Raid 1 Array. What kind of hard drive?

[kebas239]

Hello,

I have a WD Black drive from 2009 which just failed me this past week without warning. I'm pretty sure I've lost all my data as a result of my own negligence in not checking the vitals of the drive at it's age.

Anyhow...I do not want this to happen again. I was thinking of buying two drives in case of failure and setting up a RAID 1 array. From an hour of research on the net, Western Digital and Toshiba drives seem to be the most reliable, while Seagate's seem to have a high failure rate. Because of this, I will likely go WD.

I'm not overly concerned about the speed of the drives as my OS will be installed on a SSD. I'm looking for something cheap and reliable that's for file storage and backup. I will install my games on the drive(s), but (correct me if I'm wrong) I do not believe that modern hard drives will have much of an impact on gaming performance. I am not doing video editing or anything else that would be considered hard drive "intensive".

I guess my questions are...is buying two drives and setting up a RAID 1 array the best option for a home user to ensure that data is protected? What are my alternatives? If RAID 1 is the best way to go, and providing I go with WD drives, what kind should I get (Black, Green, Blue, Red) for the best reliability?


Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Onus]

RAID1 is perhaps the most forgiving when it comes to drive selection. For example, a reliable RAID5 or RAID0 requires the use of drives possessing a feature called "TLER," which is Time Limited Error Recovery. I have created RAID1 pairs with WD Black drives, and also with Seagate LP/"Green" drives, and they've worked flawlessly for years.
Note that even a RAID1 does not eliminate the need for backups. RAID1 addresses the issue of single drive failure, but does nothing for accidental erasure, file corruption, virus damage, or physical loss such as fire or theft.

 

[boosted1g]

Raid 1 is good for security agianst a single hard disk failure.

It is however not a good backup solution. A good bakcup protects you agianst failed hard dirves, corrupted operating systems, and corrupted/deleted files.
A RAID 1 disk is an exact copy, thus if windows is curropted, or infected, or if something happens to a file, you are left with an exact copy of the same damge on the other drive.

What I do and would recomend doing is getting a larger 2+ TB drive and use it as a backup drive and skip doing RAID 1. You can use syncback free once to twice a week to schedule automated backups of your files(or pay the $35 for the SE version and get verisoning and other features) then use mecrium reflect to schedule automated disk images of your entire hard drive.

With this double setup you can fully restore your pc to operating condition with a month old backup and last weeks files in about 30-45 minutes.
With RAID 1 you would just have 2 copies of the corrupted system and be no better off.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there kebas239,

In case you decide to go with the RAID 1 option, I would say you should get drives that are designed for RAID environments. From WD's series, these are WD Reds.
Apart from that, I would agree with the other guys and say that RAID configurations are not a real back up. They just provide redundancy. If for example there is a power issue that damages your whole system, then you may loose your data. Just because of that you can also consider the option of having a DAS device(big enough external USB hard drive lets say). Then you can set up some automatic or scheduled back ups with some imaging software.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[kebas239]

Thanks guys for the advice! I've decided to go with the general consensus and purchase a single 1 TB drive and back up my crucial data via alternate methods. The other stuff, well, I will closely monitor the drive as much as I can and try to prevent data loss by purchasing a new drive in the future before it fails.

Thanks again!