Raid 1 questions

[treebus]

I'm looking to set up two drives in an external non-RAID enclosure and run them in a software RAID 1 (on Windows).

Two questions:

1. If one drive fails, will the functioning drive work as a stand-alone copy. As in, could I just plug it into a SATA port and the computer would recognise it as a normal drive?

2. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good quality 2 bay external enclosure?
Requirements are:
-Good build and component quality
-Supports drives of either 10 or 12TB
-Is non-RAID
-Interface is not really important as long as it doesn't bottleneck read and write speeds

Thanks

 

[asoroka]

What are you trying to achieve?

If you want speed then mount the disks as internal drives.

If you want portable backup then some sort of enclosure. Either USB3 or ethernet NAS. I am not sure if you can get a good one that does not offer raid.

On an ethernet NAS you will get about 120MByte per sec sustained. I would recommend a small 2 bay NAS eg Synology DS216SE if you go that way.

A USB 3 interface or eSata should be faster. eg
ICY BOX (IB-RD3640SU3E2) External RAID system

If you want your windows OS to manage the raid, then you will need the disks to appear as separate devices, so 2 enclosures, one per disk. I would stay away from this setup as it will be easier to break the mirror.
If one disk fails then yes the other will still allow you to read and write.

 

[treebus]

Hey asoroka, thanks for the reply and suggestions.

"What are you trying to achieve?"

The goal is to have a safe backup that is seperate from my main system, hence the external enclosure. Speed is not really important as long as it doesn't slow things down unnecessarily.

So if I go with a hardware RAID and the enclosure fails will the drives be readable individually also?

 

[treebus]

Actually I think I'm going to ditch RAID all together and just have two seperate drives. It's more hassle to do backups but should be considerably safer.

So now I just need two single 3.5 HDD enclosures. Any suggestions for those?

 

[asoroka]

If you go for a mirrored raid enclosure then yes the data will be readable when one disk fails.

I would suggest that you set up a NAS device to sit on your network, this will give you a separate portable box that has your backup. Only downside is that you need a valid network to see your data.

Alternately any basic USB3 enclosure will do the trick. If you are using 3.5" HDD then the enclosure will need to have an external power supply. If you can stick with 2.5"hdd then teh enclosure can be powered off the USB cable.

My advice is to go for a NAS file server which is always on (one disk) and the second disk in a portable enclosure that you can take off site. Bring it in once a month for a refresh.

That way you have an active backup at home and a reasonably current backup offsite.

 

[treebus]

"My advice is to go for a NAS file server which is always on..."

So a small NAS + USB backup drive. That's a really good suggestion and will make things easier for me. Thanks for your help!