RAIDing hard drives

[comda]

Greetings,

Its been a while but im back for break. Anyways ive got plenty of stuff planned. Anyways, my main machine has 2 drives and since apple replaced my Laptop i now have a nice SSD kicking around that i purchased last year.

The Computer has 2 times 1TB drives and since i have some things i dont want to loose. I decided maybe i should RAID these machines to mirror each other. I believe its RAID 1. However i was told this only works with identical drives. I have a Seagate Barracuda and a Western Digital Black. Both are 1TB drives. Is what i was told true, or can this be done no problem?

The machine i plan to do this in is my AMD machine. Its board is a Asus M5A97 which i know supports RAID. Issue is, ive never done it.

Any suggestions are accepted and appreciated. Thank you all.

[DaveLembke]

Hardware raid I think you have to have like drives in capacity and make model, but if you use windows software raid you can do this across different size drives just making sure that the partitions to mirror are same size. I seen a drive split in half mirrored to self once for a POS system and I was like... WHAT THE? Why would anyone mirror to same drive? Contacted the vendor of the POS systems and they said its for fault tolerance. I said usually its among 2 separate drives and not a hard drive mirrored to self which actually overworks it because its writing 2x as much to 2 sections of the drive. It was a lost cause trying to convince them how this made no sense.

Which OS are you using?

Here is the windows 7 method. I used Windows XP Pro in past for this software raid. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36504/how-to-create-a-software-raid-array-in-windows-7/

If you have 2 like drives same make/model then you can go with the raid controller method. One feature I like in addition to raid is shadowcopy so if a file is overwritten or deleted you might be able to get an earlier version back. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-do-i-configure-and-use-shadow-copy-in-microsoft-windows/

Shadow copy availability depends on what you have for OS. Not aware of any 3rd party shadow copy programs out there other than the old GoBACK 4.0 that Norton has that I havent used in years ever since shadow copy replaced it for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBack

I used GoBack 4.0 with Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and XP systems

[camerongray]

You can certainly RAID different drives, it's maybe not the most "best practice" situation but it will work fine.  A couple of pointers:

• RAID is not a backup - This is important, RAID is great for redundancy (if a drive fails the machine will keep working) and your data is safe against drive failures however it offers no protection against issues such as your disk controller exploding and writing nonsense to disks or you accidentally deleting a file.  You should always do a backup as well as running RAID.
• I'd advise against using the RAID built into a motherboard, it's often known as "FakeRAID" - Software RAID configured in Hardware, it requires special drivers and is often very tricky to get working, especially under non-Windows OSs.  You would be better off either using purely software RAID (configured from within your OS) or by buying a hardware RAID card from a company like Adaptec or LSI.

[comda]

Hardware raid I think you have to have like drives in capacity and make model, but if you use windows software raid you can do this across different size drives just making sure that the partitions to mirror are same size. I seen a drive split in half mirrored to self once for a POS system and I was like... WHAT THE? Why would anyone mirror to same drive? Contacted the vendor of the POS systems and they said its for fault tolerance. I said usually its among 2 separate drives and not a hard drive mirrored to self which actually overworks it because its writing 2x as much to 2 sections of the drive. It was a lost cause trying to convince them how this made no sense.

Which OS are you using?

Here is the windows 7 method. I used Windows XP Pro in past for this software raid. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36504/how-to-create-a-software-raid-array-in-windows-7/

If you have 2 like drives same make/model then you can go with the raid controller method. One feature I like in addition to raid is shadowcopy so if a file is overwritten or deleted you might be able to get an earlier version back. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-do-i-configure-and-use-shadow-copy-in-microsoft-windows/

Shadow copy availability depends on what you have for OS. Not aware of any 3rd party shadow copy programs out there other than the old GoBACK 4.0 that Norton has that I havent used in years ever since shadow copy replaced it for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBack

I used GoBack 4.0 with Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and XP systems

I remember GOback 4.0! one of the Older style P2 Toshiba laptops i have has it at bootup! Anyways. what im essentially looking at is running the OS on this machine on the SSD and keeping everything i need on this RAID, so if one drive fails i can rebuild it easily using another drive without loosing data. Ive just done some reading on software VS Hardware RAID and both have advantages and disadvantages. The exact drive models i have are as follows: Seagate ST1000DM 003-1CH162 and the second is a Western Digit Black WDC WD10 02FAEX-00Y9AO. Both being 1Tb drives. I have currently updated to windows 10 from 7 but am contemplating going back on that. What do you suggest? i dont want to loose my files. I have Music, personal Photos, and even Personal ISO copies of Linux, and copies of all my windows installers as for some reason DVD's go bad in my house fast. So ive not used the OEM disks in years to avoid damage. 

[comda]

You can certainly RAID different drives, it's maybe not the most "best practice" situation but it will work fine.  A couple of pointers:

• RAID is not a backup - This is important, RAID is great for redundancy (if a drive fails the machine will keep working) and your data is safe against drive failures however it offers no protection against issues such as your disk controller exploding and writing nonsense to disks or you accidentally deleting a file.  You should always do a backup as well as running RAID.
• I'd advise against using the RAID built into a motherboard, it's often known as "FakeRAID" - Software RAID configured in Hardware, it requires special drivers and is often very tricky to get working, especially under non-Windows OSs.  You would be better off either using purely software RAID (configured from within your OS) or by buying a hardware RAID card from a company like Adaptec or LSI.

Alright. Well the issue is budget haha. Maybe if i was back when i build this machine in 2012 id have the money for identical drives or other means. If i do a software RAID and these drives are not running the OS, if one fails can i replace it and have the software rebuild the other drive without data loss? Thats mainly what im after. I have 1 of these 1tb drives filled with software im running that needs to be cleaned but about half of it i need. I also have a few other external drives packed to the rim that need to be sorted and cleaned out. So i need a secure option as right now i have copies of stuff across drives and im loosing my mind LOL

[DaveLembke]

What do you suggest? i dont want to loose my files. I have Music, personal Photos, and even Personal ISO copies of Linux, and copies of all my windows installers as for some reason DVD's go bad in my house fast.

I backup plan is needed if you dont already have one. I would not trust all my data to just a RAID array. yes it will protect from a single drive failure, but if bad data is written back, you are essentially corrupting both copies of files. That is where shadow copy is helpful, however connecting to a NAS or USB External Drive every once in a while to backup an exact copy of all your most important data is best.

I run RAID, Shadow Copy, and well as I backup on occasion to  4 x 32GB USB sticks. My data that is most important is 23.6GB right now. I have the USB sticks marked A, B, C and D and Perform a weekly backups every weekend with a batch script that targets where I store my most important data with an exclusion list to skip certain files etc. So this week I back up to Stick A, then next week Stick B and week after that C and then week after that D and then week after that OverWrite Stick A, and then B C D and cycle repeats. I can essentially get data that is almost a month old and USB sticks are cheap. The more data you have and depending on how important it is to have multiple points to go back to will determine the cost associated with data protection this way.

Its not perfect as for if something got corrupt say back on January 13th, and I run the backup today for Feb 15th, and overwrite the prior backup that had that file not corrupted and found the issue today, I am out of luck.

However I also my most important files that dont take up much space at all which are my programming projects and source code etc backed up to an online cloud for free and have folders for each backup date so I can go back quite a ways if needed, although most programs are easy to reconstruct if needed not too difficultly.

[Salmon Trout]

I would not trust all my data to just a RAID array. yes it will protect from a single drive failure, but if bad data is written back, you are essentially corrupting both copies of files.

This needs saying. Over and over. RAID is not backup! Just google that phrase.

[camerongray]

You could still backup to your second hard drive without using RAID.

Here's how I do my backups of my home server (Where all my stuff is stored) - I have a cheap hot swap drive bay on the front of the machine (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orico-5-25-Inch-Trayless-Caddy/dp/B014HWNVV6/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1455582313&sr=8-14&keywords=hot+swap+hard+drive) - I run RAID 10 internally (purely for availability) and then keep a hard drive in that bay that is unmounted most of the time (preventing accidental erasure) - I have a script that periodically mounts this disk, performs an incremental backup of all my data to it and then unmounts it again.  Every week or so I take the hard drive out and swap it with another drive that I keep offsite.  This means I have a backup on a separate drive and another one that is kept offsite. When it's all working correctly all I need to think about doing is pulling one drive out and putting the other in every so often.

I'm not saying you need to go as crazy as this but having some sort of removable backup device isn't a bad idea - You could at the very least keep it in a different location from the PC.  It's a good idea to have a backup that is usually kept totally separate from the PC, even if it's unmounted, your power supply could blow up and take out any drive that it is connected to.

[comda]

You could still backup to your second hard drive without using RAID.

Here's how I do my backups of my home server (Where all my stuff is stored) - I have a cheap hot swap drive bay on the front of the machine (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orico-5-25-Inch-Trayless-Caddy/dp/B014HWNVV6/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1455582313&sr=8-14&keywords=hot+swap+hard+drive) - I run RAID 10 internally (purely for availability) and then keep a hard drive in that bay that is unmounted most of the time (preventing accidental erasure) - I have a script that periodically mounts this disk, performs an incremental backup of all my data to it and then unmounts it again.  Every week or so I take the hard drive out and swap it with another drive that I keep offsite.  This means I have a backup on a separate drive and another one that is kept offsite. When it's all working correctly all I need to think about doing is pulling one drive out and putting the other in every so often.

I'm not saying you need to go as crazy as this but having some sort of removable backup device isn't a bad idea - You could at the very least keep it in a different location from the PC.  It's a good idea to have a backup that is usually kept totally separate from the PC, even if it's unmounted, your power supply could blow up and take out any drive that it is connected to.

So you have 2 internal drive and one that you carry elsewhere? im following what Each RAID means from here: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/RAID
im just trying to keep up. Ive done a lot on computers and even done repair at a store for basic customer level stuff. Formats and reloads data backup virus removal but RAID is something new to me. So if i may ask for a dumb version haha.

Interesting idea you pose. Sadly i dont have elsewhere to go. Im a university student limited to his room and school haha. I have a 1Tb usb 2 external drive and its fully too. I have to go through it and delete a BUNCH of stuff i dont need.

[Lisa_maree]

I wouldn't start setting up any raid system with one drive holding important  programs. Some raid types require that you re initialize both drives loosing the data, not a good thing. I would use Easeus todo backup free or the workstation version,  backup your OS partition and program partition  to the spare drive.  The program is very clear in what it is doing to where . There is the option in the tools menu to make a windows boot CD to restore the backup if you need to or you can mount the backup as a drive and copy back any files you loose.