Computer junkies I need help.

RAID 1 is what I was talking about. It's the only reasonable way for him IMHO. The other systems get too expensive and offer little for a small setup. All he would need is to rebuild his computer with a SATA/RAID motherboard, but that would usually entail almost every other component as well since his older computer doesn't use the newer processor, memory, video, etc. I'd look into either having a friend build one as cheap as possible or just getting a package deal from a major builder like Dell or Gateway. Karl.

Personally, if you can afford it, I would go Raid 5. Unless you lose more than one drive at a time with Raid 5, you can still recover everything.

I don't know that I'd recommend RAID-5 unless the usable space requirements dictate it.

These days you can get a 250GB SATA-II drive for $63. Mirror it for 250GB usable and you're at all of $126.

Sure, you could have 500GB usable in a 3x250GB RAID-5, but its overkill if you don't actually require that much space. If you want hardware RAID, you'll pay more for a card capable of RAID-5 as well.

Mike
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Originally Posted by Scott

Personally, if you can afford it, I would go Raid 5. Unless you lose more than one drive at a time with Raid 5, you can still recover everything.

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Thanks for all the replys guys I don't need anything fancy. I don't need a zillion gigs.

All this comp does is maintain my entire customer data base thats it I don't need anything major. I can build another comp that is not a problem I have built many of them over the years. My problem is in the last 5 years my shop took me away from that hobby and as you know 5 years means I might as well not know a damn thing anymore.

All I need is something that will back it's self up for a small business and not take days to recover if it crashes. The simple way is what I am looking for nothing fancy I am not some big corporation just a small guy.

RAID sounds great as long as it is simple, For the short term I can do the nero thing.

I have no clue how to do RAID 2C offered me a good deal on a board and other stuff I just need to know how to do RAID.

Man , that sucks monkey chunks HunterCO, hope you get it worked out.

PM'd ya back Hunter.

Pm coming at you Hunter.

Also, as I was gooling around, it seems there's a fair number of folks who get stuck and fight with their systme trying to get raid running.

May just be certain motherboards, not sure. The board I'm offering Hunter is intel 865 based with intel raid on the ICH5 chip for those out there who know this stuff. If anyone is hot shit setting raid up I know I would need help if it was me.

Bingo!

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Originally Posted by newracer

I bought a CD/DVD burner that included a copy of Nero. You can set Nero to back up the hard drive or just portions of it at any interval you want. I also bought an external HD to store the backup on. Very easy to setup and will be less than $200.

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RAID 5 has the advantage of faster reads, but you take a hit with slower writes since you're also having to write parity data. RAID 1 is easier and you get at least the same performance of the single drive.

My primary server at home is RAID 1 and my performance desktop is using RAID 0. RAID 0 offers performance by striping the data across multiple spindles, but you lose everything if 1 drive in the stripe set fails.

Using a DVD burner for backup still would require the user to change media even if you schedule the backup. RAID will protect your data in the event of a drive failure, but it won't help you in the event of data corruption. Regular backups could allow recovery to a point in time before the data was corrupted.

RAID 1 with an occasional backup with something like a Maxtor OneTouch II should give you the belt and suspenders.
PCmag: Maxtor OneTouch II External USB Drive

There's also a really low tech way to keep an extra copy of important data. Schedule an event that copies the important stuff from your primary data source to another system on your network. Chances are, both systems won't fail at the same time.

The RAID configuration is really a moot point. As long as you remove the single point of failure for your drive then you should be fine. RAID 1 is just fine and is usually the most cost effective RAID configuration.

Then to make sure your backup isn't a single point of failure (IE if your shop was robbed/burned/bombed and the computer taken/destroyed...then so is your data)

Use microsoft's built-in backup utility to do a backup of system state and critical data to another computer or hard drive (like the USB drive).

Then if you are really paranoid use ghost or some other imaging software and take a monthly or bi-monthly image of the drive and burn the image to dvd's and take them off-site.


Oh and sorry to hear about the drive failure. I just had that happen with a Maxtor that I was in the middle of putting all my cd's and dvd's onto to make my home theater media-less. And now it's all gone. :evil: