HDD for raids

[Ykno]

I have 2 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drives

 

And I have 2 1TB Hitachi Hard Drives

 

Just wondering if these are okay to make 2 Raids with.

 

I'm not sure on what level raid ill use but defo one with redundancy.

 

1 raid will be for my pc backup and that will be on the 2TB raid and the other will be for files,media ect and that will be on the 1TB raid.

[alexhelvetica]

The 2TB drives will only be able to hold 1tb of stuff.

I would not recommend raiding with 2 different types of drives anyway!

 

 

EDIT - I think you will be fine, I think you can do 2 raids at once (I need to read and not scan)

[Ykno]

The 2TB drives will only be able to hold 1tb of stuff.

I would not recommend raiding with 2 different types of drives anyway!

 

 

EDIT - I think you will be fine, I think you can do 2 raids at once (I need to read and not scan)

I'm not raiding 2 different drives 

 

I'm doing 2 raids 1 raid with the 2tb greens and 1 raid with the 1tb hitatchi

[alexhelvetica]

I'm not raiding 2 different drives 

 

I'm doing 2 raids 1 raid with the 2tb greens and 1 raid with the 1tb hitatchi

I worked that out after I posted it.

I need to read and not scan topics.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there Ykno,

 

Your plan seems pretty reasonable and should work just fine. Do have in mind that it is recommended that for RAID arrays you should use NAS/RAID class drives for better safety and more optimal performance. One example is WD Red: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=GmZ1q5 

Using such drives lowers the chance of drives dropping out of the RAID, corrupting the data and generally improves the life expectancy of the array. 

 

Captain_WD.

[braneopbru]

....I'm not sure on what level raid ill use but defo one with redundancy.....

 

 

 

There are only two RAID levels that support two drives and only one of those has any redundancy. So that really doesn't leave you many options to be unsure about.

 

Can I ask why specifically you are intending to create any sort of RAID array to begin with and why you decided to build to separate arrays?

[Ykno]

There are only two RAID levels that support two drives and only one of those has any redundancy. So that really doesn't leave you many options to be unsure about.

 

Can I ask why specifically you are intending to create any sort of RAID array to begin with and why you decided to build to separate arrays?

i have 4 spare drives 2 sets of same drives and there different sizes so that leaves me stuck with making 2 different raid arrays i want a redundancy raid so raid 1 for my back ups so i have that security and with the second raid it will be films tv shows ect so im gonna go with a raid 0 for extra speed when reading from the raid

[braneopbru]

Why exactly do you think you need speed for reading movies? If you're watching a two hour movie, doesn't matter how fast your drive is, it still takes two hours to read the entire file off the drive. For media, there is NO reason at all to use RAID 0. You will see NO benefit from the speed and you risk loosing ALL your media on a single drive failure. Just keep them as two seperate drives and split your media evenly between them. Worst case, if one drive dies, you only loose half your stuff.

As far as the RAID 1 for backup; well, that's sort of pointless too. If your data is THAT important that you need to keep three copies of it, keeping those three copies in the same location is asinine. Where's your protection in case of fire or theft? If your data is THAT important, you should be keeping an off-site backup. At the very least, get an external enclosure for one of the 2TB drives, and keep the other in the computer. Do manual backups one a week and at the bare minimum keep the external drive in another part of your house, but ideally at a friend's place.

Look, don't get me wrong, doing things just because you can isn't necessarily a bad thing. But you have to make sure you understand why it MIGHT be.

In your case, I think running any sort of RAID would not only be useless, but it's probably even worse than having JBOD.