Question RAID 0 & RAID 1 + offsite backup drive risk factors

[crj83]

I currently have around 12TB of data (pictures) spread across several external drives and one drive being in Raid 1 and I'm trying to clean the mess I've made now.

So I recently purchased two 24TB G-RAID drives because I wanted to simplify how I store my pictures with the added redundancy since some of my data only lives in single hard drives.

In my situation would it be better to set both G-RAID drives to Raid 0 (or JBOD?) to maximize storage and read/write speeds and purchase an additional drive to backup these two units for offsite storage?

Or set both G-RAID drives to Raid 1 (which limits me to 12TB per drive of free storage but redundancy) and purchase an additional backup drive for offsite storage?

Because my budget is somewhat limited at the moment this is the dilemma I’m currently trying to figure out which route to go…

Would be great to hear your suggestions.

 

[USAFRet]

1. RAID is not a backup.
2. See #1.
3. RAID 0 is the absolute opposite of a 'backup'.

 

[USAFRet]

Now...with that out of the way:

How much data do you have, and how much available drive space do you have, on what specific drives?

 

[crj83]

Now...with that out of the way:

How much data do you have, and how much available drive space do you have, on what specific drives?

I have around 12TB of data (pictures) spread across several WD external drives and one WD drive (with red NAS drives) being in Raid 1.

My two newly purchased G-RAID units are 24TB each and contain HGST drives so therefore I'm trying to figure out which configuration (RAID 0, 1, JBOD) I should set them to based on my situation

 

[USAFRet]

I would set one of the 24TB enclosures as JBOD. Move all of your current data off that group of externals, and use that as your working location.
Set the other one as JBOD also. Have your system set up some sort of automated backup from JBOD A to JBOD B. NOT a RAID 1.

Wipe all the externals, and use as desired.

 

[mdd1963]

With WD and Seagate offering external 8 TB USB drives at only $139, a pair of them would seem the least expensive way of getting the data at least backed up, without having to fork out $500-$600 for a 4-6 bay NAS unit, and then an additional $240 per drive per 8 TB NAS-worthy storage drive....

As you've already paid for the G-Raid, presumably you can choose between RAID 0 (high speed, but, at least double the risk of total data loss!), or if skipping RAID perhaps you can run it's drives separately as individual 12 TB storage devices, so you'd have roughly 24 TB in pure storage. To back up that data, however, It would cost you an additional $420 in three each external 8 TB drives to back up the data. (One copy of anything is tempting fate almost to the point of begging for data loss!)

 

[crj83]

With WD and Seagate offering external 8 TB USB drives at only $139, a pair of them would seem the least expensive way of getting the data at least backed up, without having to fork out $500-$600 for a 4-6 bay NAS unit, and then an additional $240 per drive per 8 TB NAS-worthy storage drive....

As you've already paid for the G-Raid, presumably you can choose between RAID 0 (high speed, but, at least double the risk of total data loss!), or if skipping RAID perhaps you can run it's drives separately as individual 12 TB storage devices, so you'd have roughly 24 TB in pure storage. To back up that data, however, It would cost you an additional $420 in three each external 8 TB drives to back up the data. (One copy of anything is tempting fate almost to the point of begging for data loss!)

Good points made here. So I'm thinking now to maximize the amount of storage available I will set my two G-RAIDs as JBOD and use one unit to backup the other. I feel like if I set them to RAID 0 it will be much riskier than JBOD (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I am also considering to purchase another third 24TB G-RAID unit as an offsite backup for my two G-RAIDs. Sure it would cost more than purchasing a few small external drives for backup but I wanted to get away from having too many drives around.