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is raid1 worth it for the typical home user?

N

nageov3t

Lifer
so, my fall project is organizing my PC storage. think I'm going to start with getting a 500GB drive to use for my long-term storage (mp3's, movies, etc), which right now is spread across 3 different drives, all a mix of sizes and internal/external, and re-partitioning my OS/games drive (currently, it's partitioned straight in half, but I'm thinking about increasing the OS size, as I'm constantly running out of space, shrinking down the games partition, and using it only for WoW (any other games I can run off the new 500GB drive).

my question is, would setting up raid1 on the 500GB drive be worth the cost (and potential hassle if I ever need to move the setup into a different computer with a different raid card)? a good measure of paranoia is always healthy, and I deal with drive failures at work on almost a daily basis (I work at a noc where servers are put under pretty stressful conditions), but in the 15 years I've been tinkering on computers, I think I've only ever seen one drive failure on a home PC (and even that wasn't a total DOA failure... had plenty of time to copy the data onto a new drive, and I'm sure I could probably plug that failing drive into a rig today and get it to boot up).
 
Normally, no. You will generally get some sort of warning if the drive is flaky. If you're paranoid about data protection, then image the data to another external HDD.

Most people RAID for faster throughput speed. Note that the latest Seagate 7200.11 drive is averaging +80MB/sec read speed.
 
That type of redundancy is useful in some areas. I use it - but mainly so I can use and understand RAID 1.

I back up that RAID array every week by cloning it to a USB external drive of the same size. That eliminates the problem of moving to another computer, etc.

My RAID 1 array is data only - and mostly financial data and digital image archives. If either drive fails, the remaining drive can then be used non-RAID or used to build another array by replacing the bad drive.
 
I use RAID1 as a piece of my backup strategy. Frankly, my free time is valuable enough to me that I don't want to spend it rebuilding my OS, apps, and data after a failure. I installed the OS and apps on a RAID1. That RAID1 stores all of my most important data, so in the event of a failure, I don't have to reinstall anything. Basically, the RAID1 provides guaranteed uptime for me if my drives start to fail.

I also have backups and replication, so the RAID1 array is then backed up to another machine. If I lose a single drive, the RAID1 should allow me enough time to get the drive replaced.

If I have a more catastrophic failure and lose the RAID controller/motherboard, my data is backed up to another machine. Also, at this point, my machine running RAID1 is old enough that if it does fail it will be completely replaced rather than repaired.

If you're planning to use RAID1 as your sole backup means, or if you're looking to use it for increased performance, it's not worth the hassle.
 
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