Basics of RAID

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.'"

Comments

Still a single point of failure

[L-Train8]

With RAID, you still have a single point of failure. Instead of it being your hard drive, it is now your RAID controller. So what is the advantage?

Since a RAID controller doesn't have moving parts, is it less likely than a hard drive to fail?

SCSI RAID Yes, IDE RAID No

[Anonymous Coward]

IDE HDD Talking to IDE Controller:
HDD: I'm gonna need more time for that write
Contr: Yeah OK, go ahead good buddy
Contr: What's up?
Contr: What's up?
Contr: Error: Drive controller timeout error

SCSI HDD Talking to SCSI Controller:
HDD: I'm gonna need more time for that write because I found a bad block
Contr: Yeah OK, go ahead and remap that bad boy
Contr: What's Up?
HDD: Need more time to map that bad block
Contr: Yeah OK, go ahead
HDD: All done, grabbing the next command in the queue

Re:Current HDD prices...

[tool462]

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.