Question Do I need RAID? What should I do to Mirror my 14TB disks?

[edo101]

Hi guys, I have 4 x 14TB HDDs. I want to use them to hoard data like movies, songs, pics etc. It's soley for backups including PC images. I don't want to buy a box just for them. My computer can handle these HDDs and I'd rather them be in my main desktop given my "on the move" situation.

I had actually set up the first mirror as a RAID 1 pair through my Intel Motherboard. But then I thought about what would happen if I had to replace my mobo and/or if I upgrade my system to maybe an AMD one if they offered the best performance and I realized after googling that it can be tricky. And it seems most people discourage MB RAID.

My question is, what route should I go? SInce these are 14TB drives, I want to mirror their data in pairs since losing 14TB of data is costly. So 2 RAID 1 arrays. I want to keep it as simple as possible and I want to be able to easily move the mirrored pairs to a new system should I encounter a motherboard issue OR do an upgrade.

Another thing is that I have two different verisons of Windows 10 on my machine and in the future it might become dual booting Windows 10 and Windows 11 or doing a triple booting with Windows 10, 11 and a Linux image. THis is why I initially went with a motherboard approach. I figured it would be tricky to do Windows OS RAID when I have dual/tri booting system.

Do I need RAID? Should I find a RAID card and if so, what do you recommend? If not what other routes should I go? I'm open to anythig that's not very expensive.

 

[hotaru.hino]

What's the end goal here? If this isn't a server that you need up 24/7 as much as possible, RAID's kind of pointless here.

If you need a back up solution, buy an external drive or a NAS box.

 

[edo101]

What's the end goal here? If this isn't a server that you need up 24/7 as much as possible, RAID's kind of pointless here.

If you need a back up solution, buy an external drive or a NAS box.

The goal is just to not end up losing my data if 1 HDD fails. I have had to hdds fail over the last 3 years and have lost some data because of it

 

[USAFRet]

The goal is just to not end up losing my data if 1 HDD fails. I have had to hdds fail over the last 3 years and have lost some data because of it

And RAID is not that.

A RAID 1 (mirror) is good for continued uptime, in the event of physical drive fail.
It is NOT for data security.

You just need a good automated backup routine.

 

[edo101]

And RAID is not that.

A RAID 1 (mirror) is good for continued uptime, in the event of physical drive fail.
It is NOT for data security.

You just need a good automated backup routine.

@USAFRet any recommendations on that?

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Hi guys, I have 4 x 14TB HDDs. I want to use them to hoard data like movies, songs, pics etc. It's soley for backups including PC images. I don't want to buy a box just for them. My computer can handle these HDDs and I'd rather them be in my main desktop given my "on the move" situation.

So 4 x 14 TB HDDs that are not currently full of data unique to each?

I have over 1000+ movies in my home theater library... and digital copies of every one of them that I stream throughout the house and copy to portable devices. I have a 12TB HDD and said files currently take up about 6TB of space. Included in this amount is all my photos and other related media.

I have a 10TB external USB 3.0 HDD that is a backup of the main HDD.

The odds of both failing at the same time are virtually nil... and that's all I've done. It's taken 6 years to reach the halfway point of the main HDD capacity so I'm good for a while before I have to worry about hitting 10TB (the capacity of my backup drive) and by then I'm sure I'll have all the data on some other form (SSD?) of storage anyway.

The only reason I keep them on HDD is because for streaming the drive speed really doesn't matter... so no point of wasting SSD space... of which I have 16TB.

Point being... if you have 4 drives... you could put data on 2 and make the other 2 the backups... pretty much what I am doing... all tied into my desktop. If I misunderstood your intentions I apologize. 🤣

 

[USAFRet]

@USAFRet any recommendations on that?

A second/third actual copy.

The general principle is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise inaccessible.

My house systems back up to the NAS nightly or weekly.

 

[bill001g]

You are looking at only 1 narrow area of failure types. As mentioned you need a actual separate backup to solve many of those.
The most common would be some kind of catastrophic failure of unit with the disks. Could be as simple as a power supply frying all the parts because you got a power surge but maybe someone dumps a glass a water on your drive enclosure.
You also have to consider software issues. Could be as simple as oops and you do something to delete a bunch of files but you have to consider thing like ransomware.

I would spend your time and effort to find a way to get a offline backup of some kind a your first step. If you really want you can use raid to make mirror copies and then remove one of the drives but that is not really it intended use.

 

[edo101]

So 4 x 14 TB HDDs that are not currently full of data unique to each?

I have over 1000+ movies in my home theater library... and digital copies of every one of them that I stream throughout the house and copy to portable devices. I have a 12TB HDD and said files currently take up about 6TB of space. Included in this amount is all my photos and other related media.

I have a 10TB external USB 3.0 HDD that is a backup of the main HDD.

The odds of both failing at the same time are virtually nil... and that's all I've done. It's taken 6 years to reach the halfway point of the main HDD capacity so I'm good for a while before I have to worry about hitting 10TB (the capacity of my backup drive) and by then I'm sure I'll have all the data on some other form (SSD?) of storage anyway.

The only reason I keep them on HDD is because for streaming the drive speed really doesn't matter... so no point of wasting SSD space... of which I have 16TB.

Point being... if you have 4 drives... you could put data on 2 and make the other 2 the backups... pretty much what I am doing... all tied into my desktop. If I misunderstood your intentions I apologize. 🤣

No that sounds along the lines of what I want. Seems like I don't need RAID.

How do you stream from those throughout the house?

 

[edo101]

You are looking at only 1 narrow area of failure types. As mentioned you need a actual separate backup to solve many of those.
The most common would be some kind of catastrophic failure of unit with the disks. Could be as simple as a power supply frying all the parts because you got a power surge but maybe someone dumps a glass a water on your drive enclosure.
You also have to consider software issues. Could be as simple as oops and you do something to delete a bunch of files but you have to consider thing like ransomware.

I would spend your time and effort to find a way to get a offline backup of some kind a your first step. If you really want you can use raid to make mirror copies and then remove one of the drives but that is not really it intended use.

Yeah I will notbe doing RAID anymore. I must ask, when people bring up offline backup/offsite what do they mean? Do they mean an external HDD enclosure seperate from your desktop?

A second/third actual copy.

The general principle is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise inaccessible.

My house systems back up to the NAS nightly or weekly.

What do you mean by 2 different media and what do you mean by offsite? Like a seperate HDD enclosure or some cloud service?

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah I will notbe doing RAID anymore. I must ask, when people bring up offline backup/offsite what do they mean? Do they mean an external HDD enclosure seperate from your desktop?



What do you mean by 2 different media and what do you mean by offsite? Like a seperate HDD enclosure or some cloud service?

My "offsite" storage is a couple of hard drives in a desk drawer at work.
Updated every few months.
This protects against fire/flood/theft/ransomware/etc.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

No that sounds along the lines of what I want. Seems like I don't need RAID.

How do you stream from those throughout the house?

I stream via iTunes and Apple TV devices connected to each TV that connect to my PC through the home network.

When I purchase a blue ray/UHD disc that comes with a digital copy I add it to my iTunes library and then download a copy to the PC... usually around 5MB per movie.

If it doesn't come with a digital copy (most older titles) then I just rip my own with MakeMKV and my blu ray drive and then encode the file with Handbrake. I then add it to my iTunes library.

End result is a streaming movie library to any TV in the house.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Yeah I will notbe doing RAID anymore. I must ask, when people bring up offline backup/offsite what do they mean? Do they mean an external HDD enclosure seperate from your desktop?

What do you mean by 2 different media and what do you mean by offsite? Like a seperate HDD enclosure or some cloud service?

The 3-2-1 principle of backing up is this:

• Three copies of the data
• At least two physically different storage devices used (this could be anything from a separate hard drive, to optical media, to thumb drives; whatever fits your needs)
• At least one copy not in your house. This could be taking one of the physically separate devices elsewhere or using something like a cloud service.
  • This is so that if something happens to where you live and you lose the copy in your home, you still have at least one copy

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I might have to do that... add a 2nd backup... not on site. ^