External storage, eSATA, PCI cards and RAID 1

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tbm

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I'm currently looking at external storage solutions; the one that currently seems most appealing being this 4 bay Raidsonic effort.
Ideally I'd like to eventually fill it with 2x2Tb drives running RAID 1 for photos, and 2x1Tb drives (also running RAID 1) for other media.

I can see two potential problems:

1) The enclosure has 1 eSATA port per drives, so I'll need 4 corresponding ports on my PC (which only comes with 1). So I'm assuming I'll need to invest in a PCI card with more ports.

2) It appears that the enclosure itself doesn't have a RAID controller, so I'll need one of those too.

I'm assuming the best (and possibly only?) solution is to source a PCI card that contains both the RAID controller and the 4 eSATA ports I require.. is this correct? Does such a card exist? Can I get around this problem in any other way (say one PCI card with a RAID controller and one with the eSATA ports)?

Thanks for any help; I'm well out of my depth on this one :p
 
im going to say it again but treat RAID as 1 device (ignore the fact it has more than 1 disk) and have a 2nd copy of your data on another device.

RAID is not infalible and the worst can happen, ive seen it first hand in server level RAID but fortunately we had tape backups to restore from.
 
I think Neil has some good advice, by all
means have a raid device but also a backup.

As far as the need for additional sata ports is concerned I suspect the housing supports port multipliers. In other words it will take one sata input and spraed it across several drives. If so you need to ensure that the sata expansion card you use supports this function, not all do.

As an alternative look at drives and cases from Span and Scan.

http://www.span.com/

http://www.scan.co.uk/
 
Thanks gents :)

Currently I back up my data manually to a secondary disk. Although obviously more hassle than using RAID to mirror the drive, is this considered a more reliable method of backing up?

I'm aware that the ideal is several backups; one of which is off site. Unfortunately given that I'm looking at around £500 to fill a four drive enclosure, I can't afford a third storage system.

I hadn't thought about port multipliers - initially I assumed that the enclosure in my link had a single port, but it appears that there's actually one for each drive. In the interests of tidyness I'd rather use a single cable; plus it would negate the need to buy a separate PCI card as I could use the existing eSATA port on the PC (providing it supports the port multiplier).

I'm assuming that using one eSATA connection through a port multiplier would strangle bandwidth to a point, although I can't see this being a huge problem.

Thanks for the links Chappers - tis easily the greatest selection of external drives I've seen :)

So in summary, RAID Mirror or manual backup, and if going with the former I either need an enclosure with an integral RAID controller, or I need to install one in the PC - correct? How would I go about doing this?
 
That option looks very expensive for not a lot of action.
I would look for either a much cheaper case, or a case that includes raid.
As for second backup, its not so much the off -site storage i would worry about (althought that is important to keep in mind), its the fact that if all your drives are connected to the same power supply and you are very unlucky with a failure, the power suply could fry all the drives.
 
Hmm... I've seen cheaper 4 drive units but they don't look like amazing quality.

I appreciate the comment about the power supply, but what other choice is there? To run RAID they obviously all have to have power at the same time.
Having everything in the same enclosure would negate the potential to periodically manually backup to a drive that would be disconnected at all other times..

Presumably a surge protector might be a good idea?

Thanks for the advice; please keep it coming as this situation is resulting in a lot of head scratching..
 
After a bit more thought I'm now considering 3 internal drives (OS, Photos and other media) backed up to another pair of drives through an external hard drive dock.

Thinking advantages of this are:

- Far cheaper than an enclosure
- Less likely for the drives to get fried / robbed as it's easier to remove them and store them away from the machine
- Not RAID capable, but then this isn't a problem if I back it up manually and RAID doesn't seem that popular on here anyway :p
- Allows me to easily fiddle with other drives should I need to (recovery from other machines etc)

Right, who's first to shoot holes in my plan?

Am I likely to encounter problems with dust / contamination / wear of contacts on the drives? Any other potential problems?
 
tbm said:
After a bit more thought I'm now considering 3 internal drives (OS, Photos and other media) backed up to another pair of drives through an external hard drive dock.

Thinking advantages of this are:

- Far cheaper than an enclosure
- Less likely for the drives to get fried / robbed as it's easier to remove them and store them away from the machine
- Not RAID capable, but then this isn't a problem if I back it up manually and RAID doesn't seem that popular on here anyway :p
- Allows me to easily fiddle with other drives should I need to (recovery from other machines etc)

Right, who's first to shoot holes in my plan?

Am I likely to encounter problems with dust / contamination / wear of contacts on the drives? Any other potential problems?
Click to expand...


the three drive option that you describe is exactly what I run!! Use a free software from mircosoft (yes FREE and MIRCOSOFT!) called Synctoy. It sync's a folder you want backing up with another folder. I have my photos sync'ed to 1 external, with some media sync'ed to antoher external. Do this twice a week, and the externals are never left on, unless its syncing.
 
Cheers Dave; wasn't really aware of the syncing option.

Could this still be used with single dock and multiple drives? Do you think the PC / Syncing software would recognise each drive that goes in the dock individually or simply recognise the dock, if you see what I mean...?
 
tbm said:
Cheers Dave; wasn't really aware of the syncing option.

Could this still be used with single dock and multiple drives? Do you think the PC / Syncing software would recognise each drive that goes in the dock individually or simply recognise the dock, if you see what I mean...?
Click to expand...

think it recognises each drive, then defines that drive with a letter, not the dock getting a letter. not sure how it would cope with multiple drives on a single dock though.

the synctoy is a really basic backup option, but for me it works fine. its not automated (shame) but you set up the original folder (photos) then select the copy destination. every time it runs, it looks for additions, alterations or deletes. at the end of the run you will have a folder on external that is identical to the selected folder. For me it does the job.
 
Dave450 said:
think it recognises each drive, then defines that drive with a letter, not the dock getting a letter. not sure how it would cope with multiple drives on a single dock though.

the synctoy is a really basic backup option, but for me it works fine. its not automated (shame) but you set up the original folder (photos) then select the copy destination. every time it runs, it looks for additions, alterations or deletes. at the end of the run you will have a folder on external that is identical to the selected folder. For me it does the job.
Click to expand...
Cool, that sounds promising :cool:

Simplicity is good - at the moment my backup system is based around drag and drop when I can be bothered - which doubtless isn't often enough..

Cheers ;)
 
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