RAID Explained

[Murdin999]

Ok here is what I'm thinking of doing, currently i have a new pc with just a 120gb SSD in it, as i barely installl a lot of stuff on my computers as i usually pile everything on my external HDD (1tb)

However recently i've been thinking if my external HDD fails, i've lost near 850gb of pictures/movies which I'd really like to keep, and for such a size i can't really install it on DVDs etc so i thought of raid and i have loads of questions which i'd love to be answered.

1. If i got another identical external HDD can you setup RAID 1 to mirror everything to each drive? So if one dies I'm still fine?

2. If i added 2, 1tb HDD into my computer, how would i go about setting up RAID 1 as i thought you had to do that when installing the OS? and even then don't SSD and HDD use different "settings"

3. In a raid setup, if one drives fails, and i replace it, do i have to setup the raid again, and does the data from the working drive copy itself over when the raid is setup again or do i have to manually copy everything over?

4. How "stable" is raid, as i don't want to waste time if it doesn't work

and lastly 5. Does RAID 1 work with HDDs that have been partioned off, say i split both 1tb drives into 2 500gb drives would it copy the files to the corresponding partion for each drive?


I'd really appreciate any help as I'd love a fail-safe backup solution.

 

[rpstewart]

I'd really appreciate any help as I'd love a fail-safe backup solution.

Then RAID isn't what you're looking for. RAID is a redundancy solution (hence the name) not a backup solution. It's designed to keep the system up and running in the event of a disk failure, nothing else.

If you want a backup then you need a second copy of the data, preferably not permanently connected to the source PC and better still not in the same physical building.

With your setup probably the easiest thing to do is add another 1Tb internal disk and use that as your primary store instead of the external one. The external one then becomes a backup location for both the SSD and the internal disk. A simple backup strategy with something like Acronis True Image for the OS drive and Synctoy for the data drive will do what you need.