To RAID or not to RAID

[jimfoto]

I'm a photographer wil ots of large image files. I have a new system that I'm just assembling (my first) and I'm agonizing over whether or not to use the hardware RAID in a RAID 1 configuration.

I didn't have enough hard drives so I thought I'd add RAID later; Well Win7 won't start if you switch to RAID after it's installed. I know there's some workarounds but since I've not got anything but the OS on there, I figure now's the time. I've got additional drives ordered to match my 2 existing drives (Sam. 1tb Spinpoint for OS and WD 2tb Green fora data). I've never used RAID before. Previously I just used SyncBack which does give me the flexibility of moving data and drives around. However when I recently had a drive die, corrupt files which disappeared on the primary drive were deleted on the backup drive! I was trying to keep my backup drive clean by having it delete files that I've deleted from the primary drive.I now know I need different settings for my daily backups.

Here's my questions:

What benefits will I have using RAID over my previous backup software, other than system slowdowns as the software is running?

Can RAID 1 be set to mirror the primary drive without deleting files from the backup when you get corrupt sectors and they disappear from the primary?

Would it be foolish to even think about a RAID config later?

 

[RampantAndroid]

I'm a photographer wil ots of large image files. I have a new system that I'm just assembling (my first) and I'm agonizing over whether or not to use the hardware RAID in a RAID 1 configuration.

I didn't have enough hard drives so I thought I'd add RAID later; Well Win7 won't start if you switch to RAID after it's installed. I know there's some workarounds but since I've not got anything but the OS on there, I figure now's the time. I've got additional drives ordered to match my 2 existing drives (Sam. 1tb Spinpoint for OS and WD 2tb Green fora data). I've never used RAID before. Previously I just used SyncBack which does give me the flexibility of moving data and drives around. However when I recently had a drive die, corrupt files which disappeared on the primary drive were deleted on the backup drive! I was trying to keep my backup drive clean by having it delete files that I've deleted from the primary drive.I now know I need different settings for my daily backups.

Here's my questions:

What benefits will I have using RAID over my previous backup software, other than system slowdowns as the software is running?

Can RAID 1 be set to mirror the primary drive without deleting files from the backup when you get corrupt sectors and they disappear from the primary?

Would it be foolish to even think about a RAID config later?

afaik, RAID 1 doesn't "copy" a drive as much as it performs the actions on both drives. If you write to a sector, both drives write to that sector. If you delete a file, both drives delete it. If a sector goes bad - something that is not an action taken on the drive, the backup drive will not have the same problem.

RAID 1 itself will slow down performance; not by that much, but it WILL slow it down nonetheless. Have you considered RAID 5?

 

[jimfoto]

I haven't really considered RAID 5. I'm a single user and my main concern is data redundancy. Also, RAID 5 is a bit complicated and I'm a RAID newb.

 

[mnewsham]

I like RAID 10 myself but to each his own.

 

[mfenn]

RAID 1 itself will slow down performance; not by that much, but it WILL slow it down nonetheless. Have you considered RAID 5?

No, actually it won't as long as the drives are well matched. On writes, the drives will essentially be synchronized, whereas each drive is free to grab a different sector for reads, thus improving performance.

That being said, RAID is one of those things were if you have to ask, then you don't need it. The first and most important rule is that RAID is not a backup. RAID is for uptime and availability, thus saving you from having to wait for a restore to happen before you can continue working. In a SOHO environment, a restore should take a few hours at most, so that's not a big concern.

What is a concern is (for example) a virus going through and deleting your important data. The RAID will not protect you in this case, whereas an (offline) backup would.

 

[KlokWyze]

That being said, RAID is one of those things were if you have to ask, then you don't need it. The first and most important rule is that RAID is not a backup. RAID is for uptime and availability, thus saving you from having to wait for a restore to happen before you can continue working. In a SOHO environment, a restore should take a few hours at most, so that's not a big concern.

What is a concern is (for example) a virus going through and deleting your important data. The RAID will not protect you in this case, whereas an (offline) backup would.

I've got to agree with this. I've got a RAID1 setup on my home PC and I want to break it and just do a daily or weekly backup of critical files. I see no point in wearing down both drives... and I've read a lot that people have problems breaking/restoring their RAID setups when drives do go bad, especially on "normal" desktop PC's. RAID was always specifically designed with servers (SCSI) in mind.

 

[jimfoto]

All right. So now I'm looking for software that will create a bootable drive of my OS hard drive and will do incremental backups of my data.

I work with a large number of images my backups are basically copies of the files. I like having uncompressed files with the same folder structure in my backups. My daily, automatic backups do not delete files off the backup drive (in case bad sectors have made files disappear). Periodically I will do a one way backup where deleted files from my primary data drive will be deleted from the backup drive. All of my drives are matched so my OS drive (with some data) is going to the same size, brand etc. In the event of an OS drive failure, I'd like to be able to just boot off my backup OS drive.

I've been using Syncback for data backup but don't think it will create a bootable drive for me. Do I just use Windows 7 for this and sontinue using Syncback?

I guess I'm really looking to clone my OS drive on a regular basis and copy my data from one drive to another on a scheduled basis. Normally the copying would be two way with a periodic one way session to clean up the backup drive.

 

[muskie32]

Raid 5 is easy to set up. But i think you should go with raid, Uhh.. no... 60 is overkill..

Yeah. Raid 5 is nice! Just get some good matched drives and your set

 

[mfenn]

All right. So now I'm looking for software that will create a bootable drive of my OS hard drive and will do incremental backups of my data.

I work with a large number of images my backups are basically copies of the files. I like having uncompressed files with the same folder structure in my backups. My daily, automatic backups do not delete files off the backup drive (in case bad sectors have made files disappear). Periodically I will do a one way backup where deleted files from my primary data drive will be deleted from the backup drive. All of my drives are matched so my OS drive (with some data) is going to the same size, brand etc. In the event of an OS drive failure, I'd like to be able to just boot off my backup OS drive.

I've been using Syncback for data backup but don't think it will create a bootable drive for me. Do I just use Windows 7 for this and sontinue using Syncback?

I guess I'm really looking to clone my OS drive on a regular basis and copy my data from one drive to another on a scheduled basis. Normally the copying would be two way with a periodic one way session to clean up the backup drive.

I'm not aware of any products that will directly create an online bootable image of a drive and apply it to a second drive without using a third drive as an intermediary. If something like that exists, I'm sure that somebody will post it here though.

My suggestion would be to create and store images anyway because that will allow you to keep historical versions of your boot drive (via incremental backups) so that you can restore to a version from potentially several months previous if need be.

 

[Cerb]

Well Win7 won't start if you switch to RAID after it's installed.

Really? 'Cause I know 2k, Xp, and Vista would (haven't tried it on 7). At worst,you might have to find the drive number and edit boot.ini.

Here's my questions:

What benefits will I have using RAID over my previous backup software, other than system slowdowns as the software is running?

None. You should still be using your backup software. With RAID 1, one hard drive can fail, without your PC even needing to be shutdown. You can then replace it at your leisure. Any data loss not caused by a hard drive failing is not protected against by RAID.

Can RAID 1 be set to mirror the primary drive without deleting files from the backup when you get corrupt sectors and they disappear from the primary?

Um...what? That makes no sense. If you get a bad sector, the drive has failed, and needs replacing, and is no primary drive in RAID.

RAID only makes sense if your PC being down for a day or two would cost you a good bit of money, and should be used in addition to backups. IMO, Acronis TrueImage Home is quite good (it won't make the secondary drive bootable, but you can boot up with a disc to recover the backup to a new drive).

 

[jimfoto]

I'm not aware of any products that will directly create an online bootable image of a drive and apply it to a second drive without using a third drive as an intermediary. If something like that exists, I'm sure that somebody will post it here though.

My suggestion would be to create and store images anyway because that will allow you to keep historical versions of your boot drive (via incremental backups) so that you can restore to a version from potentially several months previous if need be.

Are you suggesting that I just create backups using Win7 of my OS and continue doing scheduled incremental backups of all my pictures?

 

[Jeff7181]

What benefits will I have using RAID over my previous backup software, other than system slowdowns as the software is running?

Can RAID 1 be set to mirror the primary drive without deleting files from the backup when you get corrupt sectors and they disappear from the primary?

Would it be foolish to even think about a RAID config later?

I'm with mfenn. Rather than use RAID1 or any other level of raid, buy a couple hard drives and use one to store backups. Get one of these so you can easily disconnect it from your computer to avoid corruption from viruses and power surges, etc:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153066

I guess I'm really looking to clone my OS drive on a regular basis and copy my data from one drive to another on a scheduled basis.

That's not an efficient way to do it if you're willing to spend money to protect your data. Here's my recommendation that will provide fault tolerance, data backup and minimum downtime in the event of a hardware failure.

Get three drives. At least two should be identical... put them in RAID 1 to protect against hardware failure. Use the third drive (possibly a larger drive) to write backups to, starting with a system image, and differential backups from there on out. This way you have all the same data on all three drives and if any two drives fail, you can theoretically not suffer any data loss except what was created since your last backup.

You could even consider a 4th drive and put them in a backup rotation. Do a weekly full backup and daily differentials/incrementals. Swap backup drives every week, so if one of the backup drives fail and your computer takes a dump, you still have another backup that's only a week old.

If you want to archive data, like pictures, send it offsite with one of those online services like Carbonite. They're relatively cheap if you have pictures of kids, etc. that are irreplaceable.

 

[Cerb]

Are you suggesting that I just create backups using Win7 of my OS and continue doing scheduled incremental backups of all my pictures?

Maybe, but that seems kind of vague, so I'm going to assume no, and explain.

Whole-system backup will create an image on the other drive. Not image as in your photos, but as in a snapshot of your system at a point in time. MS' backup can somewhat do this, but they kinda do the minimum, it's annoying to get working just right, and every now and then, somebody finds they can't restore it to their HW, for some reason. Hence, there is still quite a market for software to basically do what it does, but with more bells and whistles, and UIs that sane people don't get too frustrated with.

However, with such a backup, you will need some software to restore that backup.
So you have drives A and B in your system, with B as the backup.
A dies. Buy drive C (a third drive), boot up a special disk, restore backup.
B dies. Buy drive C (a third drive), and have your backup software make a new backup to it, starting the process over again.
File corrupts. Find the latest non-corrupt version in your backup, and restore that one (drive C optional).
Whole file system corrupts. Boot up special disk, restore backup (drive C optional).

The first two RAID protects from, the second two it does not (both drives get the corruption); and IME, the second two are at least as common as unexpected drive failure. Even with RAID, you would want to do backups, to protect against them.

With bought backup software (Acronis rules the roost, and for $50, it's hard to go wrong), it's generally easy to set up backups, and manage them, so that you can do things like restore your whole system, undelete, or get a snapshot of a single file from a prior time, using whole-system, incremental, backups.

 

[jimfoto]

Backup B restores to new drive C, which then gets plugged into where A was, right?

Acronis will create my boot disk too? And Macrium will do the same?

 

[Cerb]

Backup B restores to new drive C, which then gets plugged into where A was, right?

Yes, though to be picky, you generally only have to make sure it's before or after the other drive, using SATA (IE, if you had A in port 2, and B in port 6, you could generally put the new drive into any of ports 1-5).

Acronis will create my boot disk too?

Yes.

And Macrium will do the same?

Sure looks that way from their tutorials section.

 

[mfenn]

Maybe, but that seems kind of vague, so I'm going to assume no, and explain.

Whole-system backup will create an image on the other drive. Not image as in your photos, but as in a snapshot of your system at a point in time. MS' backup can somewhat do this, but they kinda do the minimum, it's annoying to get working just right, and every now and then, somebody finds they can't restore it to their HW, for some reason. Hence, there is still quite a market for software to basically do what it does, but with more bells and whistles, and UIs that sane people don't get too frustrated with.

However, with such a backup, you will need some software to restore that backup.
So you have drives A and B in your system, with B as the backup.
A dies. Buy drive C (a third drive), boot up a special disk, restore backup.
B dies. Buy drive C (a third drive), and have your backup software make a new backup to it, starting the process over again.
File corrupts. Find the latest non-corrupt version in your backup, and restore that one (drive C optional).
Whole file system corrupts. Boot up special disk, restore backup (drive C optional).

The first two RAID protects from, the second two it does not (both drives get the corruption); and IME, the second two are at least as common as unexpected drive failure. Even with RAID, you would want to do backups, to protect against them.

With bought backup software (Acronis rules the roost, and for $50, it's hard to go wrong), it's generally easy to set up backups, and manage them, so that you can do things like restore your whole system, undelete, or get a snapshot of a single file from a prior time, using whole-system, incremental, backups.

Yep, this is what I was getting at. Good explanation.