rcannonp;25'6 said:
Thanks for the reply.
So, what sort of hardware do you use in your RAID setup? Do you use dedicated RAID hardware or do you configure it in software? Wiebetech is supposed to be coming out with a two bay version of their RTX series enclosure. I was waiting to see what price point those come in at and thinking of picking one up. I'm still not sure if I would want a JBOD or hardware RAID unit.
Software RAID is somewhat slow. I use a
Promise TX23'' RAID controller that I can control remotely from any other computer over the the LAN (Or anywhere in the world if proper port open in firewalls) if local computer is not accessible.
You can have either Software JBOD, software RAID, hardware JBOD or hardware RAID.
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) may increase performance but at the cost of loosing all data security! If only one drive fail in the bunch, all of them fail! Maybe good for gamer on a rush for speed but very bad for invaluable data. Avoid it!
RAID is more expensive:
In JBOD, 4''GB + 4''GB = 8''GB
In RAID, 4''GB + 4''GB = 4''GB
With RAID there is an increase of performance only in the "read" operations but you have peace of mind if one drive fail. You can continue working while waiting for a replace ment drive but then, keep up to date external backups religiously!
External array may be a good choise if you have more than one computer to protect. This should not be a local USB/FW unit but something accessible from any computer on the LAN. More and more of these units are also accessible to home entertainment systems... That may be a good idea to move your PhotoShoots and Lightroom catalogs there then making backups on the local drive.
If money is not a concern, I suggest going to RAID-5 with which you can loose more than one drive and continue and also have an "hot spare" drive that can be used to rebuild automatically the array in the advent of a drive failure.
Hope this helps
P.S.: May be an "Equipment talk" topic?