The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

What! Raid 1 is literally mirrored drives. If one fails, the other still has data intact. Why would it be irretrievable?

 

Sam,

That's not what I mean. I mean you can't access the good drive without replacing the bad one. The raid 1 I do shuts down the bad drive, and pop up a message on the screen telling you it has shut down the problem drive, but the other drive still works, but without any redundancy until a new drive is cloned!

Russ

 

Ah well RAID1's not so bad. Not having any redundancy left if one of the drives fails, I imagine would be pretty obvious. It wouldn't be possible to have redundancy if the other drive failed!

 

Even if the Raid 1 array is faulty, the enclosure should default to the good drive, eh? So the data can be backed up/extracted. That's ridiculous if you can't get the data off the good drive...

Maybe a software Raid 1 is a better idea?

 

Sam,

No that's true, but not being able to access the single good drive until you replace the defective one is kind of a bummer. You have to have two drives installed and working before you can access your data! The enclosure won't even work with just a single drive in it, you have to have two drives. In my eyes, that's not a particularly good thing if you're a business using an external raid 1. A lot of business's around here use these HP and Compaq Slim-Line's, and they only hold 1 HDD, and want to run a mirror! I guess it would pay them to have a brand new spare drive on hand at all times!

Russ

 

Oman7,

No, and it says it right in the manual! There is no default like there is with an internal mirror! You can't even run a single drive in the enclosure, you have to have both drives for it to work at all!

Russ

 

That's messed up! Ok, won't be buying that one. Thanks russ

 

Oman7,

If they have the bays in the case, a raid 1 would be the cheapest and best solution. Very easy to set up too!

Russ

 

Well, I definitely need to cool their case a little better first. And I'll likely space the drives apart too. It should hold 3.

I've definitely learned my lesson with how warm a hard drive can get. My black drives feel pretty warm in the sata dock I have. I imagine they run cooler in the haf932. The air is rather stagnant in this room.

 

My MyBook is plugged in 24/7 and tucked into a bookshelf and I've never had an issue. Of course I have it spin down when not in use, but still it really stays decently cool.

 

Russ is right and it is true of all small RAID configurations. If yoou have a drive down you can't continue to write to the good drive and you HAVE to replace the bad drive and rebuild the RAID configuration on the bad drive before you can continue to use it. Even with that I've seen people loose their data because the RAID gets corrupt so YOU STILL need a backup system, mag-tape or big companies now are using multiple arrays as backup systems. The larger more expensive RAID systems loosing one drive isn't the end of the world but RAID 1 would be a problem.

 

Mr-Movies,

I think the reason so many people have problems with RAID on a lot of motherboards is that they fail to realize that you have to load it when you install Windows. If you don't, you have to start all over and re-install Windows. I think anther thing that many people don't understand is that if a drive goes bad in RAID 1 you have no redundancy from that time on, nor do you have ready access to what was on the crashed drive. It's a very simple thing to clone a new drive, and it's not very time consuming, but it does need to be taken care of at the earliest possible time. The longer you wait to replace the failed drive, the greater the risk of losing everything!

Russ

 

Watch movies online for free? I smell a spammer...

Oh lightning, where are you LOL!

So you wouldn't be opposed to a Windows 7 Software Raid 1 then, would you? They'll probably just be into burning discs though. They're not gonna look at hard drive the same way again I imagine.
Raid 1 is raid 1 though. If a drive drops out, then the raid array is down. I think I understand.

 

Lol reported. What a waste of posting room.

 

Oman7,

The array is down, but the good drive keeps working unprotected! It just shuts down the faulty drive and pops up a message on the screen. All you do is replace the bad drive and clone the good one to it, and you are fully protected again.

With the Cavalry and the ProDuo both drives would be down and you would have no access to either drive.

Russ

 

Thank you russ. I believe I understand. I'll definitely urge them to go with hard drives, but discs aren't that expensive either. It's up to them. Given it took them years to acquire 200Gb worth of data, burnable discs is definitely an option.

 

Well yes and no. It depends if they're willing to put up with the hassle. Not to mention environmental factors like scratching etc. I think in the long run it would be easier and more future proof to software RAID 2 500GB drives inside the case. If drive space is a concern you can always transplant the cage from a junk case

 

They should have space.

I'm waiting for him to give me the model number of his case. I need it to get fans for it too!

 

You people have no idea how fast time is. Time is unnaturally fast for me. Just trust me on this. I got you beat LOL!

My brother has had his case/tower for 3 yrs this june. I thought maybe 2. That's why I couldn't find it in my newegg history.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147066
Can't seem to find the information about the front area. Surely it takes a 120mm fan in the front. I guess I'll have to check Rosewill's site

 

Oman7,

It goes between the front bezel and the case!

Russ