[SOLVED] Is it possible to set up a ssd boot drive then have a raid one set up

[Stangcrazy347]

Hi, I am building a new pc and want to set up a raid 1 on it to save family pictures, videos, documents and other stuff I have collected through the years so they will not be lost. I would like to have a ssd for a boot drive and game off of but set up a raid 1 on a couple hdds to save the above stuff. Is this possible on one pc. If so how do I go about doing it? I have a MSI b450 max carbon wifi motherboard with amd ryzen 5 3600. With 16 gb of ram. I have never messed with a raid but need to do something to protect all my stuff collected before one of my hard drives fail and I loose this stuff. Thank you in advance.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi, I am building a new pc and want to set up a raid 1 on it to save family pictures, videos, documents and other stuff I have collected through the years so they will not be lost. I would like to have a ssd for a boot drive and game off of but set up a raid 1 on a couple hdds to save the above stuff. Is this possible on one pc. If so how do I go about doing it? I have a MSI b450 max carbon wifi motherboard with amd ryzen 5 3600. With 16 gb of ram. I have never messed with a raid but need to do something to protect all my stuff collected before one of my hard drives fail and I loose this stuff. Thank you in advance.

A RAID 1 is NOT the way to protect your personal docs.
At all.

Not uncommon misconception.

RAID 1 is for continued uptime. Not data protection.
For instance, if you were running a webstore, and a dead drive == lost sales.
But any smart web admin ALSO has a good backup routine.

RAID 1 does nothing againstall the other possible ways to lose your data.

You are looking for a backup, not a RAID 1.

Read here.
Scale up or down as needed.

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

 

[mdd1963]

As 3,4 and even 5 TB external USB drives are often about $79-$99 these days, you could easily buy two for minimal added dollars , and have at least 2 offline copies of your important docs/photos...

And, consider the assorted free cloud service accounts , as even 5-10 GB is actually a lot of photos... (if you have privacy concerns, sub-folders of docs/photos can be encrypted with 7-Zip prior to storage)

IceDrive
P-Cloud
OneDrive
GoogleDrive
DropBox
AsusWebStore (if have Asus mainboard)
Amazon (if have Amazon Prime anyway)

 

[Stangcrazy347]

So if I am understanding you correctly, I should not use a raid to back up pictures, videos, or documents. It should be on external hard drives outside of the pc. I am currently doing that but they are spread out over a bunch of different ones through the years. I was hoping to organize and combine them in a raid for storage and easy accessibility and have them backed up on two mirrored hdds in a raid 1 in case one failed. What if I still did this for easy accessibility but then backed them up on a couple external hard drives. Does that make more sense? I appreciate any and all ideas. Thank you.

 

[Stangcrazy347]

I thought also of setting up some kind of server to have things backed up on but am not sure if that is ideal also. Right now though I can only afford 1 new pc build.

 

[USAFRet]

So if I am understanding you correctly, I should not use a raid to back up pictures, videos, or documents. It should be on external hard drives outside of the pc. I am currently doing that but they are spread out over a bunch of different ones through the years. I was hoping to organize and combine them in a raid for storage and easy accessibility and have them backed up on two mirrored hdds in a raid 1 in case one failed. What if I still did this for easy accessibility but then backed them up on a couple external hard drives. Does that make more sense? I appreciate any and all ideas. Thank you.

A RAID 1 array only provides physical drive security.
A true backup routine provides security for physical drive fail, along with all the other forms of potential loss.

 

[Stangcrazy347]

I never thought of a virus, ransome attack, or something else affecting all that info. I never have had to deal with a problem like that. I was just worried about a hdd failure. But I understand now. I appreciate you taking your time to enlighten me. So in my situation on my new pc how would you set it up to be able to game but have all the other files available easily. Then I would backup those files to an external drive to keep them safe. Do I need a boot drive and raid1 or just skip a raid1. Or a different raid. Or maybe a boot drive with just another drive for storage.

 

[USAFRet]

In the context of data loss, physical drive fail is far down the list.

For backups, the basic concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, 1 of them offsite and/or offline.

So...
An SSD for the OS and applications.
Another drive for your personal files.

OR, everything on one large drive.

Then...
An external drive or two for backups.
The main thing is to automate it as much as possible. And also test it, and know how to recover.

 

[Stangcrazy347]

Ok, thank you very much.