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RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller?
NicApicella writes "My new system has two sparklin' SATA drives which I would like to mirror. After having been burned by a not-so-cheap, dedicated RAID controller, I have been pointed to software RAID solutions. I now stand in front of two choices for setting up my RAID: a Windows 7 RC software RAID or a hardware RAID done by the cheap integrated RAID controller of my motherboard. Based on past experiences, I have decided that only my data is worth saving — that's why the RAID should mirror two disks (FAT32) that are not the boot disk (i.e. do not contain an OS or any fancy stuff). Of course, such a setup should secure my data; should a drive crash, I want the system up and running in no time. Even more importantly, I want any drive and its data to be as safe and portable as possible (that's the reason for choosing FAT32), even if the OS or the controller screw up big time. So, which should I choose? Who should I trust more, Microsoft's Windows 7 or possibly the cheapest RAID controller on the market? Are there other cheap solutions?"
Not if you've got a link. Are you american ? Okay, so that was under the beltline, ignore :-)
(but there's some truth to it, --- I've got only 10Mbps upload, but that's because I've got the -slowest- link offered by my isp, the other options are 25 or 100.
I know Microsoft has trained everyone on the gospel of NTFS but it isn't a big selling point. One difference is that FAT gives you...
Another thing vFAT gives you is a wonderful file system so innovative that Microsoft can sue Tom Tom for using it.
>If you're using Vista or above,
Yes, as a matter of fact I do use FreeBSD.
hawk
While the op is asking about RAID it is clear that RAID is only one third of what people require. They require backup, disaster recover, and availability. RAID only addresses availability. If you want RAID done correctly add a multi-port controller (preferably one that is compatible with your motherboard RAID) and mirror two drives with a hot spare (3 minimum). That way the hot spare will auto sync to the working drive after a failure and be there if the second master drive fails shortly thereafter. That will provide excellent availability, but backup and disaster recovery are another matter.
Disclaimer: I'm the CTO of vitalEsafe. Having watched clients struggle with backups and disaster recovery for the last 27+ years. I finally decided (4 years ago) that nobody was providing the solution that people actually needed, so I designed one from the ground up.
Based on vitalEsafe's secure web services platform, shadowSafe address ALL the requirements of the vast majority of users. It is backup and disaster recovery as a service (nothing to purchase). We use StorageCraft's excellent ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software married with secure storage of your backups on our remote servers (which are backed up using Amazon S3). Data is fully encrypted and stored for you in the event of a catastrophic failure and a local copy is maintained for all those "other" times where you need to recover a file, volume, or an entire machine. No bandwidth limitations like some online backup systems out there. If you go out of business, you have a fully functioning backup and disaster recovery system on your system that is completely independent of vitalEsafe (without the catastrophic recovery option of course). Backups can even be imported into VMware virtual machine a booted in minutes.
Based on the list of potential failures shown above (and with one addition, catastrophic event), here is how shadowSafe address each problem:
1) Aw sh1tz. "I didn't mean to delete that folder"... or "Whoops! I formatted the wrong drive", "I saved the wrong version of the file!", whatever. Although I *myself* don't have this happen often, it does happen. And even in my case I've lost about as much useful information this way as by drives dying. Users delete stuff all the time, and it's usually my job to bring it back, which is why I perform redundant, historical backups EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Mount any point-in-time backup (yes it is like a "time machine") and restore your file. You can backup every hour if you like, but most people think 1, 2 or 4 times a day is adequate. This can be done because our software utilizes volume shadowing services (VSS) that is built into Windows (sorry Linux/Mac users, for now you are out of luck) that can make backups of Exchange, MS SQL, Oracle 11g, Pervasive 9/10 (and any other VSS-aware database or service) backups without shutting them down. Backups are made at the block level (not the file level) which means that intra-day backups are really small and very fast.
2) Malware. Don't minimize this - it's real, and it's why I reply to Parent. You are more likely to lose information from a virus/worm/malware and/or b0rked install of something that hoses your filesystem than by a hard disk crash given stable hardware.
Always do an incremental backup of your machine before installing software. Then if you 'hose" the machine, restore your entire machine back to any point-in-time backup in minutes (from your local backup). Works like a restore point for your entire system.
3) Bugs. Filesystems have bugs. So do applications, utilities, anything with software. Strange, unexpected conditions, often caused by bugs in applications can cause data to "disappear", files to get corrupted, filesystems to get corrupted, folders to be incompletely written, etc. This is about as likely to cause lost data as:
Restore your entire machine back to any point-in-time backup in minutes (from your local backup).
4) Hardware failu