What's the best RAID.?

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Syblemz

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Jul 14, 2013
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Hello,

I am going to build a computer shortly for general use, gaming and video watching/editing, but I was just wondering what the best RAID for storing data is. I want it to be relatively fast and safe. Would I be better off having 2 or more HDD's mirroring or just manually taking regular backups, just to be safe in case one fails.

Away from that, I will have a seperate stand alone 250GB SSD purely for the OS (windows 7).

And, what are the actual chances a HDD will fail?

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
USAFRet
Once a month or so, create a new image of your boot drive. CloneZilla, DriveimageXML, etc can do this easily.
Use this in case of a fail of the boot drive.

For your personal data...just a regular backup. Currently, I use SyncBack Free.
Point it at a source and target folder, give it a schedule, and it copies over any new or changed.

My schedule is thus:
Every 12 hours, copy to another drive in the same system.
Every night (3AM) copy to an external drive on another PC on the LAN.

So I always have 3 copies. The regular one, the one on secondary drive, and the one on the secondary PC. Very, very unlikely all 3 drives would fail at the same time.

And they are just regular files. No RAID needed, and no "Windows backup"...
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Traciatim

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Nov 11, 2006
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The best RAID is no RAID. Unless you are doing something very specifica that you know one drive can't handle then it's probably best to avoid the RAID all together. If you want to keep data safe you back it up to a location that your machine is not. If you want just to keep data safe through a drive failure you just have multiple copies of it on two drives (You can set up a syncing system to sync some folders every night).

If for instance you need 8TB of storage in a single volume with the data relatively safe while being able to suffer through a a single or multiple drive failure yet have to have access to all of it at all times... then sure, look in to RAID. If you need to have sequential write speeds of 750MB a second to capture uncompressed 4k HD video, then sure look in to a RAID.

For a day to day use machine under normal 'put my stuff on it and keep it there' scenarios it's generally not worth the hassle.

 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
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Mar 16, 2013
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Once a month or so, create a new image of your boot drive. CloneZilla, DriveimageXML, etc can do this easily.
Use this in case of a fail of the boot drive.

For your personal data...just a regular backup. Currently, I use SyncBack Free.
Point it at a source and target folder, give it a schedule, and it copies over any new or changed.

My schedule is thus:
Every 12 hours, copy to another drive in the same system.
Every night (3AM) copy to an external drive on another PC on the LAN.

So I always have 3 copies. The regular one, the one on secondary drive, and the one on the secondary PC. Very, very unlikely all 3 drives would fail at the same time.

And they are just regular files. No RAID needed, and no "Windows backup" foolishness. If needed, I can read those files from any PC. Windows, Linux, whatever.
 
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Syblemz

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Jul 14, 2013
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Thanks both of you, I wont use RAID, instead I'll take regular backups. Also, USAFRet, what if your computer is not on at 3AM does it do it when its turned on next or how does that work?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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My PC and the target PC (media server and general house file server) are always on. If it fails at 3AM, it tries again on the next night.
You can set that time to whatever you want. Doesn't have to be 3AM. Or do it on demand. Click a button, poof...it pushes all current new and updated files to the target. I prefer it to do it on its own. Then I don't have to worry about it.
 
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