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| Thread ID: 111561 | 2010-08-02 06:16:00 | Thank Heavens for RAID | Billy T (70) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1123967 | 2010-08-03 01:33:00 | This is why the RAID edition drives from WD have TLER to prevent the array from breaking in the event of an error like this. | Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1123968 | 2010-08-05 03:01:00 | Well, I'm back on line, one new U/G disk later. Bought a spare as well so that next time (there is always a next time with computers!) I can just pop in the new disk and away we go. Turns out that under RAID-1 the usual means of tracing which disk has died is simply to swap in the new disk, position by position, until the fault indication clears. In this instance I had a fair idea that it was one of the OS disks because there were a few hangs before it quit (after which it stopped hanging and behaved itself) so it seems to be a straightforward fix. Apparently Windows can't tell you which disk is AWOL, something to do with SATA protocols I believe. Anyway, this is how they fixed it, so who am I to argue? Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 1123969 | 2010-08-05 04:17:00 | I've been running a RAID 0 setup on every build for the last 10 years and have never had a hard disk fail. I don't keep important files on my system so no biggie if one dies, and to date have only had RAID (with redundancy) pay off once, and have lost data because of my RAID 5 and RAID 0+1 array at least a couple of times. As I read it, when researching RAID for this computer, RAID 0 is striped so unless you use a parity bit, if one disk fails you lose the lot, so this configuration is principally an access-speed enhancer. Just as well you haven't had a disk failure then. RAID 1 is simply mirroring on two disks, while RAID 0+1 has both striping and mirroring to give the best of both worlds, but requires 4 disks to implement, so that was out of the question for me as it would have required 8 disks to keep OS/Progs and Data separate, and the RAID 2 to RAID 6 options were outright overkill. I can't see how you could lose data on RAID 0+1 unless you had a multiple disk fry-up, and likewise with RAID 5, which is another 4 disk configuration, a single disk failure will not lose data but you have to rebuild promptly as a second failure will see you kumara'd. No doubt an expert will correct me if I'm wrong. :D Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 1123970 | 2010-08-05 04:21:00 | Any RAID setup is not a true backup because if the machine with the RAID setup in it gets stolen, blown up, flooded etc etc then RAID won't save your data. You need to backup to an external source and preferably take that off site as well. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 1123971 | 2010-08-05 04:38:00 | The main point of RAID is to increase reliability and\or increase performance. It is not a replacement for an off-site backup by any means. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1123972 | 2010-08-05 04:46:00 | Glad I have not bothered about raid, I mean is it necessary for usual home based purposes? Might add unneeded complexity, or desire to enhance/experiment even more without any noticeable user advantage. Won't operating systems, vigilance, security measures be enough for performance and reliability. Unless if you are running different operating systems - e.g. home/family, and business or similar. | kahawai chaser (3545) | ||
| 1123973 | 2010-08-05 06:18:00 | As I read it, when researching RAID for this computer, RAID 0 is striped so unless you use a parity bit, if one disk fails you lose the lot, so this configuration is principally an access-speed enhancer . Just as well you haven't had a disk failure then . RAID 1 is simply mirroring on two disks, while RAID 0+1 has both striping and mirroring to give the best of both worlds, but requires 4 disks to implement, so that was out of the question for me as it would have required 8 disks to keep OS/Progs and Data separate, and the RAID 2 to RAID 6 options were outright overkill . I can't see how you could lose data on RAID 0+1 unless you had a multiple disk fry-up, and likewise with RAID 5, which is another 4 disk configuration, a single disk failure will not lose data but you have to rebuild promptly as a second failure will see you kumara'd . No doubt an expert will correct me if I'm wrong . :D Cheers Billy 8-{) I had power drop out on 2 of my 4 disks in Raid 0+1, the disks were still fine after I fixed the power but the data was toast . I also had a replacement disk fail while rebuilding data on an already failed array, data was toast, so yeah, lesson learned, now I've got about 6-7 1TB disks floating around with a copy of all my data . |
Deimos (5715) | ||
| 1123974 | 2010-08-05 08:21:00 | Glad I have not bothered about raid, I mean is it necessary for usual home based purposes? Might add unneeded complexity, or desire to enhance/experiment even more without any noticeable user advantage. Won't operating systems, vigilance, security measures be enough for performance and reliability. Unless if you are running different operating systems - e.g. home/family, and business or similar. For a normal home user I would say it does not offer much of an advantage compared to the extra cost and work to set it up. If you were regularly authoring movies or something and wanted to make sure your PC didn't crash in the event of a drive failure then a mirrored RAID for your OS drive would be useful, but you'd probably be more likely to kick your power cord out. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1123975 | 2010-08-05 08:53:00 | The main point of RAID is to increase reliability and\or increase performance. It is not a replacement for an off-site backup by any means. For me it is an ongoing concurrent backup during daily work, and if a disk fails between normal backups (which I do to an external drive that can be taken off site) not only do I not lose data, but provided I back up every few minutes to the external drive, I can just keep on working with minimal risk. I don't think many PF1 members would have 'off-site backup' facilities, and in fact I doubt that many small to medium sized businesses would either. There is no other system that can keep on recording data input beyond the point of failure of a hard drive and as a one person business, I do not have the luxury of IT support. However, it was my OS/Program drive that failed and that would normally have seen me starting the laborious process of intalling and configuring all my programs again (if I hadn't imaged it). Instead I am back to normal and everything is as it was, all for the mighty initial cost of around $440 for four 640GB disks. For me, that's a no-brainer! Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 1123976 | 2010-08-05 09:30:00 | For me [raid] is an ongoing concurrent backup Personally I don't think the word 'backup' should be used in connection with RAID . As Nomad said above, RAID is not a backup if you delete an important file or get an intractable infection . To spell it out, the deleted file will disappear from both drives and the malware will kill both drives too . Much better to use the second drive as an ordinary backup . You hit a hotkey every now and then and save a copy of your current project onto the backup drive . If you are worried about hardware failure, a system image on another disc is the way to go |
BBCmicro (15761) | ||
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