Backup

[beesagtig]

Hey

Found a pretty good deal on some 160GB HDD's

If I get them I will probably use some of them to backup my main hard drive.

I was wondering how I could do this.

Put them in raid 0?

If in raid 0 can you remove the drives without destroying the raid setup?

Is there any other way to do this?

Also from what I've read if one drive in a raid 0 all the drives are gone, is this right?

Olly

 

[alexp999]

If you want backup, the best option is to do Raid 1. That way what ever is on the "main" HDD (what the OS can see), is mirrored onto the second HDD, that way if there is a mis-read or a HDD failure you dont lose your data, you can also remove one or other HDD from the array and it won affect the operation of the OS.
You will also find that you get better boot and loading times as you have twice the avaiable read bandwidth.
To set it up, you'll need all your HDD's plugged in, then you go into the bios and enable raid. the after the post messages the NVraid tool wil come up, I cant rem the exact key to press to access it, but it will give you a prompt. Then you go in and setup the raid you want (Raid 1). Now I cant rem exactly, but you might need to install the RAID driver into windows first, I'll see if someone else can rem that bit, it could well be different to when I setup Raid 0 on my dad's 750i.

 

[Deleted member 3]

RAID 0 isn't an actual RAID level, hence the 0. And RAID is never a backup. The R means redundant (which explains my first point) RAID will protect against a failing drive, though for instance a virus will still eat your data, and deleting files still is a bad idea. If you want to use a disk as backup put them in a USB enclosure and copy all important files to it periodically.

That being said, using RAID 1 can be an OS independent way to do the job. RAID 1 makes an exact copy, ie mirror. If you just take it out the array will be degraded but work just fine. If you put it back in it will restore the array, ie making an exact copy of the original drive. When the array is back up you can take the second drive out again. Of course this is just a nasty and limited solution (no control over what is backed up), but it could work.

 

[beesagtig]

Ok, so these HDD's are 160GB and my main is 500GB so for a USB could I put about four of them in one enclosure and have it 640GB or just get four enclosures (or one and swap it) and backup as neccesary?

 

[WhiteLotus]

I would use them as removable drives. But in what way is up to you. I would personally go with the cheapest option though.

 

[beesagtig]

So can you combine 4 drives in one enclosure?

 

[alexp999]

Ok, so these HDD's are 160GB and my main is 500GB so for a USB could I put about four of them in one enclosure and have it 640GB or just get four enclosures (or one and swap it) and backup as neccesary?

If you want them in Raid 1, you will have the available space of the smallest drive. Only raid 0 would give you 640GB. Its prob cheaper, just to buy one more 500GB and put it in Raid 1. Or even cheaper just to buy a HDD big enough for you to manually backup the stuff you need.

 

[WhiteLotus]

So can you combine 4 drives in one enclosure?

If you have an enclousure big enough to hold four yes. Or you can make one.

 

[beesagtig]

So how would I go about making one?

 

[Homeless]

It's as simple as getting a raid controller and telling the drives how you want them setup

 

[beesagtig]

Ok, cool.

Thank you for your help everyone

 

[beesagtig]

Oh and for raid 0 if one drive fails are the rest unusable or will they be fixed with a format?

 

[Deleted member 3]

Oh and for raid 0 if one drive fails are the rest unusable or will they be fixed with a format?

Your data is lost. Though you can always use the disks that didn't die again. And RAID 0 still won't give you the full space, it'll give you N*smallest drive.
If you want full space then JBOD is the only way, which in my opinion is mostly useless, just using the drives separate works just as fine and is less of a hassle.