[nycbug-talk] Advice on setting up a RAID array

[Jesse Callaway]

On Jul 29, 2004, at 8:28 PM, Jonathan wrote:

> Hello all,
> 	I'm thinking about setting up a RAID array for my computer for a few 
> reasons:
> 1.  I'm really bad about backups and I have too much information that 
> is reorganized too often to try to backup on CDs
> 2.  I'd like to have more hard drive space for future use
> 3.  I have some money to spend :) and I have not spent any on 
> computers for over 6 months :(
>
> 	The main things I am looking for with the RAID array are (not 
> necessarily in priority order):
> 1.  Size, I'd like to go 500GB+
> 2.  Redundancy, the main requirement I'm planning to try and mitigate 
> any crashes considering I have no backups (I do know hard drive 
> crashes are not the only thing that can destroy data but hard drive 
> crashes are my main concern)
> 3.  Preferably Hardware RAID so it is more compatible across OSes and 
> performs better.
> 4.  SATA, I don't know if this is even an option yet but SATA would be 
> very nice esp. considering 18in IDE cables can't reach anywhere near 
> the top of my case where I would need to put the drives.
> 5.  Compatibility, I don't doubt whatever I get would work under 
> windows but I also want to be sure it will work under the BSDs 
> (FreeBSD-current won't boot right now but I want to try  NetBSD one of 
> these days (5.2.1-release does work for some reason))
>
> Awaiting much helpful advice ;)
> Jonathan
>

the problem is getting yesterday's data. RAID 5 is pretty cool, but 
alone it will let you down eventually. Maybe you have RAID 5 to work 
off of and then do backups to another RAID 5 setup. I highly recommend 
this over any realtime backup *unless you can roll back. If you can't 
roll back to another point in time it's just not a backup. Maybe 
snapshots would help to reduce storage needs.