Help setting up Raid HDD setup

[sburrell93]

Hi all,

I'm wanting to get another HDD and set up some sort of Raid arrangement on my PC as I'm starting to build up a lot of photos and videos I wouldn't want to lose if anything every went wrong.

My current setup is:
Windows + Programs on an SSD (this will stay as it is),
All documents, photos, files etc, couple of bigger programs (AutoCAD/Inventor), and Steam Games/Files all on a separate 2TB HDD.

I want to add another 2TB HDD in some sort of arrangement that'll give me a safety net should one drive begin to fail. My knowledge of Raid is pretty much non existent so I'm after some pointers about what's my best options, and what I need to do for it. In fact, just a full idiots guide lol.

Thanks!

 

[charltjr]

RAID is great, but it's not a backup and from what you're saying it doesn't sound like you have a backup?

Personally in your position I'd get an external hard drive, back everything up to that and keep it somewhere separate to your PC, for example in a drawer at work if you can. Then every month bring it home and get it up to date.

It'll be cheaper and offer far, far better data protection than RAID which becomes completely useless if the PC gets stolen, there's a fire, etc. RAID is really about minimising downtime rather than data security.

 

[Gus]

Before you start tinkering with RAID make sure the contents are backed up. Its easy to mess up and worst case you may mirror the blank hard drive to the old one of you arent careful.

You want RAID 1 -" Mirroring " .

This means that the contents on both drives will be identical. There wont be any speed advantages but you will be a lot safer in the eventuality of one drive failing.
Start by going in to your desktops BIOS and see if there are any raid options.

 

[Darren S]

As @charltjr says above, RAID isn't really about backup. In fact the first word in that abbreviation is 'Redundant' - it's a means to reduce the risk of loosing all your data should the single drive fail.

Increasingly, cloud options are becoming cheaper and larger in capacity. You might want to consider looking into the likes of basic Dropbox accounts - where although you're still reliant on an active internet connection - you can access your files anywhere and pretty much have 100% protection from data loss.

@Gus mentions RAID1 - which would be the easiest option to meet your needs. However, you couldn't simply chuck another drive in there and start mirroring it. You would have to copy everything across to an external drive first, then 'prep' the two SATA drives into a RAID1 configuration before copying all your data back. Switching the drive to be used in RAID rather than standard AHCI and the like will destroy the accessibility of your data on your existing drive.

The other option is you really want local storage in the home is to consider a NAS box. These vary massively in spec and capability and can range from a simple dumping ground of files, to being a fully fledged media server, iTunes server, database server, etc. I have a QNAP four-drive device here and I dump all our films on it. Meaning that we can watch a film from any of the TVs here and even on the laptop and tablets.

Have you any idea of budget?

 

[sburrell93]

RAID is great, but it's not a backup and from what you're saying it doesn't sound like you have a backup?

Personally in your position I'd get an external hard drive, back everything up to that and keep it somewhere separate to your PC, for example in a drawer at work if you can. Then every month bring it home and get it up to date.

It'll be cheaper and offer far, far better data protection than RAID which becomes completely useless if the PC gets stolen, there's a fire, etc. RAID is really about minimising downtime rather than data security.

I hadn't really considered an external hard drive, but you're correct, I have stuff on my HDD in my PC and that's it. RAID seemed appealing just because it sounds less hassle than backing everything up every couple of weeks or month or that.

I guess an actual backup never really crossed my mind as I'd never considered theft or a fire or anything that much of an issue. Was just thinking more that if a drive packed in on me one day and I lost half my old videos/photos from holidays and stuff I'd be pretty pissed off lol.

Before you start tinkering with RAID make sure the contents are backed up. Its easy to mess up and worst case you may mirror the blank hard drive to the old one of you arent careful.

You want RAID 1 -" Mirroring " .

This means that the contents on both drives will be identical. There wont be any speed advantages but you will be a lot safer in the eventuality of one drive failing.
Start by going in to your desktops BIOS and see if there are any raid options.

That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. As above, it's mainly the fear of a drive failing that's got me considering it so that sounds ideal. I definitely have RAID ability on my BIOS, although I'm not sure what ones are there, will need to check. I'm assuming RAID 1 will be though.

As @charltjr says above, RAID isn't really about backup. In fact the first word in that abbreviation is 'Redundant' - it's a means to reduce the risk of loosing all your data should the single drive fail.

Increasingly, cloud options are becoming cheaper and larger in capacity. You might want to consider looking into the likes of basic Dropbox accounts - where although you're still reliant on an active internet connection - you can access your files anywhere and pretty much have 100% protection from data loss.

@Gus mentions RAID1 - which would be the easiest option to meet your needs. However, you couldn't simply chuck another drive in there and start mirroring it. You would have to copy everything across to an external drive first, then 'prep' the two SATA drives into a RAID1 configuration before copying all your data back. Switching the drive to be used in RAID rather than standard AHCI and the like will destroy the accessibility of your data on your existing drive.

The other option is you really want local storage in the home is to consider a NAS box. These vary massively in spec and capability and can range from a simple dumping ground of files, to being a fully fledged media server, iTunes server, database server, etc. I have a QNAP four-drive device here and I dump all our films on it. Meaning that we can watch a film from any of the TVs here and even on the laptop and tablets.

Have you any idea of budget?

As above, my main reason for considering RAID was a fear of a drive failing rather than physically losing stuff I didn't have backed up, through theft or anything like that. I do actually have a few accounts for cloud storage, like dropbox, onedrive etc. Only one I really use properly is Google Drive for backing up all my phone's files, photos and videos, but I've got a decent stack of GoPro footage and other similar stuff that isn't backed up to it.

Budget wise, I've not even thought that far. I kinda just read a bit about RAID, thought it sounded ideal, and asked last night while I was very tired lol. May or may not have actually forgot I even wrote this thread until now...

 

[iain187]

I am fully aware RAID isn't a backup but RAID1 and an external drive are nearly the same thing

if one sets up a RAID1, the data is copied to a logical drive but copied to 2 physical drive, then if there is a failure you can sort it.
if one purchase a physical external drive, one has to copy the data to a physical drive, then another physical drive.

in a raid, the computer does all the routine copying for you, which is helpful - but recovery and configuration requires some expertise.
or, in an external hard drive example, the user has to copy everything they want to save, but recovery is a lot more simple, especially if the user has the OS on another disk


personally, If every time I synced my phone to the PC and I knew the photos were getting put in 2 places automatically, I'd be happy with a raid and relying on the redundancy as enough protection (I obviously wouldn't do it at work) but I probably would only suggest it to someone else if they had a fairly keen interest in working out how it works themselves. If I had to go through it with them, I don't want to have to help them when it all goes wrong

 

[andybond]

You also need to consider if you are using hardware RAID or software RAID
RAID is normally considered enterprise and used for speeding up reads / writes across many spindles. Banging RAID1 across two large spindles wont be the optimum way of utilising raid , and it will only give you mirror protection. I would find another solution such as on a home PC I would use Backup and Sync from google. Its £15.99 for 100GB of storage that automagically syncs via a tool that lives in your tray on your PC. Its simple , fast and ultra reliable.

 

[HarvB]

As above, because you're just using it for storage you don't really need a RAID array - if it went down you would buy a new drive and restore a backup - nothing time-critical in photos/videos (for the most part).

In which case I'd do both of the suggestions above - get a cloud backup set up, but also grab an external hard drive and do a monthly/weekly clone to it. If you set it up to run a full system backup you could restore if you were virus'd/cryptolockered etc without any real difficulty. It's also best practice to have at least two forms of backup.

 

[White16valver]

Thread bump!

I need to back up filing from a macbook and was thinking of just getting a couple of HDDs to copy all my files onto, then keeping them update and in separate locations 'just in case'.

How can I back up the OS, though? It's a secondhand laptop so I don't have any disks or anything, so I'm not sure what I'd need to do if the drive fails / I get virus-locked / etc...

 

[andybond]

TimeMachine is the mac backup tool.

Personally though I would use a cloud based solution. Its most probably cheaper and a shed load easier.

 

[Darren S]

Thread bump!

I need to back up filing from a macbook and was thinking of just getting a couple of HDDs to copy all my files onto, then keeping them update and in separate locations 'just in case'.

How can I back up the OS, though? It's a secondhand laptop so I don't have any disks or anything, so I'm not sure what I'd need to do if the drive fails / I get virus-locked / etc...

MacBook's are ridiculously straight-forward to reformat and start again with. I know my background is in IT, but the easy steps of installing Windows 10 is equivalent of putting man on Mars compared to the reinstall of MacOS.

Literally (assuming your hard drive isn't knackered and you're happy to wipe the drive clean) - you need a CAT5 cable into your router (ideally) - or go wireless, if you want the process to go more slowly. Switch on the MacBook and hold down the Command + R keys, which takes you to the OS X Utilities page, from which you can reinstall the latest and most up-to-date version of the OS available for your MacBook.

This will give you the OS only however. If you have any previously installed apps such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc - it won't help with any of those. Still, if you have legit versions of these apps, simply re-download them onto the fresh install of MacOS. The Mac estate is much more efficient in terms of housekeeping than Windows is - but even it benefits from a slate cleaning process once in a while.

 

[Krarl]

Dont bother with RAID unless you cant be arsed taking backup snapshots.

If you're wanting to RAID your drives then get 4 drives and go for RAID 10, hot swappable is the best way to go. If you cant afford than then have your OS SSD and 2 spare drives in RAID 1 so their mirrored at least

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Dont bother with RAID unless you cant be arsed taking backup snapshots.

If you're wanting to RAID your drives then get 4 drives and go for RAID 10, hot swappable is the best way to go. If you cant afford than then have your OS SSD and 2 spare drives in RAID 1 so their mirrored at least

Why RAID10 and not RAID5?

RAID5's fault tolerant at 3 drives and depending on enclosure / NAS, you can expand capacity much more easily than RAID10, surely?

 

[Krarl]

Why RAID10 and not RAID5?

RAID5's fault tolerant at 3 drives and depending on enclosure / NAS, you can expand capacity much more easily than RAID10, surely?

I've always used RAID 10 at work, its quicker to rebuild so server downtime or the risk of loss outweighs using RAID 5.

Data is mirrored and stripped so it can rebuild from multiple data points. Plus we dont usually use a small amount of drives

Our standard NAS boxes are 26x1.2TB drives, same with the VPS'

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

I've always used RAID 10 at work, its quicker to rebuild so server downtime or the risk of loss outweighs using RAID 5.

Data is mirrored and stripped so it can rebuild from multiple data points. Plus we dont usually use a small amount of drives

Our standard NAS boxes are 26x1.2TB drives, same with the VPS'

Yeah rebuild time is pretty glacial but for SOHO use, at least on the Synology kit I'm used to, the rebuild doesn't take the array offline and the performance hit isn't noticeable.

 

[Krarl]

Yeah rebuild time is pretty glacial but for SOHO use, at least on the Synology kit I'm used to, the rebuild doesn't take the array offline and the performance hit isn't noticeable.

Nah it's alright, I just prefer 10. A few lads at work prefer 5 over 10, they never actually give me a reason why😂

 

[White16valver]

MacBook's are ridiculously straight-forward to reformat and start again with. I know my background is in IT, but the easy steps of installing Windows 10 is equivalent of putting man on Mars compared to the reinstall of MacOS.

Literally (assuming your hard drive isn't knackered and you're happy to wipe the drive clean) - you need a CAT5 cable into your router (ideally) - or go wireless, if you want the process to go more slowly. Switch on the MacBook and hold down the Command + R keys, which takes you to the OS X Utilities page, from which you can reinstall the latest and most up-to-date version of the OS available for your MacBook.

This will give you the OS only however. If you have any previously installed apps such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc - it won't help with any of those. Still, if you have legit versions of these apps, simply re-download them onto the fresh install of MacOS. The Mac estate is much more efficient in terms of housekeeping than Windows is - but even it benefits from a slate cleaning process once in a while.

That is super-useful info, thank you very much!

I'm hoping all will be stable for a long time (part of my reasons for going Mac over Windoze) but good to know it's easy to sort out if it goes tits up

 

[Darren S]

That is super-useful info, thank you very much!

I'm hoping all will be stable for a long time (part of my reasons for going Mac over Windoze) but good to know it's easy to sort out if it goes tits up

I think the most complex it gets is remembering your Apple ID and your wireless password to get access through your router! It really is a doddle.

 

[Darren S]

Why RAID10 and not RAID5?

RAID5's fault tolerant at 3 drives and depending on enclosure / NAS, you can expand capacity much more easily than RAID10, surely?

Went for RAID6 myself with the 4x 2TB drives in my QNAP.

 

[andybond]

Nah it's alright, I just prefer 10. A few lads at work prefer 5 over 10, they never actually give me a reason why😂

less disk required for equivalent useable raw capacity

 

[Krarl]

less disk required for equivalent useable raw capacity

Aye but we work with 8+ drives at work in most servers😂 All 500GB and over and enterprise drives🤦‍♂️

 

[andybond]

Aye but we work with 8+ drives at work in most servers😂 All 500GB and over and enterprise drives🤦‍♂️

It’s still the same.

Your raid groups will be built up into 4 disc chunks ( probably )
Assume for simplicity sake they are 2tb in size. Ignore spindle speed.
a RAID5 set will yield 6GB per 8GB set
A RAID10 Will yield 4GB per set.

even if you span a lun via a meta it will still be the same.

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Aye but we work with 8+ drives at work in most servers😂 All 500GB and over and enterprise drives🤦‍♂️

Which is also hardly appropriate given the question the OP actually asked.

A little SOHO NAS with 3 multi TB WD Red drives in is a perfect bit of redundant storage that's easily expanded in the future. Through in an external drive for backups and you're away.

8+ 500GB drives in a RAID10 array isn't really home friendly.

 

[Krarl]

Which is also hardly appropriate given the question the OP actually asked.

A little SOHO NAS with 3 multi TB WD Red drives in is a perfect bit of redundant storage that's easily expanded in the future. Through in an external drive for backups and you're away.

8+ 500BG drives in a RAID10 array isn't really home friendly.

I'm not saying it mate😂 Just an example of how different people set stuff up differently

It’s still the same.

Your raid groups will be built up into 4 disc chunks ( probably )
Assume for simplicity sake they are 2tb in size. Ignore spindle speed.
a RAID5 set will yield 6GB per 8GB set
A RAID10 Will yield 4GB per set.

even if you span a lun via a meta it will still be the same.

Yeah I just tend not to use it because if you get multiple failed drives (which happens) then they tend to be an arse to rebuild.

Especially when you hot spare a drive and then another falls on its arse😑

 

[andybond]

The speed of the raid set is key. You are correct though it’s slow. I find the trade off ok with my clients. I have lost minimal disk in the time I have been working. Never enough to worry about changing raid sets.

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

If you're wanting to RAID your drives then get 4 drives and go for RAID 10

Why RAID10 and not RAID5?

I've always used RAID 10 at work, its quicker to rebuild so server downtime or the risk of loss outweighs using RAID 5.

Our standard NAS boxes are 26x1.2TB drives, same with the VPS'

You literally just told him to go RAID10 because it's what you use at work on 26 drive arrays.

 

[Krarl]

The speed of the raid set is key. You are correct though it’s slow. I find the trade off ok with my clients. I have lost minimal disk in the time I have been working. Never enough to worry about changing raid sets.

What sort of hardware do you use? If you need anything let me know because I'll be clearing out a load of old stuff soon

@cs_rich no, if you read it I said its quicker to rebuild and less chance if data loss (multiple drive failures)

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

What sort of hardware do you use? If you need anything let me know because I'll be clearing out a load of old stuff soon

@cs_rich no, if you read it I said its quicker to rebuild and less chance if data loss (multiple drive failures)

Most of which only applies in a large enterprise setup.

If you've got a 3 drive RAID5 array how often are you realistically going to be doing rebuilds?

I've had RAID5 running at home for about 20 years now in various flavours and literally the only times I've ever had to rebuild have been to add capacity by buying a single additional drive. Something you can't do with RAID10.

 

[andybond]

What sort of hardware do you use? If you need anything let me know because I'll be clearing out a load of old stuff soon

@cs_rich no, if you read it I said its quicker to rebuild and less chance if data loss (multiple drive failures)

EMC generally but it’s always brand new and 5 year cycles.
Thanks for the offer though.

 

[Greeny.]

As above, I personally wouldnt bother with consumer RAID solutions, anything software based is abit s**t and buying a dedicated RAID controller is probably more hassle than its worth for a home setup, especially if you're not familiar with it. A cloud based offering would be the best option assuming your upload speed is acceptable enough, although after the initial upload of your data it shouldnt be to painful going forward.

RAID5 has always been more than acceptable for home use, RAID10 is very much overkill and as we are talking about a home setup there isn't alot of point quoting what we use at work..

 

[Krarl]

Raid 10 was a suggestion

Personal preference mate😂