Raid 1 SSd + a HDD

[excalibrax]

I was thinking about raiding what do you guys think of a Raid 1 combo of a SSD and a HDD. If you did it at the Bios level would you get the speed befit of a SSD with the mirrored drive having the benefits of being a HDD?

 

With something like this Seagate 120gb HDD

[Hans Christian | Teri]

It's probably technically possible however I can't imagine it working out great at all. What exactly do you mean with "the benefits of being a HDD"?

[excalibrax]

Well if it didn't degrade the speed of using the ssd. It's basically a backup solution for your ssd files.

[dalekphalm]

I would strongly recommend against doing this. The idea sounds great in theory, but there are several problems you must consider:

 

1) Doing a RAID 1 array would limit the HDD to the size of your SSD (You MIGHT be able to partition off the unused space, but I cannot confirm whether this is correct or not).

 

2) Performance would be slower than the SSD alone. The RAID 1 array writes to both drives concurrently, which means that the SSD would be "waiting" on the HDD to finish each write. This will effectively negate any performance benefits of the SSD.

 

3) Added complexity - More points of failure, both in terms of software corruption/glitches/errors, as well as the drives physically failing.

 

You'd be much better off using a synching or cloning program, such as Acronis, depending on what exactly you want to achieve.

 

I'd suggest either:

 

[A] Full drive image backup - Use a program such as Acronis to image the SSD periodically to your HDD. Many image backup software include the ability to incrementally backup to the image file. This means that rather than having to re-image the SSD in full during each backup, it just adds/updates the image with any changes. You can generally also configure the software to add a new image, say, once a month.

 

or

 

Sync documents/files - Using a program such as RSync or the built in sync feature of Windows to sync folders from one drive (The SSD) to another (The HDD). This is not suitable for syncing the entire drive though, as it's not a proper "clone". The benefit of this, is it's generally less obtrusive or intensive, and takes up less space, as you're JUST backing up your user files. You would need to reinstall Windows in the event of a drive failure, then copy your files back.

 

I would prefer option [A] over option .

 

Also, ideally, with your backup solution (Which - RAID is not a backup solution), the target HDD (eg: your backup) should not be a local/internal drive. Either an External USB drive, or a drive located in another computer. This is to prevent multiple drive failures from a common cause (eg: your PSU decides to go bat-shit-crazy and fries all your components).

 

Anyway, I hope this gives you some insight and lets you make an informed decision. If you decide to do the RAID 1 array with the Seagate HDD anyway, let us know how it goes.

[excalibrax]

As you said it seems great in theory, but point 2 is what leads me to not do it. For point 1 i was going to buy a $15 drive that was the same size as the SSD. I'm already working on setting up my current system as a NAS/Media Center/Torrent box, once I actually buy and build the new system. I'm pretty sure that can be done with Linux, just gotta figure it out!

[IdeaStormer]

It would be like coupling a Ferrari and a Toyota Corolla together, total waste of a Ferrari.

[DaFirnz]

You could just use the hard drive as a dedicated backup drive. ie nightly.    Be forewarned it is IDE!