suitable hdds for raid 1

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flank2

flank2

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Feb 18, 2008
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So I am looking for a pair of hard drives that would work for a simple raid 1 array. I've come across the WD red series of drives that are apparently designed for raid applications but does anyone know if the WD red drives would be ok to create a raid 1 array and install an operating system on it?
 
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nukemaster
I am not 100% sure about your setup(never used that card), but in basic software raid, I have used black without any kind of errors or timeouts.

While raid1 has redundancy, it is no replacement for a backup system because if the drive gets infected or has software erase files, it will do it to both drives. It does save you if you loose a drive from failure.
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Yes that would work fine in raid1 as would most drives to be honest.

Here is the issue.

1. Raid 1 does not tend to add speed, but does allow single drive failure protection(both drives have the exact same data).
2. WDC red's are designed for quiet use so the access times are VERY high for an OS drive.

You may want to look at blacks(hell blue would be faster than red as an OS drive) for better speed and raid0 if you want sequential throughput(make sure you have a backup plan as one drive failing in raid0 = data loss).

For a storage drive the Reds are great(low power and less noise in part thanks to the slower seek speeds).

Also note that even an entry level ssd, while not as fast in sequential read/writes will win on random read/writes and thus be a better OS/program drive.
 
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flank2

flank2

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I realize that raid 1 isn't for performance. I am thinking that I will use raid 1 to provide a bit of redundancy. This is my computer that does a lot of downloading and will have at most 1 VM running at the same time. I'd like to get at least around 500gb of drive space. And I've seen the 1tb WD red's on sale for ~$65 which isnt a bad price. But whatever drives I end up getting will be attached to a dell perc 5i to handle the raid. I thought that TLER was still an issue and If raid is going to be utilized then so should a drive with TLER enabled?

Am I going about this wrong? Should I just use a single drive and implement a backup schedule? How would you go about drive configure for my situation?
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
I am not 100% sure about your setup(never used that card), but in basic software raid, I have used black without any kind of errors or timeouts.

While raid1 has redundancy, it is no replacement for a backup system because if the drive gets infected or has software erase files, it will do it to both drives. It does save you if you loose a drive from failure.
 
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