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2 X 2TB in RAID 1

W

WarpedMonkey

n00b
Joined
Aug 23, 2009
Messages
13
I'm in need of storage with redundancy and I want it to last long enough, hence the 2TB. I've been looking for a good RAID 1 enclosure with eSata and 2TB drives that will work. I was looking at the W20EARS, but it's been brought to my attention that they don't work so good in a RAID environment due to the sleep recovery mode. As for the enclosure, I've found NexStar MX.

I would like to have recommendation for 2TB drives and/or a better casing. I don't want to pay more than 400$ for the whole kit.

Thanks in advance
 
Is this for home or business? Do you have a backup separate from the RAID1?

Could you tell me about sleep recovery mode? Don't you just mean the absence of TLER/CCTL?

You could avoid all these issues if you just get two 2TB drives where one is a backup in another system. Would provide a lot more protection than RAID1, but no uptime guarantee.
 
It's for home use. I want to store all my data on it (bunch of home movies, steam games, photos, etc.) I meant the TLER I think, people are saying that the RAID thinks the hard drive is dead since it doesn't respond.
 
Well as said, your life could be easier without RAID. If 2TB is enough storage for you, then just go by a single 2TB drive (5400rpm) and buy another to use as backup. That would be very safe, especially if the backup disk is in another system; or put it in an external casing so you can switch it off and disconnect it from your main computer.

This would make more sense than RAID1 to me, would consume less power, would still be less expensive since you don't need RAID-edition (TLER/CCTL) disks and for a home user would make more sense. Unless you need more space than 2TB; but even then a RAID0 + backup would be better than a big RAID0+1 or RAID5 for example.

Your data could still be in danger when using onboard RAID1 and non-RAID edition disks. This is not because the normal Harddrives do anything wrong; this is because the software RAID and hardware RAID implementations common on Windows do not allow a disk to not respond for up to a minute.

RAID implementations on non-Windows operating systems would handle non-RAID edition disks fine in RAID arrays, without split or broken arrays which is common on Windows onboard RAID.

So i say, save yourself the trouble of poor quality RAID solutions; a simple 2TB disk + 2TB backup would do wonders. Why 5400rpm and not 7200rpm? Well unless you're using it as system disk, it wouldn't really matter. Your videos wouldn't play any faster, your music won't sound any better. Large files are dealt fine on 5400rpm disks; it's the access times that suffer the most, making them less fast for the function of a system disk; which require the disks to do a lot more seeking.
 
sub.mesa is right. Your best bet is to just buy two drives and use one to back up the other.

I would recommend that you don't keep your Backup drive plugged in except for when you are running a backup. Since you got a docking station instead of an enclosure, you will need to find a safe place to store the backup drive when it is not in use.
 
sub.mesa is right. Your best bet is to just buy two drives and use one to back up the other.
Click to expand...

Agreed. A RAID is not a backup. It does not prevent you from deleting everything, it does not prevent filesystem corruption, it does not prevent a virus destroying all of your data.
 
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