To Raid or Not to Raid that is the question

The advantage of setting up a raid system seem clear yet and even easier now with most motherboards supporting it yet it is always recommended that you use identical drives. Great when you set it up because you purchase the 3 or 4 hard drives at the same time. Sonow I've got raid, better performance and protection should a drive fail. So lets fast forward two or three years and let say now one of the drive's fail in my 4 hard drive setup. So do I need to replace the hard drive with an identical one (what are the chances of me finding one 2 or 3 years later) orcan I replace it with a different one? What pain do I have to go through to get it to work - ie.. firts set up partitions etc... OR is the solution to buy additional drive at the time of purchase and have them lying around - just incase one in the raid array fails

if he talkin about usig 4 harddrives then he probably using RAID 5 or 0+1

RAID 0+1 means two harddrives have data spread across and two back-ups of each thus better performance and protection

I would recommend RAID 0+1 since you could probably find similar drives if one were to fail years later and it offers much faster performance

What sort of raid are you running? But no, it doesn't have to be exactly identical.Same size/speed/interface is really all you need to worry about usually...Captain__Tripps

I'm busy building a new system using the Corsair 800D case of which I plan on installing 4 HDD's most likely Seagate Barraguda 1TB and set it up in a raid 5but I'm pondering if going for that protection is worth it should adrive fail later will Ibe able to get another drive that caneasily replace the failed one.

[QUOTE="Captain__Tripps"]What sort of raid are you running? But no, it doesn't have to be exactly identical.Same size/speed/interface is really all you need to worry about usually...dghillza

I'm busy building a new system using the Corsair 800D case of which I plan on installing 4 HDD's most likely Seagate Barraguda 1TB and set it up in a raid 5but I'm pondering if going for that protection is worth it should adrive fail later will Ibe able to get another drive that caneasily replace the failed one.

it only protects you for only 1 drive failure as the safe as other RAIDs and a single failure in RAID 5 while it does not mean a lost of data suffers a lose of performance

if he talkin about usig 4 harddrives then he probably using RAID 5 or 0+1

RAID 0+1 means two harddrives have data spread across and two back-ups of each thus better performance and protection

I would recommend RAID 0+1 since you could probably find similar drives if one were to fail years later and it offers much faster performance

Flamingthief

Yeah RAID 0+1 is under consideration - my biggest thing is speed and protection and being protected means being able to recover years later without any or too much hassle or why bother.

if he talkin about usig 4 harddrives then he probably using RAID 5 or 0+1

RAID 0+1 means two harddrives have data spread across and two back-ups of each thus better performance and protection

I would recommend RAID 0+1 since you could probably find similar drives if one were to fail years later and it offers much faster performance

Flamingthief

[QUOTE="Flamingthief"]

if he talkin about usig 4 harddrives then he probably using RAID 5 or 0+1

RAID 0+1 means two harddrives have data spread across and two back-ups of each thus better performance and protection

I would recommend RAID 0+1 since you could probably find similar drives if one were to fail years later and it offers much faster performance

Captain__Tripps

My point if that is the case then why bother with raid ... seems like the only resonable option is raid 0+1 or else I might as well just mirror the drive

[QUOTE="Captain__Tripps"][QUOTE="Flamingthief"]

if he talkin about usig 4 harddrives then he probably using RAID 5 or 0+1

RAID 0+1 means two harddrives have data spread across and two back-ups of each thus better performance and protection

I would recommend RAID 0+1 since you could probably find similar drives if one were to fail years later and it offers much faster performance

dghillza

My point if that is the case then why bother with raid ... seems like the only resonable option is raid 0+1 or else I might as well just mirror the drive