Hard Drive Setup Help

[obviouslytom]

I am in a dilemma. I have 2 500gb drives and 2 160gb drives. Currently the 160gb drives are filled with misc items and one of the 500gb drives is the main OS drive and the other 500gb drive I got today.

I want to do a RAID setup but can't decide if I should backup the 160gb drives and use those, or just use 500gb drives as the RAID. The 500gb that is in use has about 250gb of free space on it.

 

[longblock454]

What are you after? Speed or some fault tolerance?

Without knowing I'd suggest using the spare 500 as an offline backup drive.

 

[obviouslytom]

I just want to have some sort of backup in case my main drive decides to crap out. I do a lot of CAD and 3D programs and would feel better having a raid backup of everything

 

[longblock454]

I just want to have some sort of backup in case my main drive decides to crap out. I do a lot of CAD and 3D programs and would feel better having a raid backup of everything

Remember, RAID is not backup. Delete/corrupt the wrong file, your still screwed!

Keep your 500 as an offline backup and you'll be in good shape.

 

[obviouslytom]

I understand that RAID is not a backup, I just wasnt thinking right about it when I typed it up. I would like to do RAID1 and preferably, if at all possible, to do it without doing a reinstall of every program that I have (which is about 250gb worth of stuff)