PCI Sata II card with or without Raid

[hackmole]

I have been going over whether I want to get a PCI SATA II card with or without Raid 1 for my two new SATA II Samsung drives. The cards without RAID seem to cost about half the price.

I want a fail safe system but can't that also be done with software like Crashplan or what's the other one, Cambrian.

I'd like to know if I should or shouldn't use a RAID 1 system? Will Raid 1 slow my system down? (I do plan to convert a number of VHS videos to digital so I want to be sure I won't have trouble capturing the videos). If I get a virus will it also be copied to the second drive? Is RAID 1 a good thing or not? Or is it just better to use backup software. And does the backup software also keep a copy of the OS and installed software on the second drive.

If something happens to one drive, it would be nice if I could immediately switch over to the other drive and continue working without missing a heartbeat and having to be interrupted and spend hundreds of hours reinstalling the OS and 60 or more programs etc.

 

[dac7nco]

RAID-1 is not a backup - it's to maximize your "Up-time", i.e. one drive fails and you have an exact mirror which keeps running EXACTLY as if nothing happened. A virus WILL be duplicated to the mirror drive. With RAID-1 both drives will be spinning simultaneously and the MTBF will be affected accordingly. PCI-bus SATA cards are usually SATA-150, which is 50% of SATA-II (not important for storage). Get a small $100 SSD for your OS, and put your data drives on RAID-1 or JBOD. If you have SATA ports on your MB then use them instead of a PCI card.

Daimon

Edit: It seems you're using a hard drive for OS+Video - that will be slower than using your new drives for data only.