RAID

[RGraze]

Does anyone have information regarding RAID setup and uses for RAID.

[M_Six]

Run a search on this board for RAID. You'll be buried in info.

[NDC]

Here's a very good explanation of different types of RAID by, qball...

http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/007859.html

[helldiverCDN]

Try these links:

http://pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/markeditorial.html?cat=%2fTechnology%2fRAID&prodkey=raid_wp&type=Technology

Cheers,

hell out

[Axel]

If you can afford the adapter as well as 3 to 5 hard drives you can expect the following

1) come close to doubling your file read speed
2) never make another tape back-up
3) never have to power down the box to replace a hard drive

So - if those are things you're interested in - continue to do your research.

Most RAID historically is set up in a SCSI system, although, in the last few years, IDE RAID has become possible. Look up Promise Technologies on the web and read about their IDE RAID adapters and hot swap drive bays.

I'd avoid RAID capable motherboards. You'll have much less grief with a seperate PCI adapter - just make sure your BIOS can handle it - that should be in the board specs. In most cases, a good SCSI card will have RAID software with it and handle everything on a BIOS that rides on the adapter card itself seperate from the mobo BIOS.

[BangorDude]

Hey Axel
I cant't believe you would suggest to someone not to make a tape backup. In the world I live in, we have these disasters like fire, flooding, etc.

Don't think your raid will help you much there.

[RGraze]

Thanks for the help guys, I am looking for performance/speed so it looks like RAID 0 is for me.

[Axel]

99% of the corporate tape back-ups I've ever witnessed never make it out of the same room the machines are in much less the same building..... B-Dude - what's your point?
Also - one of the most painful experiences I've ever had besides marine corps boot camp has been restoring from a tape back-up.....

When I think of back-up I think of a hedge against losing a hard drive and everything on it....

If you have RAID1 and mirrored drives - you resolve the vast majority of those issues - if you have a good power strip with a surge protector on it - you resolve most of what's left - and if you actually spend a few bucks on a good desktop UPS with graceful power down software, you eliminate everything but fires and tornados in my area....

So - don't buy land in a flood plane and use RAID1 or RAID5 with hotswap drives and go on with life.....

[DVNT1]

The one thing a proper tape backup system will offer that RAID & UPS won't help with...file corruption or vandalism (in various forms).

I actually have a metal safe (offsite = at my house) with periodic full backup tapes from the last 3 years. The previous night's tapes are taken offsite everyday. This is backups from servers which have a good Raid5 disk subsystem as well.

Granted, I've only done a full restore once and is wasn't too fun. I've had many file restores based on file problems (corruption, deletion, virus, etc...).

Raid can be a good way to increase disk related I/O performance or as a backup for hard drive failure.

I have had good experiences with both SCSI and IDE Raid setups.

[Stan]

Hi

You will always need a backup tape.
You might have the best RAID1 or 5 setup but, if by mistake or damage,... , you loose one partition, then you are screwed big time.
I know, it happened to our mail server at work. I was a Dell PE 4300 with RAID5. But, somehow, we lost all the partitioning of the disk array... including a 30GB exchange DB...
Without a tape, there is no way we could have magically recovered the partitions (and the files).
Glad we made a backup...

Stan