Setting up a raid. (NLC).

Post by **pete** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 11:54 am

Can anyone tell me if this is a good idea, or an utter futile waste of time.

My desktop HDD is toast (they shouldn't make beeping noises should they) taking with it some data (just photos) as I am incapable of backing up disks, despite having Norton ghost which will do it automatically.

So as my PC flashes up something about RAIDs every time it starts I thought I could set up a raid array, so the data gets backed up automatically!

Is it possible to have 2 disks on raid (SATA I guess, the old one were IDE but there are some empty pink plugs on the board marked SATA) and a third on IDE on it's own. (So I could have 2 disks on RAID holding data and one on IDE running the OS).

Is that a stupid idea?

BiggestNizzy · Post by **BiggestNizzy** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:06 pm

when i read the title I though you where planning a robbery.

I'm so disapointed

Post by ed » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:12 pm

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Looks like you need a geek.......

Erm Sanj?!

Sanjøy · Post by **Sanjøy** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:13 pm

External box, USB / firewire. If the data is important get it off site and out of the box that might get nicked/burnt/smashed etc.

mac · Post by **mac** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:22 pm

Erm - being a railway bod and not much into computers and stuff - but the beeping noise - isn't that indicative of a motherboard failure? The HDD might be sound and it's the MB that's gone T.U.????

Mac

k12chu · Post by **k12chu** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:39 pm

pete,
keep it simple. get an external HDD to store data. and create an image file of the whole HDD (external) and burn that into a DVD+/-RW. i havent used norton ghost before, but am pretty sure it should have an option of back up once a week.

Post by **ironside** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:53 pm

Yes, it's possible to have a RAID array full of data and an IDE drive on it's own and use both at the same time. If it was me I wouldn't bother with the IDE drive on it's own at all and just put everything on the array. You could always use the IDE drive in an external thing and follow Sanjoy's suggestion for backing up.

Like Sanjoy says, RAID only kind of works as a backup solution. It will protect you from a hardware failure of a single drive but won't protect you from getting nicked/exploded or you making a mistake

If you delete a bunch of irreplaceable family photographs the delete operation will be replicated perfectly to both disks in the array.

RDH · Post by **RDH** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:04 pm

BiggestNizzy wrote:when i read the title I though you where planning a robbery.

I'm so disapointed

jason · Post by **jason** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:14 pm

pete wrote:My desktop HDD is toast (they shouldn't make beeping noises should they) taking with it some data (just photos) as I am incapable of backing up disks, despite having Norton ghost which will do it automatically.

is the beeping in a regular pattern like an error code? It probably is. You should be able to find a schedule on the 'net to decode what your motherboard is telling you.

steve_weegie · Post by **steve_weegie** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:18 pm

ironside wrote:Yes, it's possible to have a RAID array full of data and an IDE drive on it's own and use both at the same time. If it was me I wouldn't bother with the IDE drive on it's own at all and just put everything on the array. You could always use the IDE drive in an external thing and follow Sanjoy's suggestion for backing up.

Like Sanjoy says, RAID only kind of works as a backup solution. It will protect you from a hardware failure of a single drive but won't protect you from getting nicked/exploded or you making a mistake If you delete a bunch of irreplaceable family photographs the delete operation will be replicated perfectly to both disks in the array.

Raid only does 2 things - protect you from losing data after a failed hard disk and speed up the disk subsystem in certain configurations.

External disks are all very well and good, except they suffer from failure and file system corruption just like any other drives. There really is NO substitute for taking either DVD, tape or offsite backups.

By all means, setup your raid - 2 disks mirrored (RAID 1) if you're looking for fault tolerance, or 2 disks striped (RAID 0) if you're looking for ultimate performance, but dont rely on it for long term backups.....

If you go ahead, watch out for the boot order between your RAID and IDE disks.... You might find that the PC tries to boot up from the SATA RAID controller instead of the IDE drive with yoyur OS on it... There's probably a boot device order thing in the BIOS that you'll need to change to get this to work ok....

Cheers,

Steve

robin · Post by **robin** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:21 pm

The best backed up memory is the one between the ears

If it doesn't fit in there, it's probably not worth keeping anyway.

Almost all PC RAID solutions are a s/w bodge; with windows getting less reliable than hard drives, you're really risking disaster with a s/w RAID approach.

True h/w RAID tends to be slow and expensive.

I tend to think the most reliable storage is these little network attached jobs, some of which implement a RAID strategy, but in any case you can easily manage two of them. The h/w in them is no more reliable than your PC, but the s/w usually is

Cheers,
Robin

steve_weegie · Post by **steve_weegie** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:24 pm

pete wrote:
My desktop HDD is toast (they shouldn't make beeping noises should they) taking with it some data (just photos) as I am incapable of backing up disks, despite having Norton ghost which will do it automatically.

Can you describe the "beeping" noise? When disks die, they generally make rattly sounds, or sounds like grinding things with an angle grinder!

You 100% sure the beeping is coming from the disk and not the motherboard??

Titanium S1 111S (gla) · Post by **Titanium S1 111S (gla)** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:25 pm

Because Iâ€™m an IT illiterate I take my photos to Jessops, print them out, put them in an album and keep them in my book case.

Keeps me safe from high-tech disasters.

Stone age faction.

gorrie · Post by **gorrie** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:53 pm

I used to love RAID systems... made my life simpler at Sky. Loads of IVR's running SCO unix, data being striped over 3 disks (using 1 for parity).

If you lost a disk in the middle of the day, the system would stay up as the data was across all 3 disks.... and you could hot swap it mid-day so it would rebuild itself all whilst still giving callers the treatment... Saved a lot of "WHY HAS OUR SYSTEM GONE DOWN!!" shouts in my direction.

Thank F*ck

Post by **pete** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:36 pm

steve_weegie wrote:
pete wrote:
My desktop HDD is toast (they shouldn't make beeping noises should they) taking with it some data (just photos) as I am incapable of backing up disks, despite having Norton ghost which will do it automatically.

Can you describe the "beeping" noise? When disks die, they generally make rattly sounds, or sounds like grinding things with an angle grinder!

You 100% sure the beeping is coming from the disk and not the motherboard??

Errrm. Oh bugger. Was sure - now less sure.

Will investigate tomorrow.

Pete

(needed more storage anyway and the 2 new HDDs I've ordered I will use...)

Scottish Elises

Setting up a raid. (NLC).

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