RAID Question

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FlipperBizkut

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 25, 2002
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Hi all. I just had a HDD meltdown this morning. I lost all my data. It was nothing irreplacable, but it did get me thinking about what if my other drive had failed. I do backup from time to time, but it is impractical for me to backup as often as I would need to in order to feel comfortable. So... I was thinking about RAID (mirroring which ever one that is).

The drive that failed was a WD2500KS 250GB SATA3.0G drive. It was my video drive. All of my other stuff (OS, music, etc.) is on my other identical drive. The failed drive is under warrantee, and I will be RMAing it. The problem with that is that it is going to take about 2 weeks for me to get a new drive, and I can not be without the space for that long.

So... I ordered a new Seagate 320GB 7200.10 with perpendicular recording thing-a-ma-bop so that I would have my space available to me as quickly as I could. Now, in 2 weeks, I will have a new WD drive exactly like my other one that I can use to create a RAID setup.

Now that the situation has been described, here are a couple of questions...

1. Will setting up RAID to mirror decrease performance?
2. If the RAID (mirror) is set up, will I be able to sleep at night knowing that my data is safe (unless lightning strikes my computer, or both drives fail at the exact same time)?
3. Can I set up the 2 WD drives in a RAID array, and use the new Seagate seperately (independant of the raid array)?
4. Are there any better solutions that I should consider to insure my data using the 3 drives that I will have available?

By the way, I am going to be running all these drives off of a DFI Lanparty NF4 mobo.

Thanks for taking the time.
 
Another question...

How would I go about taking my currently working WD drive that has 6 partitions, and turning that into a RAID array with the new WD drive? Am I going to have to wipe out the current drive and start over with the new drive, or can I somehow copy everything over and just start it from there with everything already on it?

Thanks again.
 
You'll have to wipe everything and start over.
Your stuff will be relitivily safe i would say you could sleep well at night and with a good surge protector you should be fine. You might want to invest in a dedicated raid controller or if you have win xp pro check out the hack for software raid on toms hardware that is pretty slick and looks very reliable.
 
FlipperBizkut said:
Hi all. I just had a HDD meltdown this morning. I lost all my data. It was nothing irreplacable, but it did get me thinking about what if my other drive had failed. I do backup from time to time, but it is impractical for me to backup as often as I would need to in order to feel comfortable. So... I was thinking about RAID (mirroring which ever one that is).
Click to expand...
RAID, in whatever form is not a replacement for backing data up. It is used as an uptime tool. At best RAID can protect the user from one source of data loss, physical drive failure. It adds at least one more source of data loss at the same time either controller or driver problems.

There are a lot of ways, many of which occur far more frequently that will cause you to lose your data, even if you run RAID-1. Here's a short list:
  • hitting delete on a file that you did not mean to
  • messing around with a partitioning program
  • Installing a new OS
  • Getting a Virus infection
  • Some program doing something stupid and overwriting a file
  • ...

As such, I advise you to be aware that RAID is not backup. Not even in the farthest sense of the word backup.
FlipperBizkut said:
1. Will setting up RAID to mirror decrease performance?
Click to expand...
depends on the RAID card or the software RAID driver as well as the access pattern. It can improve performance in certain cases.
FlipperBizkut said:
2. If the RAID (mirror) is set up, will I be able to sleep at night knowing that my data is safe (unless lightning strikes my computer, or both drives fail at the exact same time)?
Click to expand...
See above: NO
FlipperBizkut said:
3. Can I set up the 2 WD drives in a RAID array, and use the new Seagate seperately (independant of the raid array)?
Click to expand...
Most software and hardware RAID implementations that have been released "recently" allow this.
FlipperBizkut said:
4. Are there any better solutions that I should consider to insure my data using the 3 drives that I will have available?
Click to expand...
Yes: make at least one drive an external drive and disconnect it from the PC between backup cycles. Store it in a safe place, preferably fire resistant/ fireproof.

FlipperBizkut said:
How would I go about taking my currently working WD drive that has 6 partitions, and turning that into a RAID array with the new WD drive? Am I going to have to wipe out the current drive and start over with the new drive, or can I somehow copy everything over and just start it from there with everything already on it?
Click to expand...
If you are planning to run RAID-1, then most recent implementation will allow you to move from a single drive to a RAID-1 array without data loss:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_28159.html
take a look at the user guide for your implementation (linked above)
 
Thanks for the replies!

I think that what I will do is to try and be a bit less lazy. I had around 200GB of video files on the drive that crashed that were just sitting there ready to be burned. I just "hadn't gotten around to it". That could have easily been avoided.

The reason I considered RAID was for my other drive where it is just not practical for me to backup to CD/DVD everytime that I would really want to. I do a lot of coding, and I would hate to lose any of that. Even if I backed up every day, I would still lose up to a whole day's work, and that would p!$$ me off.

So... I think what I will try to start doing (besides burning off my video files asap) is to get a little 1GB USB Flash Drive, and just transfer new stuff to it at the end of each of my computing sessions. Once the flash drive is full, I will burn it off to a DVD and start over.

Of course, my laziness is already starting to take control again, and it leaves this question...

Is there anyway (or any program) that can access certain folders on a HDD and check the files in those folders against the files stored on a flash drive? In other words, is there a way to synchronize the HDD (certain folders) with the flash drive?

Thanks again.
 
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