HDD setup

[Butuz]

Well, I never said that Raid 1 magically makes either of the hard disks more reliable. Just that if your running raid 1 on two drives your less likeley to lose data over a given time period and if your running raid 0 on two drives your more likeley to lose data.

The problem with more reliable drives with 5 year warranty's are, capacity. What is the cost of a 72GB Raptor? What is the cost of a 200GB IDE or SATA drive? Most people can not afford the price premium that raptors or SCSI drives command.

As for proper backing up - how exactly are you supposed to back up 2 x 250GB HDD's in raid 0? Can the average person afford a tape drive and 5 tapes? Nope. Can a cheap tape drive and tapes back up 500gb? Nope. At best, you can back up your array to another hard drive or another array. But then, your getting back into the "is raid 1 worth it" argument as youve now bought more drives to backup to and you still run the risk of them failing.

Butuz

[BlackSheep]

I'm quite tempted by overclockers offer on the 250GB maxtor HDD as they also have 5 year warranty ... mmm

You can't rely on RAID1 in favour of backing up - but then do you really need to backup everything? - most of my data is DVDs/downloads/games - only say about 5GB is actual data I can't afford to lose.

RAID1 is only really of use if you can't afford any downtime if/when a disk fails - but then you might want to consider RAID5 as you probably need the increased speed as well.

I don't think I could sleep at night knowing 160GB was going to waste just mirroring stuff that I could afford to lose if the HDD decided to die.

[Rythmic]

Then you have a lot less than I have, I have over 70GBs I'd hate to lose. Thats 15+ DVDs...

No - you can't rely on RAID 1 in favour of back ups of vital data. Something may kill one machine entirely - but it's pretty unlikely.

In the end, this issue is down to the individual - if you don't have a huge amount of data to backup, then RAID 1 ain't gonna be worth it. If you have - then currently it's the best price/reliability ratio you can get.

For those that wonder - I have mine stored on a RAID 0 array, thats backed up to single drive in another box, thats backed up to an externally housed drive (thats normally disconnected).

[r1zeek]

No - you can't rely on RAID 1 in favour of back ups of vital data. Something may kill one machine entirely - but it's pretty unlikely

This is very true. You can't rely on RAID 1 over backups as you could get a virus on 1 drive and it would be mirrored onto both drives.
Wasn't there something called RAID 0 + 1 and that was what it says in the name, using 4 drives?

[Butuz]

Yes is commonly known as Raid 10.

You have to have 4 drives of the same size. You still lose 2 drives worth of Data. You basically end up with a mirrored pair Raid 0 arrays.

Butuz

[Rythmic]

Ah - theres 0+1 and 10 - they're slighlty different. Ones a mirrored pair of striped arrays and the other is a striped array of mirrored pairs.

In practice, there isn't a whole bunch of difference

[Butuz]

True - my bad. I forgot you could do it both ways. Tho people seem to disagree on what it is called. 0+1 and 1+0 or 10. No idea what the definative name is.



Butuz

[BlackSheep]

RAID0 is only less reliable if a drive PHYSICALLY breaks, and this is fairly rare, only happened to me 4 times in the past 10 years.

So you've had on average a HDD fail approx every 2 years. I wouldnt call that reliable! The chances of a 7200rpm IDE hard drive physically failing are high enough as it is, the chances of one of 2 drives failing are too high for me to risk. Thats just me though, I had 2 x IBM Deathstars in Raid 0 years ago, one failed, i lost all. Not gonna do that again!

Butuz

Butuz, maybe he lost all 4 just after 9 years of service each ... think about it

And you deserve everything you get running those nasty Deathstars

[Kumagoro]

Hmm is it worth doing a Raid 1 setup? If you are a lazy person and cant be arsed to back up regularly then its good. You could always stick the old hard disk in and copy the unreplaceable files on to it. Like your photos and assignments/essays. I think thats easier to do then making back up cds.

Also if your at uni and doing reports raid 1 might be good incase your computer goes down while youre about to print out an essay and you dont have a back up and dont have time to reinstall windows and the like.

It happened to me i just finished my essay pressed print at 2am and it died never to wake up again. The essay had to be in the that day ..... I was funked.

But my HDD was corrupted so probably raid wouldnt have made a diff.

I think people think Raid 1 is pointless as it only protects against one HDD dying (as far as i know). You shouldnt rely on it as a catch all.

[Butuz]

Butuz, maybe he lost all 4 just after 9 years of service each ... think about it

And you deserve everything you get running those nasty Deathstars

heh - put your handbag back in your locker

He didnt specify explicit faliure rates, and if you re-read what i wrote you'll see the word "average" in there. I said average, because i had no further information to go on

As for deathstars, none of us realised how unreliable they were gonna turn out to be. I bought two 30 giggers when they first came out after the 15 giggers recieved rave reviews in nearly every PC magazine and tech website.... just goes to show reviewing a product for 2 hours does not enable you to judge how reliable that product is

oi lets have some respect!! It was people like me laying down big money all those years ago who found out the hard way how crap IBM's 7200rpm drives were. If it wasnt for me and my ilk, you may have ended up buying them too!

I'll not take the blame for my deathstar experience, it was 12 months before they earned the name deathstar in the press. It was IBM's fault for making $hat drives. I've never bought anything IBM since for work or home. That little HDD incident has cost IBM £thousands which has now gone to more reliable manufacturers with good RMA procedures.

(i got utterly annoyed with how hard and expensive it was to RMA those deathstars, one of them is now a doorstop and the other i smashed up with a hammer)

Butuz

[BlackSheep]

hehe - I bought one too ... a 14.7 (I think IIRC) GB one which lasted about 2 years (! - yes 2!!) and had to be forcibly retired for being too damn loud ... was like listening to a high-pitched metal saw grinding away in the next room.

[Rythmic]

As for deathstars, none of us realised how unreliable they were gonna turn out to be. I bought two 30 giggers when they first came out after the 15 giggers recieved rave reviews in nearly every PC magazine and tech website.... just goes to show reviewing a product for 2 hours does not enable you to judge how reliable that product is

Ain't that the truth - notice how the Hitachis now get reviews "Yes it's the fastest, but the reliability may be suspect"

I gave away my 40GB 60GXP about 2 months ago. It died the next month...

[directhex]

big discussion of raid performance on teh report.

raid 1 is faster than 1 drive ;P