Anyone using Raid-1?

[georgetok]

Hi,

I am ordering a new Dell system with Raid-1 but not sure of Raid-1's pros & cons.

The main reason is data security. But few questions.

(1) Currently I clone my HDD twice a week as a back up using Acronis True Image software. Could I still do that by removing one of the Raid 1 drive OR the Raid -1 configuration will duplicate the new 3rd drive when I remove the 2nd drive ?

(2) Could I remove the Raid -1 configuration in case if I don't like it for any reasons ? In that case could I continue on cloning the drive as I am doing currently using Acronis ?

(3) Any other pros or cons ?

Thank You.

 

[DelJo63]

search the board for raid-1 - - there's lots to consider.

First and foremost, RAID-1 is not a substitute for backups.
Consider, raid-1 duplicates every write to the alternate drive(s). Question: what if that block is corrupt?
A: you have multiple occurances of bad data and without a backup with multiple versions over time, there is no recovery

Raid-1 is a fault tolerance solution for servers, not a backup tool for home users.

Full images via Acronis or Ghost is wastful of time and resources.

Suggest you research backup techniques {Full, Incremental, differential} and protect your resources

1. full image copy 2-3 times a year to ensure a system level recovery
2. backup just user data more frequently with a good backup tool to protect those precious pictures et al

 

[georgetok]

Good suggestions but here is what I need.

New data comes in my computer every minute like stock market data, charts etc plus word documents I make everyday.

In case of a disaster I need immediate exact copy of my HDD. Looking for old back ups & missing even few hours of data creates trouble for me.

So I make a clone of my HDD twice a week with extra 2 HDD. But that is not suffcient. Even then I would be missing data.

So need a solid back up plan where I have a cloneo f HDD available to me 24 Hrs a day, 7 days a week & all year around.

I thought Raid-1 would provide that security along with my 2 clonning per week. Heck I don't mind getting 7 HDD & replace one every night from Raid-1. That would give me real peace of mind. In worst scenario, I would miss only one days data.

Can you now suggest that would satisfy these requirements ?

Thank You.

 

[DelJo63]

Heck I don't mind getting 7 HDD & replace one every night from Raid-1. That would give me real peace of mind. In worst scenario, I would miss only one days data.

A tad expensive (7 hdds) and I would think you would need the HOT SWAP feature to make
this easy to do. Without HS, you have to do the swap manually, breaking the 'mirror', remove, insert, format, and finally resycn; all while offline.

You are still exposed to the file corruption problem noted originally.

If you have multiple systems on the same lan, you might like to thing about replication of data files as an alternative.