Cloning vs. RAID Mirror

[fcvandy]

I am needing to relocate my user data from my internal 1TB HDD to an external HDD for both space reasons and to separate data from boot.

My data is home use with a standard mix of documents, photos, music and movies, with movies making up a bulk of the capacity. I want to make sure this drive is backed up/duplicated somehow. Currently, I have a clone of my internal HDD minus movies on a 500GB external HDD, and I have my documents and photos backing up to another external 1TB HDD via Time Machine. I am also backing docs, photos, music and movies to an online service The new user volume will end up being a little over 1.2 TB.

If I was too purchase 2 2TB HDD for this new volume, should I set it up as a software RAID 1 or just clone one to the other nightly? I am not concerned with versioning as the bulk of this data is music and movies that never change, and the rest is versioned elsewhere.

Any suggestions or personal experiences appreciated.

 

[Mal]

RAID is not the best setup for backup purposes. If one drive goes, the other is at best inaccessible until the RAID is rebuilt with a replacement drive. I'd recommend using Time Machine (if you want incremental backups) and/or Carbon Copy Cloner.

jW

 

[fcvandy]

RAID is not the best setup for backup purposes. If one drive goes, the other is at best inaccessible until the RAID is rebuilt with a replacement drive. I'd recommend using Time Machine (if you want incremental backups) and/or Carbon Copy Cloner.

jW

I only want clones in thi situation. If each new drive is a standalone external. Isn't mirroring almost the same as cloning?

 

[Mal]

Mirroring and cloning have several major differences, but the most notable one was as I mentioned, the timeframe and effort/expense needed to get back up and running in the event of a drive failure. I would recommend Carbon Copy Cloner for your situation, and just set it to run on a schedule that you like. It's free, or you can donate if you find it useful (but that's not required). Many users find it indispensable, and while I don't use it for my backups, I have used it to clone drives for other reasons many times and never have I seen it fail to work perfectly.

jW

 

[thekev]

I only want clones in thi situation. If each new drive is a standalone external. Isn't mirroring almost the same as cloning?

It's not the same thing. Even Raid 1 setups can crash. If you end up with corruption issues, they're immediately copied. Raid is never considered a true backup in itself.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I only want clones in thi situation. If each new drive is a standalone external. Isn't mirroring almost the same as cloning?

There is another issue with mirroring, which is protection against user error.
A mirror only protects against a physical malfunction, not a user one

If you backup via clone or TM, then the clone/TM copy is "disconnected" so if through user error you do something stupid, lets say you accidentally drag something to the trash and empty it and then realise that was the wrong file, you can get it back from the copy. With a mirror, you cant do that.