howdy folks! I just got a fairly cheap 1tb (2x500gb) external USB 2 HDD for $200 from Newegg with rebate. I am pretty sure I can set up a mirror raid in Disk Utility. Being that the drive is actually 2 500 GB disks, do you think that it would be an intelligent partition? Let's say one drive or partition failed somewhere down the line. Would I necessarily have all the data on the other drive? Or would one of the disks potentially contain some bits of both mirror partitions and lose some of that data? IF that's going to be the case then I will just not have the data backed up and have twice the storage. I already have an external drive for time machine, so the OS, Applications, and my own creations remain backed up on that.
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Mirror raid a 1tb external hdd?
- Thread starter rallycars
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First, you should check if your enclosure supports RAID 1, then you won't need to get Disk Utility involved. This would be the fastest because its at a hardware level.
If it doesn't, then you will need to check that your enclosure can expose both drives so you can configure the Mirrored RAID set in Disk Utility.
Finally, yes each drive will have a copy of every file, so if one fails, the other will contain a full and complete copy. That's the point of mirroring. Do keep in mind if a file becomes corrupt, that corruption would exist on the copy too.
If it doesn't, then you will need to check that your enclosure can expose both drives so you can configure the Mirrored RAID set in Disk Utility.
Finally, yes each drive will have a copy of every file, so if one fails, the other will contain a full and complete copy. That's the point of mirroring. Do keep in mind if a file becomes corrupt, that corruption would exist on the copy too.