is to just use two separate drives in two separate enclosures, share both drives, and set my backups to run on both drives. It's "safer" than a RAID-1 NAS (non-Windows file systems bother me), but seems like it might be more maintenance. Alternately I can just use one drive as the weekly backup and another as an offsite monthly mirror of the weekly.

 

[Maverick2002]

bump

 

[Syntax Error]

RAID 1 is not a backup.

However, for what you want, there are plenty of options as RAID 1 is a pretty simple RAID function, unlike the more complicated RAID 5 that require parity calculations. I would get an enclosure that is well-reviewed and has no major dealbreaking issues based upon user review. I can't really specifically recommend one as there are so many of them. USB 2.0 should be good, though eSATA and FireWire 800 would also be a plus, though not many computers can accomodate eSATA through onboard ports, necessitating the use of PCI eSATA cards or SATA-to-eSATA PCI brackets.

I would recommend a NAS, though you said it wasn't really necessary, it would cut down the amount of connecting/disconnecting you'd have to do in order to use this external array to be used as a backup volume for multiple computers, especially if your network is on Gigabit.