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Basics of RAID

Posted by Zonk on from the brush-up-on-the-essentials dept.

Doggie Fizzle writes "RAID has been common in business environments for ages, and is now becoming more viable and popular for personal computers. This article focuses on the the basics of RAID, and spells things out for beginners or tech veterans. From the article: 'The benefits of RAID over a single drive system far outweigh the extra consideration required during installation. Losing data once due to hard drive failure may be all that is required to convince anyone that RAID is right for them, but why wait until that happens.'"

5 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Holy Ads, bat-man! by temojen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's an awful lot of ads for a re-hash of well-known info. Are the editors sure this is frontpage worthy? It looks like a blatant attempt to get page views to me.

  2. Or... by Joe5678 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A source of information with far better content, that isn't simply an excuse to sell ads.

    Wikipedia

  3. RAID for "personal computers"? but why? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Okay I guess it appeals to geeks and fancy computer modders and all. But really, when it comes down to it, a decent main hard-disk, a tray in the second bay for backup hard-disks, and a reasonable backup regimen that people keep up is all a "personal" computer user needs.

    Personally, I have 3 backup hard-disks, one that keeps a "clean" base system that I update every 6 months or so, and 2 that I do full differential backups on every 3 days. The "clean" hard-disk is kept off-site, and a script tells me when to do the backups on the other 2. And for very very important files, I just write them on a CD on the spot.

    With that, I've yet to lose a single file since I started using Linux in 93 or 94. My solution is cheap and doesn't involve fancy raiding. And I'm quite sure I overdo it, most people could do just fine with one main hard-disk, one backup hard-disk and a little discipline.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. Re:Current HDD prices... by tool462 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You may already know this, but it's worth mentioning to others who read this that may not. Your scheme works great to back up your data in the event of hardware failure, but in the event a virus or errant program corrupts the data, you'll still be wanting the DVD backups. That's because if a virus corrupts some files, it's doing the same thing on both drives, rendering the back up useless. RAID mirroring handles only one very specific type of data security. It's a very useful one, but it's important to understand the limitations or you can get bitten hard.

    Alternatively to DVD backups, you can also sync up your data on a regular basis to an external hard drive. This doesn't protect you if your house burns down, like DVD backups kept in a safety deposit box would do, but it does help you restore lost data after it gets corrupted.

    Ultimately, all these solutions require varying amounts of money, time, and effort, so you just have to decide what level of security you require and what you are willing to pay for it.

  5. Re:Current HDD prices... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ultimately, what it comes down to is that mirroring merely makes the hardware more reliable, it is not a backup technique.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.