Raid or Backup?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by BubbleBlower, Feb 21, 2005.

  1. BubbleBlower

    BubbleBlower Private E-2

    Hi all

    I would appreciate any help you can give me on this problem.

    Building a pc for a friend, but he wants to be able to have a complete back-up of his hard drive available for use but kept in a safe in case of major hardware crash or theft.

    Board is Asus P5GD2 which has 2 sata controllers on board.
    2 * 160gb Maxtor SATA HDD (1 in removable caddy)
    Dual layer DVDrw
    2gb DDR2
    ATI radeon PCIE X800 GT graphics.

    What is the best way to set this machine up according to his requirement?

    If I use Raid 1 to have an identical copy can he then remove the HDD and if so will any changes to the drive whilst it is in the safe be automatically copied over from the first drive?

    Not having set up a raid array using a removable disk I am a tad confused. Also which of the onboard SATA controllers should I use for these drives?

    If Raid won't work in this manner what do you recommend?
     
  2. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    RAID would be a good solution, RAID1 as you say. Provided your controller card (might be built in) supports RAID1, you'd be good to go. But most onboard SATA/RAID cards don't support raid1, only raid0 (striping no mirroring).

    Provided the controller card won't complain about hotplugging (that is if you are going to remove the drive in the caddy while the machine is in use), you should be okay. But.... I don't know of any cheap controller cards that will let you do that, most are reserved for use in servers and as such very expensive.

    But you will almost certainly need a seperate PCI controller card if you want to use raid1.
     
  3. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    I Wouldnt bother hes losing half of his diskspace,I think he should just set them up as 2 different drives any important files can be copied to the other drive or make back up with the dvdrw.thats 320gb of space I wouldnt know what to do with 160gb. :rolleyes:
     
  4. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Guh.... 160GB is fine if you need a backup drive... 320GB is a lot of space, if you ask me...
     
  5. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    Yeh I contradicted myself in the same sentence "doh"I was just givin my opinion if it was my comp id RMA them both and get one 70gig raptor wish I could offer advice on settin up a raid 1.
     
  6. BubbleBlower

    BubbleBlower Private E-2

    Both of the onboard controller cards support raid1.

    What I am mainly concerned about with using raid was what happens to any changes made to the first drive when the 2nd drive is not in the machine. Will the second drive be automatically updated when it is replaced? or will only future changes be copied over?

    At this stage 160GB is large enough but it is likely that at least 2 more drives will be added in the near future as a 2nd array.

    It is not the important files he is concerned about Ricky it is the complete drive. He has recently had a hard drive crash which resulted in a complete re-install of windows, software, restore of data files from back-up etc and he doesn't want to go through that again due to the down time of the machine.
     
  7. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    Yeh I see what you mean,you could easily make a mirror of the old drive once the down drive is replaced but I dont know wether it will be recognized again as a raid setup,interesting?you could do a test do a basic win install unplug one drive then add a driver to one,plug in the other drive an see if it instantly writes itself to the other drive or creates a conflict in the raid setup,surely the guys who invented it would have thought of this eventually so I think the raid would still work or there is some raid restore tool that can be used.

    Thats what Id do in the comfort of my own home but because its someone elses you dont wanna spend hours installing win then look like a dork when it dosent work sorry man best I got never used raid check the controllers website in raid 1 they'll know something. :(
     
  8. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Hum, I see your prediciment.

    Well... raid1 will only "mirror" while the drive is in use as part of an array. You would be able to boot from either hard drive on its own not being in an array, should one of them become damaged. However, if you removed a drive and used the other for a while, they would (obviously) become out of date. I *think* you'd have to format and re-mirror the drive in order to bring it back up to date.

    With hotplugging setups, if a drive becomes damaged all you do is yank the drive out, and stick a new one in there and the RAID hardware will mirror the drive automatically. But as I said, you would need a hardware controller card to do that, I think.
     
  9. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    I would be more inclined to go with backup or imaging software rather than go the Raid1 route, that way you can easily utilise a hotplugable HD to store drive images on then store in a safe place.


    Acronis True Image is a fav of mine, as I went with Raid0 for speed and use a separate HD and DVDs to store HD images on a weekly basis or when I do updating or new software instalation.

    To recover an image takes no time at all and then your back up and running just as if you never had a fault.
     
  10. BubbleBlower

    BubbleBlower Private E-2

    Is Acronis better than ghost?
     
  11. ASUS

    ASUS MajorGeek

    Dito on Halo post.
    Acronis here.
    Acronis is simple to use.
     
  12. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    I prefer Acronis like ASUS said its quick and easy, but friends have Ghost 2005 and say its alot better now than it used to be, I may try it one day to see.
     
  13. Konos

    Konos Private E-2

    Only thing I don't like about RAID 1 is if you have both drives hanging off the 1 controller card. If something happens with the controller and you start getting corrupt data being written to both drives in the array then you're completely screwed. We actually had this happen to us here in our shop. I would say run the RAID 1, but toss in a IDE hard drive and run a daily or weekly backup with just the critical data "just in case".
     
  14. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    The only times I have lost HD's is to a power surge,power cut,blown house fuse"all with surge protector" and blown psu and a few that were dead on arrival I havn't had a HD just die on its own "touch wood"
    So in all cases I would have lost 2 HD's anyway backup included.
    Thats one of the reasons I dont use raid.Just backup important stuff.
     

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