External Hard drive mirror RAID..?

S

stevewestern

Messages
5,121
Edit My Images
Yes
Is there anything available that does this off the shelf, or is it easy to set up ?
My pc has died, and had a mirror raid set up (thankfully, or I would have lost all my photos..), and I now want to buy an external set-up so that I can keep everything safe for when my new laptop arrives - anyone know of such a thing...
Cheers
Steve
 
I havent seen anything. I wouldnt have thought there would be, as you generaly use RAID for performance increases, and i cant imagine two USB drives being very quick, or quicker than internals. Probably the cheapest way you can do it, is copy all the photos on one drive, and use backup software, ie norton ghost to save to the other.
 
Dylan - I have now seen a few but they are 1TB in size, and over 250 notes, but come set up for RAID 1, ie mirror, this both discs have the same data, so if one disc fails, the data is safely stored on the second...Speed is not an issue, but safety is here !
I had sort of hoped that as storage has become so cheap that it might be possible to get something at closer to the 150 pound mark now..
 
Dunno about setting the RAID configuration, but I have an internal drive 1TB for only photos, I use Synctoy to automatically update any changes to my 2 x 750gb USB Mybooks. Synctoy also updates the internal drive to my 1TB NAS in the loft, and I also have backup copies on Flickr and most on my website. My problem was getting everything to sync - but synctoy sorted that. Initially the backups were tediously slow.... but now they dont take long at all.

BTW I just bought a 1TB USB drive - and it is great..... use it for my work crap - was £95.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143877
 
I'd be interested in knowing of a RAID 1 drive aswell; at a reasonable price of course.
 
Excuse me for digressing a bit ...


jedimonkey,

How good is that Seagate drive you've linked to? At such a price it may be worth getting two of these are just do the back-up using 3rd party applications :shrug:!
 
Aha, but that's a 2TB drive .. effectively that would by close to £200 per 1TB ... still out of my range too :shrug:
 
Look for the cheapest cost-per-GB I suppose :)

I keep all my photos on a 500GB internal drive, and a separate copy on an external 500GB drive, backed up using SyncToy...
 
Presumably you will be getting a new PC so why not get a pci raid card (£20-30) and fit 2,3, or 4 drives internally?
 
If you want something faster than USB ( don't we all) then have a look at Firewire 800. Better still go to eSATA externals. I have a LaCie on my Dell desktop . Transfer speed are much faster.
You'll need a eSATA card. I think you can get Xpress ones now for laptops. Try Overclockers.co.uk.

As far as back up software is concerned, I prefer to physically copy the data. I've used back up software and it spends hours checking file after file to see if it's altered. After a few hundred gigs it gets a real drag waiting for it to finish
 
only thing with that server is power consumption. I had a PC running 24/7 for a while as a server and that pushed up the leccy bill :(
 
Wail said:
How good is that Seagate drive you've linked to? At such a price it may be worth getting two of these are just do the back-up using 3rd party applications :shrug:!
Click to expand...

I really like it..... no problems at all. I have a couple of USB Mybooks, a NAS Mybook, and a buffalo terrastation, I also have bought the 120gb version of the Seagate - and I love it. It comes with Ceedo which can run your browsers and stuff from it - very handy. The Seagate is my favourite so far..... Im thinking of punting the NAS mybook and a USB Mybook and getting another of the Seagates. Great price and good product.
 
Thanks for the feedback, I know Seagate to be good quality but with these low prices I was worried that quality may have been an issue. Sure is good to hear this is not the case.
 
F-Stop,

Could you kindly link us to what exactly you went for .. and would love to hear your input on this set-up of yours (how long you've had it, speed, reliability, heat, etc.).

Thanks :)
 
Sure thing. I went Dell. It came with two internal 500gb drives that were in a RAID 0 (stripe) configuration. I had to break that array, reformat in a RAID 1 config and reload everything. Intel Matrix Storage Manager is the software that came with the setup and it seems to be pretty efficient.

The Dell model is a XPS 420. There are some bad reviews about the RAID array, but have since been rectified with a patch. I've had the setup for about a month now and I really can't tell a very big difference between the RAID 0 and the RAID 1 setup as far as performance (although I didn't use the RAID 0 very long). Heat doesn't seem to be an issue so far. And as far as reliability, seeing a little message pop up every time I log on saying "Your machine is now safe from a single disk failure" makes me feel very nice. :D
 
I've just brought a 1tb Mybook for backup purposes, my PC has 2 500gb drives. The main drive is for the OS and the other drive stores my apps, videos and more importantly my photos.

I can then tell the backup software to watch certain files on different drives to backup. Thankfully it doesn't copy the whole lot everytime, it only backups the changes made. Definitely get the esata version as its very quick compared to USB, I had to leave mine on over night to do the first initial backup.

If you want everything backed up then I would down the raid route, for me I not fussed if my PC goes down, as long as I have a copy of my important files.
 
Have a look at the Western Digital "my book world" external drives, I have a 2TB running raid 1, its networkable and you can access it remotely also, also has firewire.......


Victor
 
You could consider a RAID NAS box but they are not cheap.
The cheaper ones tend to be very slow but if you just want to back up your data and not have to worry about a HDD failing and losing all your precious data, then one of these will be fine.

Another cheap option would be to build a cheap RAID server.
My server is aging and creaking at the bones but I wouldn't be without it for my music collection and other important data.

The best advice I can offer is becareful with your choice of RAID controller chips.
Nvidia Nforce chips on the whole tend to be quite naff, data corruption is just one example.
When it comes to Motherboards with onboard RAID I only recommend Intel.
I've never had an issue with an Intel RAID and I've also built and configured many PC's and servers over the years and none have ever had a RAID failure - only a faulty HDD.
When it comes to seperate RAID PCI cards, Adaptec & Silicon image are very good.
 
Yup, another vote for the Intel RAID chipset here. About a month ago I built a new photo machine with a Core 2 Quad Processor and then 4x750 Gb discs in a RAID5 array giving me 2.2TB of protected storage. I also have an additional drive for OS and applications...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top