# future new computer: RAID 1 drive?



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

I have been doing some research into a better backup system for my growing collection of digital files. My current computer works well but is getting old and may need to be replaced at some point in the future. I generally like to use computers (like anything else) until they break or have too many problems and are no longer easy or practical to fix.

Right now, my files are on one external hard drive (drive F through File Manager) which I periodically back up to DVDs. It is getting to be more difficult all the time as the number of files continues to grow.

So a friend suggested a RAID drive for a future computer. In the research I've done it appears RAID 1 will work best. That is, mirrored drives, so that when I add or do other file operations, that is automatically reflected on both drives without doing any further steps.

Downsides if computer or drive is damaged or stolen, what happens to one will most likely happen to both. So I would still need to do some sort of a manual backup as I do now and keep the backup in some other location. Perhaps I could repurpose my existing external hard drive and use it as a third backup by manually copying the files on a regular basis.

Do any of you techie people have any comments or disagreements with my line of thinking? Are these drives expensive? Is RAID the best solution? (I am not willing to have a 3rd party host my backups)


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

So the files are currently on your computer + an external hard drive + DVDs? Or just on the external drive + DVDs?

Do you store the DVDs offsite or just hide them somewhere in the house?

I'm not familiar with RAID drives although a mirror system sounds like it would nice and easy to keep things up to date.

What about using an external hard drive as an offsite backup? Maybe this is what you meant when you said "repurpose my existing hard drive?". Perhaps put it in a safe deposit box and then go get it every N months to keep it up to date?

Might be a bit of work, but I don't see any other good alternatives for offsite storage if you aren't willing to use a 3rd party host.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I'm the same way - using computers until they practically die. It bit me last time though. I still can't believe it... lost both my laptop and external drives at the same time as my desktop was being replaced. Lost all my data, the only pictures I still have were those I uploaded 

My new desktop has 6 green HDDs in RAID (I forget which one at the moment) It can lose a drive or 2 and apparently rebuild itself if I replace the drive. I looked into all different kinds of NAS and backup devices and long story short you get much more bang for buck with a desktop. Pictures and such are backed up manually on an external but there are ways to auto sync that stuff now. I strongly recommend buying the parts individually from a site like newegg or a local computer store. I found efficient and quiet components for much cheaper than what you'd find in FS etc. If you need a hand just let me know

Apparently Iceland is converting the old NATO base into a datacenter that runs on geo thermal power. I've been to that base I would like to have my data either there or underground in North Bay.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I think you'd be better off with cloud-based storage. Generally speaking, a lot of the things that can go wrong with your computer are based on location, that is, multiple hard-drives in the same location won't offer a great deal of protection.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

andrewf said:


> I think you'd be better off with cloud-based storage. Generally speaking, a lot of the things that can go wrong with your computer are based on location, that is, multiple hard-drives in the same location won't offer a great deal of protection.


I'm a huge fan of the cloud. Problem is in Canada we have Bell/Rogers imposing 80GB caps and now you want to waste that whenever you access your data not to mention Canada's archaic upload speeds


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Royal has said "no third party hosts" so cloud storage is ruled out. I can see the reasoning behind this for both security concerns and longevity issues (what happens when your cloud host goes out of business or decides to change their offerings, or raises their prices, etc).

You can use a program like SyncBack SE to keep your files and an external hard disk (or a USB key) synchronized with no need to do manual backups.

I personally prefer synchronization to backup; it's possible that I might want to go back and retrieve an earlier version of a file, but I haven't needed to do that in 20 years so it seems highly unlikely that I would need to in the future. The only risk with synchronization is that if your computer gets infected then once you synchronize with your external drive it will be infected too. So a combination of backup and synchronization might be smart. 

I have a 64 gig encrypted USB key that I keep with me at all times; I keep my work files synchronized to that. For my Mac I use Time Machine, which automatically backs up everything to an external hard drive and allows me to go back in time to recover previous versions of files or to restore my system to any previous state. And I do use cloud storage for my most important files that really need to have an offsite backup. If the house burned down and I lost all my music, photos, etc., it would be a shame but nothing more than that. But losing my financial files, important records, and documentation of my belongings etc. would be worse, so I keep those stored in the cloud.

Normal consumer DVDs are not a reliable backup medium; they have an expected reliable life of maybe 10 years.


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## ddkay (Nov 20, 2010)

How large is your collection of digital files?

RAID 1 isn't generally used outside database environments, and it's not really popular because if you need scaling it's the most expensive implementation. Level 1 can protect you from single drive failure but it won't protect you from things like software failure, inadvertently changing/deleting stuff or file corruption.

I don't generate a ton of data, so the easiest thing for me to do is nightly incremental backup. You can set that up manually in Windows, or use a program like xcopy or SyncBack SE. rsync is popular for *nix. Whatever directories I think are important I'll sync between my laptop and a 32GB thumb drive.

If you need a free solution for cross-platform file encryption I also recommend using TrueCrypt containers, great program and you won't have to worry about physical loss/theft (unless you used a weak password). You can also use a TrueCrypt container on cloud-based hosts like dropbox.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

ddkay said:


> If you need a free solution for cross-platform file encryption I also recommend using TrueCrypt containers, great program and you won't have to worry about physical loss/theft (unless you used a weak password).


I love TrueCrypt as well, although note that you can't use it in any practical way to encrypt a thumb drive unless you create a bunch of separate encrypted containers, because thumb drives are typically formatted in FAT32, which has a file size restriction (something 2 or 4 gigabytes). I learned this the hard way. It works great for hard disks etc., but not unfortunately for thumb drives.


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## ddkay (Nov 20, 2010)

Yeah that's a good point, you'd need the intention to use said thumb drive exclusively for backup and reformat it from FAT32 to NTFS to get around the 4GB file size limit.


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## LBCfan (Jan 13, 2011)

It depends on a lot of things:

How many files?
How much aggregate data?
How often are files changed?
How valuable is the data (meaning how much are you willing to spend)?
How fast must restoration be?


RAID 1 will protect against a disk hardware failure, period. Actually, all RAID implementations do that and nothing more. How many have you had and did you have backups? Use your answer to decide if it's what you want. 

What other data loss situations have you faced or do you want to protect against? There are many, many other backup strategies. Your requirements will help determine your needs. What are you protecting and against what? The answer to that question will help suggest a solution.


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## NorthernRaven (Aug 4, 2010)

LBCfan said:


> RAID 1 will protect against a disk hardware failure, period. Actually, all RAID implementations do that and nothing more.


To be picky, RAID 0 doesn't have any fault tolerance - it just stripes data across multiple disks.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

There are Canadian ISPs that offer unlimited data transfer, and are cheaper than Rogers/Bell. I use one. 

But then, I have very few essential files.


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## Daryl-Manitoba (Sep 14, 2010)

I bought one of these about 6 years ago

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=4

Essentially it is a computer that you setup network shares on. Every couple years I replace the drives with the new ~$100 drives of the day. First I had 4x80GB, next I got 4x320GB, 4x750GB and now I'm starting to look at 4x2TB. I was looking for a system that would allow me to upgrade my HDs without having to find a temporary home for all my data while I rebuilt my system.

These drives feature Xraid 5 which is essentially raid 5 but with auto expand capabilities. When I upgrade all I do is replace drive 1 with the new drive and wait 8 hours for the data to be transfered across. I do this with each of the remaining drives and the do one final reboot which auto expands the volumes to the new size of the drives over the course of about 12 hours.

There is a lot of waiting to when doing upgrades but I found this a lot more convenient than trying to rehome all my current data.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Thanks for all the comments. I'll consider everything that was said but will repeat that I am NOT interested in storing my data with any 3rd party. I am certainly willing to pay for the correct hardware for my purposes. 

In response to LBCFan, that is exactly what I want to protect against. I have many photo files stored in many directories that are being updated on a weekly basis with new folders/contents. Restoration does not need to be instant. I have had no failures in the past, touch wood, but I just feel a bit vulnerable with the one external hard drive. If it craps out one day, I'll only have the data since previous DVD backup.


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