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rspeaker

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 1, 2006
279
35
I am wondering the best way to permanently store my data, aside from DVDs. I have a whole lot of stuff from school, all my notes, presentations, etc, plus a bunch of video clips and other files that I plan to hold onto until I get into teaching.

I know hard drives can go bad, but isn't there some kind of formatting/HDD that will copy the files into two places (maybe called a RAID setup?) I know nothing about this, I just want a way to guarantee my files will be safe. Thanks.
 
Hard drives are much more stable then CD's Or DVD's. But no matter what you do have 3 copies of your data. one active, on backed up in storage, and another in some other place that is backed up.
 
I know hard drives can go bad, but isn't there some kind of formatting/HDD that will copy the files into two places (maybe called a RAID setup?) I know nothing about this, I just want a way to guarantee my files will be safe. Thanks.

i would consider RAID to be an active way to access a lot of data from a number of hard drives with some redundancy built in; in RAID 5, while keeping good performance, you use 3 disks and one can die, be replaced, and you do not loose any data. this is a good explanation of the various flavors of RAID. RAID is NOT a "backup" it is a redundancy.

But no matter what you do have 3 copies of your data. one active, on backed up in storage, and another in some other place that is backed up.

absolutely, strongly agree on this one. the system i am in the midst of setting up will have my working files on my laptop, on my RAID 5 box, and on at least one set of offsite backups (hopefully hard drives, see my question below.) my non-working (archived) files will be on my RAID box, on two sets of backups, one offsite.


Hard drives are much more stable then CD's Or DVD's.

i am not suggesting you are incorrect, but do you have any data to back this up? i ask as i desperately hope this is true.
 
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