Which raid to use?

[JB4times4]

I've got a 1 TB drive I'm using for media storage, and it's full. I've had the last 4 hard drives I've owned die on me, so I'm looking at getting at least 2 TB going in a raid to hopefully prevent data loss again. What raid would you suggest and what hardware would you suggest with that?

current mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419
current hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490&cm_re=caviar_green-_-22-136-490-_-Product

 

[gtvr]

a pair of 1gb drives in raid 1 gives you 1gb storage, but with redundancy. A pair of 1tb in raid 0 gives you 2tb storage, but no redundancy (either drive fails, you are out of luck).

If you NEED 2tb, I would just stick with 2 individual 1tb drives, no raid, and back up frequently. Make sure you have good power to your PC (surge protector or small UPS).

Also, the green/5400 rpm drives are a bit slower.

 

[JB4times4]

a pair of 1gb drives in raid 1 gives you 1gb storage, but with redundancy. A pair of 1tb in raid 0 gives you 2tb storage, but no redundancy (either drive fails, you are out of luck).

If you NEED 2tb, I would just stick with 2 individual 1tb drives, no raid, and back up frequently. Make sure you have good power to your PC (surge protector or small UPS).

Also, the green/5400 rpm drives are a bit slower.

Ya, I know they are a little slower but as it's just a storage drive, I didn't mind much. Plus I picked it up for $30 with an awesome coupon a while back.

I was looking at possibly doing a raid 5 with 3 TB drives? I would then need a raid controller, which I'm not sure what to look for in those if I went that route. The other thing I was looking at is 4 1TB drives in raid 10, because my motherboard supports raid 10. What do you think of these options?

 

[gtvr]

10 is pretty high performance, but now you need 4x1tb drives for 2tb storage.

5 wouldn't be a bad option if your MB supported it. Remember though, RAID is never a substitute for backup.

 

[JB4times4]

10 is pretty high performance, but now you need 4x1tb drives for 2tb storage.

5 wouldn't be a bad option if your MB supported it. Remember though, RAID is never a substitute for backup.

Well, raid is the next best option right? It's just ridiculous to try and back up 1 TB of stuff I would think.

 

[gtvr]

raid protects against disk failure, which is good as far as it goes. It doesn't protect against accidental deletion, file system corruption, viruses that delete stuff, fire, theft, etc.

It's a matter of weighing the cost of losing data, the likelihood of each event happening, vs. the cost of some backup media/devices. At least back up things you couldn't live without.

 

[JB4times4]

Disk failure is all I'm really worried about. Add speed and size to it, and that is what I'm trying to figure out.

 

[geofelt]

Disk failure is all I'm really worried about. Add speed and size to it, and that is what I'm trying to figure out.

The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often your case seems to be an exception.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

An external backup does not need to be the same size as the original since backups will normally be compressed.

Also, you might look for any possible heat related issues. Inadequate cooling is the big enemy of drive reliability.

 

[JB4times4]

I went with the antec 900 II case because I was worried about heat. Both of your guys' information has been really helpful thanks!

 

[JB4times4]

Best answer selected by JB4times4.