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RAID 1 help
- Thread starter thebro20
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Creating a RAID 1 set from 2 external drives is possible, but it erases BOTH hard drives before you can use it.
You might be better off using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your current hard disk to another, and setup a schedule for it to clone periodically...
RAID 1 is not really an extra precaution. RAID 1 is about high availability. If a drive fails, you should be able to work on some mission critical project with the other drive remaining on line. ASAP you replace the bad drive and the good one is cloned onto the new empty one.
But that has zero to do with backups. Have a good backup plan first...with at least one backup being made by TM or CCC in the background 24/7. If you want to improve on that situation, then you can also consider using an iCloud backup service and/or rotate backup drives off site to a bank vault or other location.
But that has zero to do with backups. Have a good backup plan first...with at least one backup being made by TM or CCC in the background 24/7. If you want to improve on that situation, then you can also consider using an iCloud backup service and/or rotate backup drives off site to a bank vault or other location.
well see its not my computer that i would like to have backed up, i do that anyway, but i have a lot of pictures and media that i don't want to loose but don't want to keep on my computer. so i figured with RAID 1 if one drive failed id still have a copy of everything. I just don't want to have to plug both drives in and put files on each one at a time.
If you accidentally delete files or library on the raid drive, it will delete both copies since they are kept in sync. Your backup just went poof! Raid 1 provides fault tolerance and performance improvements in some cases. It's a false sense of security if you think you have a backup with it.
I run my Synology NAS in mirrored mode for a particular reason. I travel with it in my RV. It holds our media files and time machine backups. The media files are backed up at home. When on the road, a drive failure would be a pain with the backup miles away. With the mirror, I can continue to run, buy a new drive, and rebuild the mirror. If I was in a fixed location I would not mirror the drive.
You need a RAID enclosure to get any type of external RAID working. You could get another external drive and run two Time Machine backups.
Did you really just suggest OP rotate backup drives to a bank vault?
OP, here's what ya gotta do, because if Armageddon happens, your backups are surely toast- rotate backup drives to the International Space Station. Foolproof.
But really, RAID1 will, as mentioned, format all drives involved, so make sure your data is in another spot.
If you have to ask the question, maintaining such a solution (based on separate disk cabinets) will be more of a pain in the butt than the benefits are worth. It's not impossible, it's just impractical.
+1 on setting up an extra backup solution instead. I haven't tried the scenario you're talking about, but I would think TimeMachine should be able to handle it - just get a large enough backup drive.
Did you really just suggest OP rotate backup drives to a bank vault?
OP, here's what ya gotta do, because if Armageddon happens, your backups are surely toast- rotate backup drives to the International Space Station. Foolproof.
But really, RAID1 will, as mentioned, format all drives involved, so make sure your data is in another spot.
Each person has to decide how valuable their data is to them and what they are willing to spend or effort they are willing to make to secure it. We have many folks on this BBS who are professionals that indeed do cloud backups plus rotate backup drives to offsite locations.
Personally I do TM locally only. I don't do cloud backups or offsite backups. I do not have any revenue depending on my data availability.
Software RAID doesn't need an enclosure, just two external drives.
Hardware RAID, yes, this is true.
Good points. While I don't have revenue depending on my data either, I have gone mostly paperless so most of my life is digital and I want it protected. The money I spend on backup each year is cheap insurance to me. Others could lose all their data and be mildly inconvenienced.
Backup is like insurance. Buy enough to minimize your maximum regret.