[SOLVED] Hard drives kept in PC or getting a RAID enclosure would be better?

[fatalshot808]

Hello I'm pretty much responsible for backing up my family's photos, music and misc files. I've held onto these files for over 10 years and I wanted to upgrade to newer hard drives(both of them are like around 10 years old if not older) I have some files on a fairly new hard drive(6 months) but I wanted to do RAID 1 instead of just just copying and pasting between the two backup drives.

I was just curious if its better to keep them internal or in like an external enclosure(see "Link 1" below). If a single drive fails or if like the controller fails do you have to do anything to the hard drive to act normally as opposed to it being seen as a RAID array. I'm only asking this because for example if that enclosure fails would I need another one of the same models to unRAID them? Also the hard drives I might be using would be a Seagate Ironwolf NAS 4TB I chose this for the price and for it being a CMR, is there any issues with this hard drive because it says NAS.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Mercury-...d=1657694374&sprefix=owc+raid+,aps,188&sr=8-3

 

[DSzymborski]

RAID is not a backup solution. You want a proper backup, not a RAID, and for a fairly simple backup scenario, simply using software that backs up selected directories daily while checking the status of the backups is a far better, proper solution. If you do go ahead with a RAID, you still then want to have another solution for backup because, well, RAID is not a backup solution.

 

[Lafong]

What's the over-riding reason you want to use RAID at all?

Is your backup routine a simple and occasional copy and paste of all "original" files onto a backup drive of some type....without the use of a backup program? That sorta works, but it is quite tedious compared to backing up only new or modified files.

 

[fatalshot808]

What's the over-riding reason you want to use RAID at all?

Is your backup routine a simple and occasional copy and paste of all "original" files onto a backup drive of some type....without the use of a backup program? That sorta works, but it is quite tedious compared to backing up only new or modified files.

Thought it was be simpler overall just to have RAID 1. Yeah it's pretty much copy and pasting files one one drive to the next and just archiving additional files when they come my way. It's quite tedious but I don't do it often. No I don't use any backup programs sadly, that is probably my best option.

 

[fatalshot808]

RAID is not a backup solution. You want a proper backup, not a RAID, and for a fairly simple backup scenario, simply using software that backs up selected directories daily while checking the status of the backups is a far better, proper solution. If you do go ahead with a RAID, you still then want to have another solution for backup because, well, RAID is not a backup solution.

Thought it would be a better solution overall but yeah now I'm having second thoughts. I'm using two drives and I just copy and paste to their own directories(identical) for each drive. I will be using Cloud storage as an additional backup for mostly the photos and documents because of my slow upload speeds(10Mbit/s). Any software you recommend it either being free or paid?

 

[KyaraM]

About the harddrive. There is nothing wrong with the IronWolf HDDs. In fact, I'm using that exact drive for my home-built NAS. It performs well. I'm not sure why you think it might cause issues? NAS only means it is meant for 24/7 operation and durability. If anything, they should be theoretically longer lasting than standard HDDs, though failure happens with any all drives.

 

[Lafong]

Any software you recommend it either being free or paid?

There's a bunch;

SyncBackFree; Free File Sync; Karen's Replicator; all free

Paid; 30 bucks; 30 day free trial: Second Copy.

I've used 3 of the 5 successfully. Currently using SyncBackFree.

Continuing with the cloud is probably a good idea as a last resort fallback....although it is quite slow. I don't use it.

I back up about 110 thousand files several times a day. Takes about 2 minutes.

 

[DSzymborski]

Bvckup is another option.

 

[USAFRet]

RAID1 is not a backup.
It only protects against physical drive fail.
It does nothing for all the other means of data loss.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[s2018]

I was looking into RAID enclosures for backup.

My new system has, 1x SSD, 1x HDD.

Is this the best solution for me?
- Add two identical HDD (in my case say 4TB each will do) to my system.
(I need to check if the new system supports more HDD and has extra sata ports.)

• Use a backup software that runs daily or hourly.
• Keep heavy current working files and softwares on SSD (so it's fast), and keep a backup of this current files on cloud.
• All other files (that don't need to be on SSD, and when project is finished on SSD) go on HDD. In my case I only need to keep a backup of HDD.

 

[USAFRet]

I was looking into RAID enclosures for backup.

My new system has, 1x SSD, 1x HDD.

Is this the best solution for me?
- Add two identical HDD (in my case say 4TB each will do) to my system.
(I need to check if the new system supports more HDD and has extra sata ports.)

• Use a backup software that runs daily or hourly.
• Keep heavy current working files and softwares on SSD (so it's fast), and keep a backup of this current files on cloud.
• All other files (that don't need to be on SSD, and when project is finished on SSD) go on HDD. In my case I only need to keep a backup of HDD.

Please start a NEW thread for your particular situation
(let me know where)

But RAID, of any type, is probably not needed.