What Raid array for File safety with 4 drives
- Thread starter widdyst
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It's important to remember that RAID is an availability solution, not a backup. It will protect you from a physical disk failure and nothing else. You still need a proper backup on top.
With 4 disks my suggestion would be:
Disk1 - in the PC
Disk2 - local backup, updated any time anything is added to Disk1
Disk3 - offsite backup at parents, friends, work etc. Swap with Disk2 regularly.
Disk4 - whatever you fancy.
With 4 disks my suggestion would be:
Disk1 - in the PC
Disk2 - local backup, updated any time anything is added to Disk1
Disk3 - offsite backup at parents, friends, work etc. Swap with Disk2 regularly.
Disk4 - whatever you fancy.
Increased read speed but poor write speed.
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I would swing for a Raid 5 setup as above
How much do you expect to initially store, and what rate will this increase? What upload speed do you have on your connection?
Ideally, if you have a good upload and are only storing stuff like images, using a cloud based storage like Dropbox is the best solution - It's automated, and easy for you to get to your pics anywhere which might be nice for sharing them with other people. It's also pretty bulletproof - they use multiple backups and replicate across continents.
If cloud storage isn't suitable, then rpstewarts suggestion is safest, but obviously requires a lot more effort to keep on top of, and if your house burns down you'll lose whatever you hadn't backed up to the offsite location.
After that keeping the data on two different devices in your house is next safest, A NAS caddy and synchronized folders is better than a RAID array. Cost you less than £20 for a simple one and has the added benefit of being portable - you can take it round to a relatives house and use it like a USB drive.
RAID is pretty vulnerable, RAID5 itself can suffer from corruption, so you're better off with a mirroring level, like RAID1 or RAID10. Still the data is vulnerable to power surges/PSU failure taking out all the drives, and if a file is deleted by a virus/human error, there's no backup. It's also vulnerable to fire/flood/theft etc.
Personally I run an 8 drive RAID5, couple of drive failures over the 6 years i've had it, but rebuilds were fine and no data lost. I've recently built a second file server to replicate the more important stuff. Documents etc I keep either in google docs or my free dropbox account. The setup should do me the next 5-10 years until FTTH arrives with gigabit uploads and I can move to cloud storage.
Ideally, if you have a good upload and are only storing stuff like images, using a cloud based storage like Dropbox is the best solution - It's automated, and easy for you to get to your pics anywhere which might be nice for sharing them with other people. It's also pretty bulletproof - they use multiple backups and replicate across continents.
If cloud storage isn't suitable, then rpstewarts suggestion is safest, but obviously requires a lot more effort to keep on top of, and if your house burns down you'll lose whatever you hadn't backed up to the offsite location.
After that keeping the data on two different devices in your house is next safest, A NAS caddy and synchronized folders is better than a RAID array. Cost you less than £20 for a simple one and has the added benefit of being portable - you can take it round to a relatives house and use it like a USB drive.
RAID is pretty vulnerable, RAID5 itself can suffer from corruption, so you're better off with a mirroring level, like RAID1 or RAID10. Still the data is vulnerable to power surges/PSU failure taking out all the drives, and if a file is deleted by a virus/human error, there's no backup. It's also vulnerable to fire/flood/theft etc.
Personally I run an 8 drive RAID5, couple of drive failures over the 6 years i've had it, but rebuilds were fine and no data lost. I've recently built a second file server to replicate the more important stuff. Documents etc I keep either in google docs or my free dropbox account. The setup should do me the next 5-10 years until FTTH arrives with gigabit uploads and I can move to cloud storage.
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Ok Thats give me some good stuff to think about there.
So the general consencus is that as a safe storage means Raid is no good then.
Which leads me on to think what is the point in raid then really other than a speed increase ?
So I think I may go investigate something like drop box with a caddy backup system and use my drives as a Raid 0 array for my OS.
Zarf -Could you tell me where I could find a NAS cadddy for £20 ? I have looked but they all seem quite a bit more than that
So the general consencus is that as a safe storage means Raid is no good then.
Which leads me on to think what is the point in raid then really other than a speed increase ?
So I think I may go investigate something like drop box with a caddy backup system and use my drives as a Raid 0 array for my OS.
Zarf -Could you tell me where I could find a NAS cadddy for £20 ? I have looked but they all seem quite a bit more than that
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as rpstewart says, raid is used for availability, not backup, if you must have access to your data no matter what, then raid is very useful, if having access all the time is not critical then don't raid, but just be aware that if your hd fails, that you will need to restore from a backup, and more importantly you will need to keep that backup current, that's why for me at least Raid 5, is just a part of my backup strategy, as I backup my drives, to external drives at the close of play every day