Is it possible to do a raid 0 with external HDD(WD My Book)?

[j0zj0z]

Hello,
I've never liked to just go ahead and make a new topic about a probably silly question, but I haven't found the exact answer to this one.

So, I was wondering if it was possible to do a raid 0 with external HDD's.
My idea was just to make one big drive so I could stack all my files in there.

Thanks in advance and what a fascinant webpage this is!

 

[Traciatim]

That just seems like a really terrible idea. If anything happens with the consistency of either drive you would lose all of your data. You could put both of the drives in an enclosure that supports RAID though if you really wanted to.

 

[USAFRet]

Even if it is possible (and I'm not sure it is) that is a really bad idea.

The only reason to do a RAID 0 is for 'speed'. Pumping that through the USB interface negates that.

2 drives in RAID 0 is exactly the same size as those same two drives as individual drives. All your files still fit either way.

 

[j0zj0z]

Thanks for the quick responses.
The original idea was to have those drives as, say, "Photos", so I can stack all my photos in there. It's just a matter of comfort having all of them in a same drive.
Searching even more I found there are some "raid controllers" that do that. I'm not sure I'm correct on this one, but could that be possible?
I found these on Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607%20600252187&IsNodeId=1&name=USB%203.0 (I filtered it to USB 3.0, which is what I have for external HDD's).

Could this work?

 

[USAFRet]

Personally, I wouldn't.

A RAID 0 is more prevalent to fail over just a "D" and "E" drive. Add in the 'external drive' aspect, and you're begging for a fail.
And with a RAID 0, you really, really need an independent backup.

 

[Traciatim]

Thanks for the quick responses.
The original idea was to have those drives as, say, "Photos", so I can stack all my photos in there. It's just a matter of comfort having all of them in a same drive.
Searching even more I found there are some "raid controllers" that do that. I'm not sure I'm correct on this one, but could that be possible?
I found these on Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607%20600252187&IsNodeId=1&name=USB%203.0 (I filtered it to USB 3.0, which is what I have for external HDD's).

Could this work?

But that's the problem, they aren't all on one drive in a RAID0, little bits of each photo are on each drive and if anything happens to either drive in any way (like happens with USB all the time) it's likely that all of your data would be destroyed.

This is not a good idea in any way, shape, or form.

If you want to have all of your images stored in one location, just get a bigger drive, or get a NAS enclosure that you can put a few drives in that will manage the data properly and protect it.

 

[j0zj0z]

Thanks again for the fast responses.

Where I live is impossible to get a drive bigger than 4TB, so I bought 3x3TB (it was cheaper to do this than buying 2x4TB) so I could make one huge 9TB HDD. The NAS options are way too expensive here and also there aren't any WD raid options available.
What I didn't know was that Windows doesn't let you make external drives into dynamic ones (now I understand the reason), so I was searching for a solution to my original idea.

I found this card that might do the trick: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115138
What do you think?

PS: Usafret, I didn't understand what you meant by saying "...is more prevalent to fail over just a "D" and "E"".

 

[Traciatim]

What he is saying is that if you RAID two drives the resulting volume is twice as likely to suffer a failure than each drive on it's own.

In your case if you just put the data on the three drives alone and one fails at least you only lose 1/3 of your data. Keep in mind that RAID is NEVER a replacement for a backup solution, if you want to keep your data safe then you need a proper backup. RAID0 is also nearly NEVER a place to put active data you want to keep safe, you use RAID1 or RAID5 for that and in that case it sacrifices your capacity because data is redundant.

The link you sent for the USB RAID controller would probably function. Personally I wouldn't put anything on that RAID volume that I wasn't prepared to lose (IE, you had another copy somewhere). USB isn't really well known for it's stability and reliability, just that it's convenient and sufficiently fast.

You can also use JBOD to make the drives appear as a single drive but they aren't actually striping data across the drives like a traditional RAID. It would make much more sense this way if you just want to use the space but you don't care about data redundancy or speed. It is still a worse idea and you still need to backup your data if you want to keep it safe

A fare better option is to just plug in each drive separately... is it really that hard to put pictures across three drives?

Do you really have 9TB of images that you need access to all the time?

 

[USAFRet]

PS: Usafret, I didn't understand what you meant by saying "...is more prevalent to fail over just a "D" and "E"".

A RAID 0 array is 3 parts. Drive 1, drive 2, and the RAID software. If any of them dies, the entire thing is gone.

Up until about very recently, it was impossible to buy a drive larger than 4TB anywhere. That was the largest. Just recently, there are a couple of 6TB drives around, but they are expensive.

So....3 x 3TB drives:
You have 9TB. That is exactly the same drive space whether a RAID 0 (drive D), or just independent drives (drives D, E, F).
But the RAID 0 carries the added risk of if any drive fails, or the RAID array fails...all is lost. You cannot recover the other two drives. All your data is toast.

And if this is the only copy of this data....it may as well not exist. One dropped external drive, and the entire 9TB is gone.

 

[USAFRet]

You can if you want to, but I wouldn't.

 

[j0zj0z]

Traciatim and USAFRet, thank you both for sharing your precious knowledge with me.

Even though I understand the risks of doing it with the card I posted some posts back, I think I'd do it anyway. I'm not doing this for a backup solution or anything. What I'm going to put in it isn't THAT important. I may even put a fourth 3TB disk I have and do a 4 usb raid, so I could do a raid 1 and have some backup option (or maybe just 4x3TB). The problem is that it will probably be impossible for me to get that card here.

What I have never heard before is JBOD. What's that about?

 

[Traciatim]

Traciatim and USAFRet, thank you both for sharing your precious knowledge with me.

Even though I understand the risks of doing it with the card I posted some posts back, I think I'd do it anyway. I'm not doing this for a backup solution or anything. What I'm going to put in it isn't THAT important. I may even put a fourth 3TB disk I have and do a 4 usb raid, so I could do a raid 1 and have some backup option (or maybe just 4x3TB). The problem is that it will probably be impossible for me to get that card here.

What I have never heard before is JBOD. What's that about?

JBOD stands for Just a Bunch of Disks . . . quite literally it just makes them all appear as one big drive but doesn't stripe the data across them, so when a failure happens you can probably use recovery software to still get data off of each drive.

If you are going to do it anyway, expect that at some point all of your data on the volume will be lost and plan accordingly.

 

[USAFRet]

JBOD - "just a bunch of disks" Either independent, or 'spanned'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures

 

[j0zj0z]

By using the JBOD option the 3x3TB HDD would appear in Windows as 1x9TB? Because if it does I might give it a try since that is actually what I've wanted from the beginning.

Could you be so kind to explain me how to do this in Windows 7?

 

[USAFRet]

By using the JBOD option the 3x3TB HDD would appear in Windows as 1x9TB? Because if it does I might give it a try since that is actually what I've wanted from the beginning.

Could you be so kind to explain me how to do this in Windows 7?

(I believe) You need a NAS box that knows how to do this. There is no built in facility in Windows for this.

I could be entirely incorrect, though.