RAID Advice

[lid73]

The mobo I am looking at supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10. As I know next to nothing about RAID arrays, what is the preferred option to use for protecting data without sacrificing performance? How many disks would I need? Also, Can I establish a raid system without wiping my current data? meaning, can the blank disks simply replicate the data?

 

[Blain]

Just because you can create a RAID array doesn't mean you should create an array.
Especially since you admit yourself that you, "know next to nothing about RAID arrays".

Why not simply clone your HD once a week over to a duplicate?
That would not degrade your performance and would protect your data, as long as you remove the drive from any electrical connections when not cloning.

It's easy...
It's cheap...
It's safe and you don't have to be worried with any RAID corruption or controller issues.

 

[mfenn]

Just because you can create a RAID array doesn't mean you should create an array.
Especially since you admit yourself that you, "know next to nothing about RAID arrays".

Why not simply clone your HD once a week over to a duplicate?
That would not degrade your performance and would protect your data, as long as you remove the drive from any electrical connections when not cloning.

It's easy...
It's cheap...
It's safe and you don't have to be worried with any RAID corruption or controller issues.

This.

But to answer your first question, RAID 1 or 10 are going to be the best options for speed and protection against drive failures for a integrated controller. RAID 5 can be fast in theory, but in practice the parity calculations bog down the array unless you have a real RAID card. And of course, RAID 0 provides no protection whatsoever.

To your second question, 2 drives for RAID 1, 4 drives for RAID 10.

Third question: Not typically.

Remember kids, RAID is not a backup!

 

[FishAk]

Remember kids, RAID is not a backup!

The only thing RAID can protect data from is actual disk failure. There are many types of data loss, and a disk failure is only one type. RAID adds an additional failure point.

Only use RAID if you also have a backup capable of restoring your array.

RAID 10 will require 4 drives, will net 2 X the capacity of the smallest drive, and give speed approaching a 2 disk RAID 0 array, again, considering the speed of the slowest drive.

Don't use consumer level Western Digital drives in RAID

Your third question is irrelevant, since you can simply populate a newly created array from your backup set.

4 X 1Tb Spinpoint F3s in RAID 10, backed up by 2 X 2Tb Barracuda 5900 green drives, and something like this eSATA/USB External Enclosurewill cost $425, and yield 1.87Tb NTFS data with great speed, and good safety. An additional external drive that can be kept off-site to protect from fire, flood, theft, ext. will provide excellent safety for $540.

 

[lid73]

Thanks for the input. I know this is a gross oversimplification, but I was kind of viewing RAID as an "automatic cloning" feature. After considering y'all's input, I think I will just set up an external disk to clone on a daily schedule in the middle of the night. That probably will give me the easiest backup. Correct?

 

[betasub]

Much better. That way you are less likely to find your back-up partition has the same corruption problem as your live partition.