Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 108152 2010-03-16 04:38:00 Virtues/drawbacks of separate OS and Program partitions Billy T (70) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
867570 2010-03-17 03:22:00 Beware RAID is not data backup:

en.wikipedia.org

Indeed - I'm actually starting to think in a home environment, it's pointless. I've never liked RAID 0, and the speed gains were always debatable unless you were doing a crapload of I/O's; if read/write speed is an issue, get a Velociraptor or better yet a TRIM-capable SSD.

Even RAID 1 is pretty pointless given the massive size and reliability of modern HDD's - doing a weekly full image of your system drive, + n incrementals a day wouldn't fill modern drive's that quickly.

External backups are more for theft/fire/long-term backup etc than for full data recovery IMO.
nofam (9009)
867571 2010-03-17 03:41:00 My Drive layout is as follows;

160 GB (10,000rpm) for OS/Progs/Working data
USB 4 GB for Windows Caching
USB 16 GB for Essential Data (must not lose)
USB 160 GB for Important Data + copy of Essential Data
USB 1 TB for all remaining data + copy of importanta data and 2nd copy of essential data

I am planning on getting a 100+ GB SSD later and I will move my OS/Progs onto that and use the 160 GB for working data.
KiwiTT_NZ (233)
867572 2010-03-17 04:57:00 Indeed - I'm actually starting to think in a home environment, it's pointless. I've never liked RAID 0, and the speed gains were always debatable unless you were doing a crapload of I/O's; if read/write speed is an issue, get a Velociraptor or better yet a TRIM-capable SSD.

Even RAID 1 is pretty pointless given the massive size and reliability of modern HDD's - doing a weekly full image of your system drive, + n incrementals a day wouldn't fill modern drive's that quickly.

External backups are more for theft/fire/long-term backup etc than for full data recovery IMO.

The whole point of Raid 1 is tolerance, you don't need to worry about a drive failing..
SolMiester (139)
867573 2010-03-17 06:17:00 The whole point of Raid 1 is tolerance, you don't need to worry about a drive failing..

For sure Sol, but mirroring only protects you from hardware failure; data corruption/accidental deletions etc occur on both spindles at the same time, so it's no help. And I think corruption/deletion is more likely in a home environment, especially given how reliable modern drives are.

Would always use mirrors in a server though, usually with hotspares - but that's for systems that require 4-nines uptime.
nofam (9009)
867574 2010-03-18 00:43:00 For sure Sol, but mirroring only protects you from hardware failure; data corruption/accidental deletions etc occur on both spindles at the same time, so it's no help. And I think corruption/deletion is more likely in a home environment, especially given how reliable modern drives are.

Would always use mirrors in a server though, usually with hotspares - but that's for systems that require 4-nines uptime.

Yes, all true, however, if you have data corruption or drive failure you can still continue...backup is an entirely difference matter. I have a NAS device attached to the network for that, however, i'd be pissed if I had to rebuild due to drive failure, its just a pain in the backside...
SolMiester (139)
867575 2010-03-18 00:50:00 I'd create two partitions on one of the 650 Gig drives and/or leave some unallocated space in case I want to dual boot etc.

Install the O/S and programs on the first partition and put data on the second.

Clone the first physical drive to the other physical drive.
Sweep (90)
867576 2010-03-18 09:43:00 The Raid installation on the OS and Data drivers is solely for protection against drive failure. Other systems will be installed for data protection.

I will set up incremental backups etc as soon as I get it all going. I'm still working on my old machine while I set this one up with all my programs etc. Each drive will be in 6 partitions as I find that helps me to keep things in order, for example one will be dedicated to images and another to video etc. My External USB Backup drive is in 7 partitions. each of 50GB.

Cheers

Billy 8-{)
Billy T (70)
1 2 3