RAID Mirror Questions

[Matt]

I am running a RAID 1 as a second drive using an Adaptec 1200A PCI
controller card and 2 80 Gb Maxtors and have my data stored on this in the
interest of fault tolerance and backup purposes. Now, after lurking in this
NG, I'm wondering if this is indeed a good idea and whether RAID 1 is
pointless for backup. How reliable is RAID 1 and what are some of the
risks? Do I need to verify the mirroring process occasionally and how would
I do that? The system is only used at home.

 

[Will Dormann]

I am running a RAID 1 as a second drive using an Adaptec 1200A PCI
controller card and 2 80 Gb Maxtors and have my data stored on this in the
interest of fault tolerance and backup purposes. Now, after lurking in this
NG, I'm wondering if this is indeed a good idea and whether RAID 1 is
pointless for backup.

Yes, it is indeed pointless for backup. RAID 1 does not take the place
of a backup plan.

How reliable is RAID 1 and what are some of the
risks? Do I need to verify the mirroring process occasionally and how would
I do that? The system is only used at home.

The benefit of RAID 1 is that a drive hardware failure will cause no
loss of data, which is a good thing. The mirroring is done
automatically, so there is nothing that you really need to be doing
manually.

RAID 1 does nothing to protect you from accidentally deleting a file, or
recovering from Win2k SP4 or a virus hit, for example. That's what
backups are for.

-WD

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yes, it is indeed pointless for backup. RAID 1 does not take the place
of a backup plan.

The benefit of RAID 1 is that a drive hardware failure will cause no
loss of data, which is a good thing. The mirroring is done
automatically, so there is nothing that you really need to be doing
manually.

RAID 1 does nothing to protect you from accidentally deleting a file, or
recovering from Win2k SP4 or a virus hit, for example. That's what
backups are for.

Exactly. I have now most of my partitions in RAID-1 or RAID-5
configurations, just because I was tired of manually moving
data when yet another disk decides to develop bad sectors.

That is the only risk redundant RAID protects from. Backups
also protect from other things as mentioned by WD above.

Arno

 

[Matt]

I see your points and agree that backup of data is needed in addition to
RAID 1. I have very little to backup, so it will be quite simple to go to a
cdrw. Thanks.

 

[omega man]

Depends if you are looking for
a) fault tolerance
b) a backup system
c) or both.

You have a).
If you want b) put one drive in a removeable carrier and have it in the PC
only when doing a mirror backup ...keeping it somewhere safe and secure when
not in use. I use this method and works fine (I also have another carrier
attached to the regular IDE channel so I can put the backup drive in it and
recover separate files from it without re-booting)
If you want c) you would need another hard drive so that you can pull the
one in the removeable carrier as a backup and replace it with the old backup
volume for RAID purposes.