Question Difference between JBOD and RAID 0 - specifically re Lacie external drives

[kevinm016]

I need at least an 8-10 TB external drive and am considering:

• Lacie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 RAID drive (8 TB)
• Lacie d2 Thunderbolt 3 drive (10 TB)

1. If I understand correctly, if I set the RAID drive up as RAID 0 or RAID 1, it gives me 4 TB maximum capacity. Is this correct?
2. If I set the RAID drive up as JBOD, it gives me 8 TB capacity. Is this correct?
3. If I set the RAID drive up as JBOD, can I create 2 volumes, one 6TB and one 2 TB, or can each volume be no larger than 4TB?
4. Is there any advantage to getting the RAID drive and setting it up as JBOD over the other Lacie drive which is just one disk?

Thanks...

 

[jsmithepa]

Wow-wow-wow-wow.

First understand RAID is NOT BACKUP, RAID is for HIGH AVAILABILITY, meaning you can't be down for any amount of time when a drive fails.

RAID for high availability automatically REDUCES your total storage amount. A box that says 10TB will be reduced when u apply most RAID modes, all these stuff is on the web so I won't regurgitate.

RAID-0 is a different animal, is not for high availability but is a performance booster with downside, if one drive in the raid-0 pair fails the whole raid-0 volume will go down.

JBOD = NO RAID.

Why are you looking for RAID?

 

[kevinm016]

Wow-wow-wow-wow.

First understand RAID is NOT BACKUP, RAID is for HIGH AVAILABILITY, meaning you can't be down for any amount of time when a drive fails.

RAID for high availability automatically REDUCES your total storage amount. A box that says 10TB will be reduced when u apply most RAID modes, all these stuff is on the web so I won't regurgitate.

RAID-0 is a different animal, is not for high availability but is a performance booster with downside, if one drive in the raid-0 pair fails the whole raid-0 volume will go down.

JBOD = NO RAID.

Why are you looking for RAID?

The WOWs made me smile - and do a great job to highlight my ignorance about computer issues.

 

[fzabkar]

I'm assuming that the 8TB RAID box contains two 4TB drives.

When configured as RAID 1, the two drives will be exact copies of each other (mirrored), so the capacity of the RAID will be 4TB.

When configured as RAID 0 (striped), the total capacity will be 8TB, but it will be spread across both drives as alternating stripes. For example, drive #1 will contain the first stripe, say 128KB, then drive #2 will store the second 128KB stripe, and drive #1 will store the third stripe, and so on. This means that there is no redundancy, and the failure of either drive will result in almost total data loss.

JBOD (just a bunch of drives) concatenates the two 4TB drives into one contiguous 8TB logical drive. I would create two 4TB partitions so that the failure of either drive results in only a 50% data loss.

RAID 1 is the most secure, while RAID 0 is the fastest performer. JBOD is somewhere in the middle.

 

[kevinm016]

I'm assuming that the 8TB RAID box contains two 4TB drives.

When configured as RAID 1, the two drives will be exact copies of each other (mirrored), so the capacity of the RAID will be 4TB.

When configured as RAID 0 (striped), the total capacity will be 8TB, but it will be spread across both drives as alternating stripes. For example, drive #1 will contain the first stripe, say 128KB, then drive #2 will store the second 128KB stripe, and drive #1 will store the third stripe, and so on. This means that there is no redundancy, and the failure of either drive will result in almost total data loss.

JBOD (just a bunch of drives) concatenates the two 4TB drives into one contiguous 8TB logical drive. I would create two 4TB partitions so that the failure of either drive results in only a 50% data loss.

RAID 1 is the most secure, while RAID 0 is the fastest performer. JBOD is somewhere in the middle.

Thank you.

So if I understand correctly, the only advantage of the RAID 0 drive vs the other drive, assuming the same capacity, is that the RAID 0 drive would be faster?

Assuming that the 8 TB RAID drive does have two 4 TB drives, can I set this up as a 2 TB volume and a 6 TB volume with RAID 0 or can I only do this if set up as JBOD?

 

[fzabkar]

Your 2TB + 6TB configuration should be possible in both JBOD and RAID 0 configurations.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can set up an 8TB RAID 0 array as 2 partitions of 2TB and 6TB.
What are you actually using this for?

And...You absolutely must set up a comprehensive automated backup routine for this.​

 

[kevinm016]

I'm using it for (1) storing image files, (2) time machine backup and (3) carbon copy cloner backup.

I probably don't need a RAID drive. Probably should just get a normal drive.

And maybe it makes more sense to separate the backup drives from the drive with the images, for safety purposes in case something goes bad - instead of one large drive with separate volumes?

 

[USAFRet]

I'm using it for (1) storing image files, (2) time machine backup and (3) carbon copy cloner backup.

I probably don't need a RAID drive. Probably should just get a normal drive.

And maybe it makes more sense to separate the backup drives from the drive with the images, for safety purposes in case something goes bad - instead of one large drive with separate volumes?

Repeating the above...WOW....😉

Yes, a RAID 0 is absolutely NOT needed or desired in this.

2 independant physical drives in that enclosure. No RAID, no JBOD, no splitting partitions.
1 for images and whatnot, the other for actual backups, with your preferred tool.

 

[kevinm016]

Repeating the above...WOW....😉

Yes, a RAID 0 is absolutely NOT needed or desired in this.

2 independant physical drives in that enclosure. No RAID, no JBOD, no splitting partitions.
1 for images and whatnot, the other for actual backups, with your preferred tool.

OK!

"Enclosure"? or just two physical drives?

 

[kevinm016]

Needs to be Thunderbolt 3.

 

[USAFRet]

Needs to be Thunderbolt 3.

If either of those LaCie things can't address each physical drive independently, I'd look elsewhere.
Or, if it can't, then you also need some other drive space for actual backups.

You don't want your image store and backups all jumbled together in a single device.

I have a 4 bay Qnap NAS. 4 x 4TB drives, currently RAID 5 but getting ready to undo that in favor of JBOD.
It holds nightly backups of all the systems in the house, and the movie and music libraries and other shared data.
There is also a full backup of that on another enclosure, refreshed at least weekly.

 

[USAFRet]

And why does it need to be thunderbolt 3?

 

[kevinm016]

And why does it need to be thunderbolt 3?

Speed!

I have a G-tech TB drive that is being used for Time Machine backups.

Maybe I will just add another G-tech TB3 drive for the image files and whatnot..

 

[prophet51]

To need the speed of thunderbolt the disks have to be capable of r/w@1Gb/s. You will be lucky to get 400Mb/s. You need Raid 1 or 5 for backing up data to, or spend that money you were planning on spending on disks to some offsite backup arrangment.

 

[JKG2]

Well, I needed space and speed more than anything else, so I used RAID 0 for my 8TB WD MyBookDuo, and so far (1.5yr+) it's worked fine.

The thing that actually caused me the most consternation and time when I first got it, was finding a good software solution for backup. Now, of course the WD backup solutions come with their own software, but I found it to be a useless, bloated , and SLOW piece of work by someone who had obviously had evil on their mind.

It's not a really a difficult thing, or so I thought. I just wanted software that will copy the data I tell it to from drive A to drive B, on the days and times I specify, and be just smart enough to know whether the data has changed or not, and therefore whether to copy it. Oh, and do it QUICKLY and keep the computers and drives awake until it's done.

You would think this would be fairly simple, something that should underpin every piece of backup software ever written. And in some cases perhaps it was, at one point, but in the intervening years it has been lost in the piles of unnecessary extras; video playback, cloud backup, bonus utilities, buffer volumes, social media sharing,, etc, etc that have been dumped on many once-reputable packages in the mean time.

I tried about half a dozen of them, most of the majors and a few smaller ones, but they all seemed to suffer from one or more of the above maladies.

Finally, when I was about to give up and just start copying shit manually, I discovered a quaint little app that looks like it was written in 1998 called Cobian Backup 11. Despite its appearances, it actually ticked every box I mentioned above, did it quickly and quietly without any fuss, was easy as pie to set up, and...it was FREE.

Basically it was just written by some guy (Luis Cobian) who hosts it with another fellow at this site...

https://www.cobiansoft.com/

...with help from donations. There's not much support, although the author does seem to answer most of the tech questions on the forum himself, and I have no idea how well it would work in a larger corporate environment (although he says it remains free even in such a multi-user setup), but for me, just one person with a couple of drives to make regular unattended backups of, it's perfect. Just my $.02

 

[kevinm016]

Thanks all for the help, suggestions ... and WOWs.

So I've been persuaded that I don't need RAID; I just need 2 8TB drives, one for all the stuff that's not on the internal drive and one to backup to (Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner). We're talking Mac here...

I have G-Technology drives now and they have worked well so I will stick with them although I am sure there are cheaper options out there.

One final stupid question.

I can get two 8TB G-drives for a total cost of about $850 or I can get a 16TB G-RAID which consists of two 8TB drives for about $950.

If I get the G-RAID can I configure it such that the two 8TB drives are completely separate, they show up on my desktop as two separate drives and if something happens to one of them, it has no effect on the other?