RAID 1 vs NAS

[shirokado]

I need a pretty decent sized storage, and this is just for holding videos and pictures. Should I buy 2x 4TB drives and put them in Raid 1 straight onto my motherboard? Or should I buy a raidcard. Or should I just buy a NAS.

 

Which is more convenient?

Which is the quieter option?

[VioDuskar]

i'd go NAS.

 

then any computer on the network can use it.

a NAS is super quite if you put it in another room

[Stefan1024]

For raid 1 you don't need a raid card. The NAS has advantages like kidjt94 said, but it has much more latency.

[TJarsun]

Put the 2 drives on the PC but do not make a raid, do manually (or configure automatic) backups, it is the safest option without investing in more drives or a raid card

[Blebekblebek]

sorry to jump into conclusion

 

but I'm guessing you are not familiar with the setup and trouble shooting for NAS ?

 

if you just need extra space, get external drive is the easiest way to do it, lot's of vendor (WD/Seagate) have external solution ready and plug and play even with multi tera capacity.

plug the power, and usb port and you are served.

 

like this for example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236807

if you need bigger storage, pick the size according to your need.

[shirokado]

sorry to jump into conclusion

but I'm guessing you are not familiar with the setup and trouble shooting for NAS ?

if you just need extra space, get external drive is the easiest way to do it, lot's of vendor (WD/Seagate) have external solution ready and plug and play even with multi tera capacity.

plug the power, and usb port and you are served.

like this for example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236807

if you need bigger storage, pick the size according to your need.

I needed redundancy. I've been using single drives, and a few of them died during the same week. Recovering Data was a pain.

[shirokado]

Put the 2 drives on the PC but do not make a raid, do manually (or configure automatic) backups, it is the safest option without investing in more drives or a raid card

That seems absolutely pointless and a waste of time to setup. Seems raid 1 doesn't need a dedicated controlled. And it's be alot safer to run raid 1 then 2 separate drives doing backups. For example, drive dies in the middle of backup. Good bye data. Raid 1 would allow 1 drive to die at anytime and keep the data.

[TJarsun]

That seems absolutely pointless and a waste of time to setup. Seems raid 1 doesn't need a dedicated controlled. And it's be alot safer to run raid 1 then 2 separate drives doing backups. For example, drive dies in the middle of backup. Good bye data. Raid 1 would allow 1 drive to die at anytime and keep the data.

 

Raid 1 does not protect you from corrupted file system or virus/malware infection, you can use the 2nd drive as windows own file history function if  you dont wanna have other program manage the backup, also in most motherboard included raids if one drive dies you cant access the raid data unless you put a second drive and wait until it rebuilds the copy, with 2 drives in non raid you can access them if you remove one.

I see raid as a good option for more drives, because as you said it is a waste of time to move data to many drives manually, but just with just 2 drives raid1 is not the best option IMHO.

I had my 2 2tb hdds in raid1 but decided to undo the raid and keep the data separated because I accidentally deleted a file and you dont have a proper way to scrap deleted data from raid arrays... luckily I had a cloud copy of that file!

[handruin]

RAID is never a backup; it's used for availability of your data when configured as a mirror or parity form.

 

Decide if you need higher availability.  If you do, mirror/parity the drives.  If not, focus on creating proper backups onto another drive or set of drives.  You could even use the CrashPlan utility for creating backups without paying for their service.  If you don't want to use that, there are many ways/utilities that can help with this.

 

If you need multiple concurrent access to your data then consider building a NAS.  Otherwise keep it simple and put the drive(s) into your main workstation and share from there if you need to grant access to other systems/users.