What would you do with a new 1TB WD Blue, and a used one for fun?

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thenetvines

thenetvines

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Feb 9, 2009
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So guys, I've never done a RAID or a NAS before, I've only read about them. I have a 256GB SSD EVO as a primary drive with Windows 8.1.

A used 1TB WD Blue drive that I use to store all my media for almost 2 years (upnp that media over WIFI to an android TV box, or a ps3, but sucks for big MKV files over 10G in size, even with 35Mb of broadband download speeds, and 35 up).

An a brand new 1TB WD Blue.

Should I play around with a NAS, RAID them, or simply outlive the used drive, and replace it later with the new one? Would combining these 2 drives diminish their life cycle greatly? How long, on average, does one of these drives usually last for?
 
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mace200200
RAID 0 doesn't diminish life cycles, you have two drives working instead of one but each one is only reading half as much as it normally would. Also, if you want to set up RAID, you'll have to wipe your old drive, you could extend the volume so your two drives share one drive letter in windows, but if you do that if one goes down you lose data off both drives (I think, but I'm not sure). I would just use both drives with separate letters, then you can only loss half of your data at a time.
Or you can setup a NAS if you have a router with a usb port it's very easy. For a NAS it's cool to have RAID 5 (with three drives) then you get stripping with parity, so you get increased performance and you don't lose data if one drive goes down.
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mace200200

mace200200

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Jun 5, 2012
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RAID 0 doesn't diminish life cycles, you have two drives working instead of one but each one is only reading half as much as it normally would. Also, if you want to set up RAID, you'll have to wipe your old drive, you could extend the volume so your two drives share one drive letter in windows, but if you do that if one goes down you lose data off both drives (I think, but I'm not sure). I would just use both drives with separate letters, then you can only loss half of your data at a time.
Or you can setup a NAS if you have a router with a usb port it's very easy. For a NAS it's cool to have RAID 5 (with three drives) then you get stripping with parity, so you get increased performance and you don't lose data if one drive goes down.
 
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house70

house70

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Apr 21, 2010
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It might be cool to have RAID 5, but keep in mind one particular type of disaster scenario which leads you to lose all the data: controller failure. Even after replacing it, re-building the RAID will lead to data loss. Since no drive has a full copy of the data, means you're bound to lose it. It has happened to me in the past, and even with specialized software the data recovery was only partial. That's why I believe that for pure backup purpose RAID 1 is king.
 
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