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Am I the ONLY one that doesn't trust RIAD?

C

clank72

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 7, 2009
172
0
I don't know about you. But I'm still old-fashioned when it comes to backing up. I have 2 drives and drag everything over making them identical. And I have never had a problem.

There's been some Riad horror stories going around and I'm really sketical using it.

Here's what goes through my head...

Is this thing really working????
What if a drive fails... will it tell me??
Are my files backed up???
If one drive fails will both drives be messed??

I don't know but letting the RAID system just SIT there and do all the work is very weary to me. I hope I can overcome this one day. Because backing up manually can be time consuming, although re-assuring.

Am I alone?
 
Repeat this twenty times:

RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is an availability solution.

The only people who don't "trust" RAID are the people who don't understand what it's for.
 
there are different RAID arrays.

The mirror RAID will clone both hard disks but if you make a mistake then it is also cloned. Mainly it is considered an uptime measure to keep your hard drive up and running even one of them fails.

So as a real backup you can use either Time Machine or, CarbonCopy Cloner or SuperDuper to continue doing your old style backups, to play it safe.

For IT professionals a hardware backup has to be away in another location for it to be considered a real backup in case a physical disaster happens.
 
Yes I know what Raid is. But people can depend on them for always having a "Safety" drive at all times. Sort of like a Bkup, meaning they probably wont backup because they have Raid.

I can however see Raid 0 very useful for improving disk access. BUT. The question is. You are asking for more trouble and error by incorporating syncing and 2 drives instead of one?

Anyone using Raid here? Experiences?
 
clank72 said:
Yes I know what Raid is. But people can depend on them for always having a "Safety" drive at all times. Sort of like a Bkup, meaning they probably wont backup because they have Raid.
Click to expand...

But RAID is totally unlike a backup. RAID is not a backup. RAID is an availability solution. If you need availability, RAID is how you do it. If you need backups, RAID isn't how you do it.

Edit: In other words
  • RAID is so you can keep the computer running when a drive fails.
  • A backup is so you can save your data when it is lost, damaged, or destroyed.

They're totally different things. RAID will not protect your data and backups won't keep your computer online.
 
Nugget, thanks for explaining that. I understand.

However, if I handed you a nice RAID setup, you would probably backup less and rely on RAID to cover your losses with a Mirrored drive. Hence "Trust" the RAID. That is all I am saying. Sorry to put so much emphasis on 'backup'.

When you read a RAID horror story. Everyone says "I lost everything, I can't recover my work". Go to Apple.com and read reviews on drives.

Never mind. Thanks for the replies :)
 
clank72 said:
However, if I handed you a nice RAID setup, you would probably backup less and rely on RAID to cover your losses with a Mirrored drive.
Click to expand...
Well, you're wrong. Nobody who understands what RAID is for would think that they had less need to back up just because they'd implemented a RAID solution for availability. I've got RAID on dozens of systems and I sure as heck don't worry less about my data as a result. I just sleep easier trusting that when a drive fails the computer won't go down.

Anyone who does believe that needs to better understand what RAID does, hence all the replies you've gotten from everyone in this thread.
 
clank72 said:
Nugget, thanks for explaining that. I understand.

However, if I handed you a nice RAID setup, you would probably backup less and rely on RAID to cover your losses with a Mirrored drive. Hence "Trust" the RAID. That is all I am saying. Sorry to put so much emphasis on 'backup'.

When you read a RAID horror story. Everyone says "I lost everything, I can't recover my work". Go to Apple.com and read reviews on drives.

Never mind. Thanks for the replies :)
Click to expand...
Those that run into such situations are likely running a stripe set (RAID0), which is a bastard child of sorts. It's for performance improvements only, and offers absolutely no redundancy.

If they don't realize they need to backup, then they didn't understand what RAID or backups are for, and have learned the hard way. But I doubt they'll forget that lesson easily. ;)

If you need RAID, then by all means, use it. Just make sure you've set it up with a backup solution adequate to the job.

And given the automatic scheduling built into most backup software, there's no real excuse to have missed doing it. No user intervention required after the initial setup. :)
 
I've got RAID0 for my startup disk. Two other drives are used for storing media (music, videos, etc) and another to store projects (my designs, photography, etc, things of value).

Everything i own is also copied to an external hard drive for backup. If my RAID0 dies, i dont care too much, it doesnt hold anything other than OS X and applications.
 
I'm with you on that whole "not trusting Riad" thing. Every time I go into my room, money is missing from my desk. I should have never trusted him in the first place.
 
Nugget said:
But RAID is totally unlike a backup. RAID is not a backup. RAID is an availability solution. If you need availability, RAID is how you do it. If you need backups, RAID isn't how you do it.

Edit: In other words
  • RAID is so you can keep the computer running when a drive fails.
  • A backup is so you can save your data when it is lost, damaged, or destroyed.

They're totally different things. RAID will not protect your data and backups won't keep your computer online.
Click to expand...

Kinda sounds the same when you say it like that...
 
clank72 said:
Am I alone?
Click to expand...

Yes, you are alone.

RAID is a rather old and thus mature server technology. It was designed for fail safe redundancy, meaning that your system stays operational even after a hard disk failure. However, a RAID does NOT replace a backup!

Repeat: A RAID does NOT substitute or replace backups!

Why? Because a RAID does not archive data like a backup does, a RAID provides redundancy for current data.
 
Nugget said:
Let's say you accidentally delete a file. Explain to me how you can restore it from your RAID?

That's why RAID is not a backup.
Click to expand...

So much THIS! If you only have one copy of your data, you don't have any copies of your data. If your data is all in one location, then you may as well not have your data at all, since you are one disaster away from losing all of it.

As everyone else has pointed out, RAID is simply how your HDDs are arranged. A RAID 1 mirror provides a little comfort in that if one drive fails, the other is an exact copy. RAID 5 is good, since you can lose one drive an still keep going, and it provides better performance. However, that still isn't a backup. Backups are stored somewhere other than the original machine, preferably offsite. With that said, you can use RAID in backups. You can get NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices with a RAID 1 or 5 setup. If you want to get really crazy, you can have something RAID 5+1 (striping with parity and mirroring), but you won't really see that outside a major NAS setup or SAN.

This whole perception problem with RAID can lead to problems. I have seen a few cases where people think they have backups simply because they are mirroring their drives. They often get a rude awakening if it fails, and they lose their data.
 
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