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Thread ID: 108202	2010-03-18 06:38:00	RAID question	Nomad (952)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
868241	2010-03-18 06:38:00	Hi, please advise which option is better :) Current: 2 500GB HDDs . As diff HDDs . 1a: 1st HDD, 1st partition - OS and s/w . 1b: 1st HDD, 2nd partition, backup of 2nd HDD (below) . 1c: 1st HDD, 3rd partition, mucking around, network shared drive . 2: 2nd HDD, not partitioned out . I have GBs of photographs . I use Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom etc etc . . dSLR RAW files as well as scanned film TIF files - 35mm format sizes and larger formats . 50MB or 100MB sizes or greater for larger formats . I use SyncBack to sync "2" to "1b" . I also sync selected files from"1a" to "2" . Proposing: RAID off the motherboard - stripe mode . AFAIK, this would be throwing all my files together . I have a spare 500GB which can be used to sync selected files (treated as a individual HDD) or I can employ RAID 5 . Thanks for your help . Cheers	Nomad (952)
868242	2010-03-18 07:29:00	RAID isnt a backup. Ive head a few horror stories about things not being as simple as they should when repairing a RAID array eg different controller or slightly different drive = no recovery. I may be wrong, but I would think that using the third 500gb as a yet a another copy of things every so often would be a good idea-and unplugging it when not in use. Just make sure that the backup is LOGGED so you can be sure it actually worked. If it simply involves checking to see if this months photos are there thats nic and simple-its more tricky if it involves the same files changing. My personal experience with RAID5 I had a server running RAID5 at home, it ran perfect for over a year (actually, close to two). One night after I went to bed, a drive failed. 3 minutes later another failed. This was a 2 terabyte RAID array. I came down in the morning to my worst nightmare. Every bit of ‘valuable data’ I had in the world was now gone. blogs.zdnet.com fearthecowboy.com	pkm (13527)
868243	2010-03-18 07:44:00	Hi, please advise which option is better :) Current: 2 500GB HDDs . As diff HDDs . 1a: 1st HDD, 1st partition - OS and s/w . 1b: 1st HDD, 2nd partition, backup of 2nd HDD (below) . 1c: 1st HDD, 3rd partition, mucking around, network shared drive . 2: 2nd HDD, not partitioned out . I have GBs of photographs . I use Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom etc etc . . dSLR RAW files as well as scanned film TIF files - 35mm format sizes and larger formats . 50MB or 100MB sizes or greater for larger formats . I use SyncBack to sync "2" to "1b" . I also sync selected files from"1a" to "2" . Proposing: RAID off the motherboard - stripe mode . AFAIK, this would be throwing all my files together . I have a spare 500GB which can be used to sync selected files (treated as a individual HDD) or I can employ RAID 5 . Thanks for your help . Cheers How's your budget? :) Drive 1 - O/S and Apps Drive 2 - Pictures/photo's/data, plus a backup image of Drive 1 (and incremental backups if you have room) Really though, if you're doing Photoshop with big RAW files, you should have a third drive as a scratch drive - preferably a VelociRaptor . And a crapload of RAM too . And a Core i7 etc etc . . . . depends how serious you wanna get .	nofam (9009)
868244	2010-03-18 17:28:00	I'm very green regarding RAID, but as I understand it, your plan would require drives of exactly the same size, so you won't be able to image a 500GB drive onto a drive or partition of less than 500GB. In some ways, the plan seems a step backwards, although a tad more automated for you. Problem with a RAID is that if you make a mistake when saving data, then your backup is immediately mucked up as well. Example... if editting a document and hitting save, instead of renaming the file with Save As... You've lost your original document entirely on both drives with a RAID when you do this (and it's far too easy to do) RAID is unforgiving on user error. It's only advantage is in the event of hardware error.	Paul.Cov (425)
868245	2010-03-18 18:51:00	Why does everybody assume a poster wants to use raid as a backup system on here...not once did the OP mention backup..	SolMiester (139)
868246	2010-03-18 19:06:00	I am happy with my speed. I thought that since I have RAID support why not utilise it. I have a total of 3x Seagate 500GB - SATA2. Ok, maybe not RAID 5 then. How about a RAID stripe mode by lumping all my files together and having the 3rd HD as a standalone drive for software syncing in case the 2 drives fail. Don't want to spend much money, it's just a computer. Not that I don't have funds but a willingness to do. Would the performance be there despite lumping all files together into a RAID stripe mode over my standard setup? I use a bit of Photoshop but not huge amount, I am more into digital enhancement than manipulation. That means dust removals, curves adjustments (film), then I just throw it into Lightroom, not sure if LR use a scratch disk, digital I just use LR. Correction. Currently I sync "2" to "1b" (photos) and I sync "1a" to "2" (My Documents). So I have a copy regardless which drive goes down. Yes I also have a Acronis HDD image of my "1" stored in "1c" and "2". Cheers.	Nomad (952)
868247	2010-03-18 20:18:00	Why does everybody assume a poster wants to use raid as a backup system on here...not once did the OP mention backup.. Because 90% of people asking about raid dont realise it isnt a backup. It would be irresponsible to not mention this. Those that dont ask - already know. From what I know operations like you are doing are CPU limited not hard drive bandwidth limited - unless you are doing a gigapixel image.	pkm (13527)
868248	2010-03-18 20:39:00	Because 90% of people asking about raid dont realise it isnt a backup. It would be irresponsible to not mention this. It would also be irresponsible to not try and talk people out of striping disks when there's no appreciable benefit in most applications, near-double the risk of losing data due to drive failure (striping should actually be called AID 0, because there's no redundancy), and better alternatives for speeding up I/O such as SSD's.	nofam (9009)
868249	2010-03-18 21:16:00	I am happy with my speed. I thought that since I have RAID support why not utilise it. I have a total of 3x Seagate 500GB - SATA2. Ok, maybe not RAID 5 then. How about a RAID stripe mode by lumping all my files together and having the 3rd HD as a standalone drive for software syncing in case the 2 drives fail. Don't want to spend much money, it's just a computer. Not that I don't have funds but a willingness to do. Would the performance be there despite lumping all files together into a RAID stripe mode over my standard setup? I use a bit of Photoshop but not huge amount, I am more into digital enhancement than manipulation. That means dust removals, curves adjustments (film), then I just throw it into Lightroom, not sure if LR use a scratch disk, digital I just use LR. Correction. Currently I sync "2" to "1b" (photos) and I sync "1a" to "2" (My Documents). So I have a copy regardless which drive goes down. Yes I also have a Acronis HDD image of my "1" stored in "1c" and "2". Cheers. RIAD 5 is for fault tolerance with the loss of 1 disk to parity...usually used for DATA, not system drives. RAID 5 will give a performance hit as the CPU\Raid Controller and to calc the parity to the 3rd drive...	SolMiester (139)
868250	2010-03-18 21:17:00	Because 90% of people asking about raid dont realise it isnt a backup. It would be irresponsible to not mention this. Those that dont ask - already know. From what I know operations like you are doing are CPU limited not hard drive bandwidth limited - unless you are doing a gigapixel image. Therefore, as the OP didn't ask, he already knew?	SolMiester (139)
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