[SOLVED] Best solution for RAID 1 setup?

[Ihaveaquestion9000]

Hello!

I just bought and received the WD My Book Duos in order to use it as a RAID 1 Backup for my Data. To my amazement it has enabled hardware encryption which can't be turned off. This is unacceptable for me as it destroys the whole purpose of RAID1 and data recovery - so i will be sending it back.
Now comes my question: Is there a similar product like the wd my Duos that doesn't have hardware encryption? I generally really like the setup of the My Book Duos and its easy to use.

Am i correct that this is a Hardware RAID setup?

I will be using it solely under Ubuntu with Timeshift Backup Software and it shouldn't have a network connectivity. It also only can be the casing and i'll buy the HDDs separate.


Thank you in advance!

Edit: After some further research i came to the conclusion that a simple HDD Bay with Raid support is sufficient for a simple RAID1? So my idea is to take the 2x 4TB WD RED HDDs from the My Book Duos (The whole thing was 200€ and 1 single WD RED 4TB is 120€) and put it in a cheap third party RAID 1 compatible HDD bay. Does this make any sense or does it sound completely stupid?

 

[RealBeast]

Two points. Be sure that those are drives that will work if you shuck them from the case. Also, be aware that many WD Red drives in the midsize range currently are SMR and have poor performance relative to PMR drives. Apparently, Seagate and Toshiba are also using SMR on mid sized drives in many models.

 

[faalin]

Raid 1 in an external case just sounds like a bad idea, Since it will be a hardware raid for the case if it dies for any reason you will have a very hard time getting data off those disc.

If it must be external i would look into a synology unit.

 

[Ihaveaquestion9000]

Raid 1 in an external case just sounds like a bad idea, Since it will be a hardware raid for the case if it dies for any reason you will have a very hard time getting data off those disc.

If it must be external i would look into a synology unit.

How should i make the RAID1 then? It's just for my personal data and i want it to automatically have the data on 2 HDDs in case one of them fails. WD for some reason has hardware encryption that can't be turned off which destroys the purpose of having a backup in my opinion. Would you just buy two HDDs, connect them through two USB connectors, and back up my data separately?

Two points. Be sure that those are drives that will work if you shuck them from the case. Also, be aware that many WD Red drives in the midsize range currently are SMR and have poor performance relative to PMR drives. Apparently, Seagate and Toshiba are also using SMR on mid sized drives in many models.

Oh, these two REDs are sold as RAID HDDs but i don't know the specifics. Thanks for the advice!

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 1 is for drive redundancy, not data redundancy.
It sorta helps in case of a physical drive fail. It does little or nothing for all the other forms of data loss.

I'd belay the RAID 1 altogether, and come up with an actual backup routine.

 

[RealBeast]

. . .
Oh, these two REDs are sold as RAID HDDs but i don't know the specifics. Thanks for the advice!

Yeah, just Google WD Red SMR and you can see some of the many stories and reports. It became apparent first to people trying to build some kind of RAID arrays with Red NAS drives and getting errors. Later Seagate and Toshiba admitted to the same.

While it can be handy to have a local copy of all files for quick recovery, as stated you cannot rely on RAID for your only backup solution, cloud providers of high quality (like BackBlaze for example) are worth considering for important data.

 

[Ihaveaquestion9000]

RAID 1 is for drive redundancy, not data redundancy.
It sorta helps in case of a physical drive fail. It does little or nothing for all the other forms of data loss.

I'd belay the RAID 1 altogether, and come up with an actual backup routine.

What would you recommend then? Sorry for asking simple questions.

Buying three single consumer HDDs and do weekly backups on them separately is a good backup routine? (Placing one HDD in a fireproof safe)

Yeah, just Google WD Red SMR and you can see some of the many stories and reports. It became apparent first to people trying to build some kind of RAID arrays with Red NAS drives and getting errors. Later Seagate and Toshiba admitted to the same.

While it can be handy to have a local copy of all files for quick recovery, as stated you cannot rely on RAID for your only backup solution, cloud providers of high quality (like BackBlaze for example) are worth considering for important data.

I'm really against Cloud Backups. It's just general trust issues that the data is safe there even if i encrypt it beforehand.
I think i will send the WD My Book Duos back to Amazon. Having a buggy hardware encryption and then selling SMR HDDs which apparently have issues. Sadly not worth the money...

Thx for alle the infos!

 

[mdd1963]

If only 3-4 TB of space is required, I've seen several Toshiba external USB drives of that size locally for as low as $65 or so...; at that cost, buy two, put important files (encrypt first via 7-Zip if needed) in more than one cloud location (P-Cloud. DropBox, IceDrive, GoogleDrive, etc.), and, once per week/month, alternate a total image backup onto one of the external drives... (If you never fully trust any one drive, you are less likely to ever end up disappointed!)