Does RAID 1 have a speed penalty?

[Navid]

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
First of all, remember that RAID is not a backup solution, if something happens to the data apart from drive failure it will be gone.

If you read my post, you may see that I backup my data to my second hard drive. So, what I need, which I do not have now, is protection against hardware failure.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
4GB is one DVD, just back it up to a DVD and from there on do incremental backups to a DVD-RW. Same with the OS image (why would you need several images?) and everything else, DVD's are cheap enough today.

A backup system is useles if it relies on manual intervention!
What good is it if you forget to or if you don't feel like backup one week?

I already move my backups to DVD on a regular basis, for diversification. But, I want this automated so that I don't have to remember to do it.

You cannot just do incremental backups indefinitely. You also need to make differential backups and full backups along the way. If you only make incremental backups and one day you need to restore the data, you will be spending the rest of your life restoring every single incremental backup you have made one after another!

Just because my data is 4GB today does not mean that it is going to remain that size forever!

I have different operating systems (XP for work, XP for games, Vista, ...) and different hardware components (graphics card, sound card, ...).
Drivers get updated frequently. So, the images need to be updated.
That is why I have more than just one image.

 

[Nothinman]

A backup system is useles if it relies on manual intervention!

A good backup system is also useless if all of your data is in one physical location. Right now you have nothing to protect you from your house/apt burning down or something evil deleting the data that's on your main drive and the backup drive at the same time.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

A backup system is useles if it relies on manual intervention!

A good backup system is also useless if all of your data is in one physical location. Right now you have nothing to protect you from your house/apt burning down or something evil deleting the data that's on your main drive and the backup drive at the same time.

You are right.
But, there are different levels of protection that is attainable.

My backup has evolved from having no backup at all, to backing up my data once a year to CDs, to backing up my data to a secondary hard drive as well occasionally, to backing up my data to a secondary hard drive automatically as well as to DVDs.
So, if something evil deletes everything from my first and second hard drive, I can still get my data from my DVDs.

The next level of evolution for my backup is to protect it against a hardware failure of my secondary hard drive.

If my place burns in fire, I have more important things to worry about than my data!

But, your point is valid.
I am just improving my backup strategy in steps. One step at a time.

 

[Nothinman]

It's definitely a worthy endeavor, most people don't even get to step 1. But IMO having some form of read-only, off-site backup is more important than a mirror for your backup drive. Mainly because if the drive does start to die there is a good chance you'll be able to get most, if not all of the data off of it before it's completely dead. I've never had a drive die without some form of warning and every time SMART monitoring has alerted me to the problem early on, well except for the last one since there's no way to do SMART monitoring over USB (that's one reason to go with Firewire or eSATA for my next external drive...) but I was still able to recover everything but a few sectors.

 

[dclive]

Erm....Windows Home Server?

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
First of all, remember that RAID is not a backup solution, if something happens to the data apart from drive failure it will be gone.

If you read my post, you may see that I backup my data to my second hard drive. So, what I need, which I do not have now, is protection against hardware failure.

So you'll raid the backup to prevent hardware failure from destroying your non-current data which is backed up to that drive, correct?

Old backup data goes on one DVD, new data goes on incremental backup on DVD-RW until it's full, you wish to preserve something else, just put it on a DVD, you're OS image isn't going to change, your other programs are either worth the half a buck you pay for a DVD or you just don't back them up.

RAID1 is about redundancy, and i cannot for the world of me figure out why you'd need it.

 

[dclive]

Hate to keep spelling out the obvious, but Windows Home Server is *made* for exactly this scenario. It will handle backups via an agent running on all Windows PCs on your network, seamlessly and quietly backing them up every night (or any other schedule), uses SIS to save drive space, uses compression to save drive space, and is generally speaking a wonderful solution.

Is there anything specific you're looking for that WHS can't do?

I run mine in a VMware VM on my Q6600 box - it handles all the other machines on the LAN.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Mainly because if the drive does start to die there is a good chance you'll be able to get most, if not all of the data off of it before it's completely dead. I've never had a drive die without some form of warning and every time SMART monitoring has alerted me to the problem early on, well except for the last one since there's no way to do SMART monitoring over USB (that's one reason to go with Firewire or eSATA for my next external drive...) but I was still able to recover everything but a few sectors.

I have never experienced a drive failure. This is good to know. Thanks!

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
Old backup data goes on one DVD, new data goes on incremental backup on DVD-RW until it's full,

So, I have to place the DVD-RW in the optical drive everyday to do the incremental backup?
As I said before, I don't want to be a part of the main backup procedure. I want the computer to do that without my intervention.
Nevermind the images. I don't want to repeat myself.

Originally posted by: dclive
It will handle backups via an agent running on all Windows PCs on your network,
Is there anything specific you're looking for that WHS can't do?

Yes, a backup scheme for a single-computer system for a reasonable cost!

 

[dclive]

OK, if you want really simple, buy a 500GB third drive, and do nightly backups from your backup drive onto the new 500GB drive.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Navid
How can I set up a real RAID 1? Do I need a PCI card for that?
Where will the hard drive be connected to? To the PCI card?
Is there a PCI RAID card for SATA?

You can use Window's limited Software Raid abilities to set up only part of a drive as raid. I thought Windows XP supported Raid 0 or Raid 1, but I could be wrong on that.

If you want to use your motherboard's raid, then just use it. You'll be fine. Personally, I don't see any need for Raid on a workstation and I keep all my files at home on a linux file server using software raid 1, but linux's software raid is way better than Windows' or motherboard's software raid.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Mainly because if the drive does start to die there is a good chance you'll be able to get most, if not all of the data off of it before it's completely dead. I've never had a drive die without some form of warning and every time SMART monitoring has alerted me to the problem early on, well except for the last one since there's no way to do SMART monitoring over USB (that's one reason to go with Firewire or eSATA for my next external drive...) but I was still able to recover everything but a few sectors.

I have never experienced a drive failure. This is good to know. Thanks!

Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
Old backup data goes on one DVD, new data goes on incremental backup on DVD-RW until it's full,

So, I have to place the DVD-RW in the optical drive everyday to do the incremental backup?
As I said before, I don't want to be a part of the main backup procedure. I want the computer to do that without my intervention.
Nevermind the images. I don't want to repeat myself.

Originally posted by: dclive
It will handle backups via an agent running on all Windows PCs on your network,
Is there anything specific you're looking for that WHS can't do?

Yes, a backup scheme for a single-computer system for a reasonable cost!

yeah I do the raid thing on my server, but I don't do any offsite backup. I mean, my files are important, but not THAT important. I did make a backup to DVD a few years ago, which is stored in my attice, just to have another copy of like my old school papers and stuff. If I lost all my personal data, then yeah it would be a bummer, but it's not the same as if a business lost it's data. I mean, you're not going to lose money because you have to download another copy of "it's peanut butter jelly time" off the net.

 

[Navid]

Thanks for all the information so far.
🙂



Several references have been made to file servers here.

1- Do you guys leave your file server on all the time?
2- What are the requirements (CPU speed) for a file server?
3- Will a file server not have a negative impact on data transfer speed (compared to having the files on a local hard drive)?
4- So, you have all the user files from different laptops and PCs located on the server and so you only have to backup the server, right? What happens if you take a laptop offsite? Will it work?

 

[Nothinman]

I thought Windows XP supported Raid 0 or Raid 1, but I could be wrong on that.

Nope, no consumer version of Windows that I'm aware of supports redundant software RAID.

If you want to use your motherboard's raid, then just use it. You'll be fine.

Until he wants to move the array to another board or machine, then it's hit or mis.

1- Do you guys leave your file server on all the time?
2- What are the requirements (CPU speed) for a file server?
3- Will a file server not have a negative impact on data transfer speed (compared to having the files on a local hard drive)?
4- So, you have all the user files from different laptops and PCs located on the server and so you only have to backup the server, right? What happens if you take a laptop offsite? Will it work?

1) Yes.
2) Whatever you can find, the CPU requirements are dictated by what you want the box to do. Fileserving and software RAID don't require any real horsepower by today's standards.
3) There will be added latency and ethernet is slower than a hard disk but as long as you don't try to run things directly from there it should be fine and even that could me made to work acceptably if you really wanted.
4) Generally yes. Whether the laptop works offsite depends on how it's setup. Windows has offline file caching ability but I have no idea how well it works. I usually pack whatever I'm taking with me on a USB drive or download it via the Internet when I'm offsite.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Navid
Thanks for all the information so far.
🙂



Several references have been made to file servers here.

1- Do you guys leave your file server on all the time?
2- What are the requirements (CPU speed) for a file server?
3- Will a file server not have a negative impact on data transfer speed (compared to having the files on a local hard drive)?
4- So, you have all the user files from different laptops and PCs located on the server and so you only have to backup the server, right? What happens if you take a laptop offsite? Will it work?

1. yes, that is why I got a low power celeron - to save on electricity usage
2. My home server is a 500 mhz celeron with 512 mb of RAM running 3 virtual machines (1 Samba file server, 1 Mysql database server, and 1 Apache web server). I assigned like 32 mb of RAM to the file server and I used to check the RAM usage which spiked at about 8 mb.
3. It will have some impact, but not really noticeable unless you are doing heavy heavy file operations. Opening, using, and saving text and *Office documents is just as snappy as local, pictures open just as fast, videos open maybe a tad slower but streams just fine to the video player once it's open.
4. Yes to the first part. No to the second part. As Nothinman said, download the files to a usb stick or to the local computer, or set up a vpn connection.