Best (Cheap) RAID / Storage Solution?

[JerryPH]

You have not explained how RAID1 can possibly be better at protecting your data when it only handles failure of a drive and does nothing to protect you against theft, fire or other physical damage whilst external backup protects against all four eventualities.

The above quote strikes me as entirely wrong. You certainly can get much better protection for your data by getting a couple of cheap USB disk caddies. You protect against the whole gamut of dangers mentioned for about £20 more than the cost of the drives.

Honestly, for a home user, a RAID1 external solution is probably the best bang for the buck.

I did not think it needed explaining. It handles fire and theft in the same identical manner your USB caddy would. It is external, it is portable (put it in your fire-proof safe or external location after backing things up if this is important to you, it *is* superior to a single drive. The cost is marginally higher, yes... but a USB caddy is a single drive and smaller case. Well worth the minor cost difference vs the benefits.

I think we'ved jaw-wagged this topic to death... lol

 

[Moglex]

I did not think it needed explaining. It handles fire and theft in the same identical manner your USB caddy would. It is external, it is portable (put it in your fire-proof safe or external location after backing things up if this is important to you, it *is* superior to a single drive. The cost is marginally higher, yes... but a USB caddy is a single drive and smaller case. Well worth the minor cost difference vs the benefits.

It may be slightly superior to a single drive but for the same money you can put the drives in separate external caddies which gives you the advantage that you can have one next to the machine ready to backup and one physically secured.

So you don't skip backups because your one backup box is elsewhere and yet you always have one copy secured.

That just strikes me as a much better bang for your buck than spending it on something (i.e. the extra disk in a RAID1 array) that is designed for high availability and not long or medium term backup.

I think we'ved jaw-wagged this topic to death... lol

Not sure about that as people still seem to think that RAID1 is a backup solution (or at least superior in some way to using the same number of disks independantly in a backup solution).

 

[Dao]

RAID 1, simple, easy, why not.

think about this way. If you have a hotswapple drive bay. You can break the mirror and then take one of the drive to work and put another one in the back to rebuild the raid without using any additional cloning software. Now you have a off site backup. (I am not talking about system boot drive here) Just a thought.


As for the single USB drive vs single USB RAID1 drives. Both are fine solutions

It just depends on how much a person willing to spend. If he/she can afford it, why not go with the RAID1. It is like Canon XSI vs 40D.

 

[usayit]

Anyway, this does not answer my objection.

OP's title = "Best (Cheap) RAID / Storage Solution?"

The only thing cheaper than RAID 1 is no RAID at all (which doesn't fit the OP's criteria).... Whether or not it meets your idea of an ideal home environment is irrelevant. OP already specified two things; Cheap and RAID.

This thread reminds me of those "Help me make a DSLR choice" threads. They start out like, "I want a CANON DSLR but I can't make up my mind". Then some Nikon shooter chimes in and says "you want a Nikon [insert model here]". Then the thread degrades into a Canon versus Nikon debate which is UTTERLY and COMPLETELY useless to the OP since they already specified in the starting post that they wanted CANON.

 

[Moglex]

OP's title = "Best (Cheap) RAID / Storage Solution?"

The only thing cheaper than RAID 1 is no RAID at all (which doesn't fit the OP's criteria).... Whether or not it meets your idea of an ideal home environment is irrelevant. OP already specified two things; Cheap and RAID.

Indeed that is what he specified but if it appears that someone may have made a false assumption about something (in this case the desirabilty of RAAID) it is as well to present the alternatives.

OP has now said that he intends to go with a g/f backup approach so in this case suggesting the alternative with reasons proved useful. Had he said that he wanted to continue with RAID it would have been a different matter.

This thread reminds me of those "Help me make a DSLR choice" threads. They start out like, "I want a CANON DSLR but I can't make up my mind". Then some Nikon shooter chimes in and says "you want a Nikon [insert model here]". Then the thread degrades into a Canon versus Nikon debate which is UTTERLY and COMPLETELY useless to the OP since they already specified in the starting post that they wanted CANON.

Except:

1) If you say you know you want a Canon it is likely that you have some reason for pre-empting the choice of manufacturer. Any end user sayng they want RAID without specifying why is very likely to have been misled about the advantages of RAID.

2) In this case, as already mentioned, OP has looked at the information given and decided to go with the more robust solution of two independant external drives so in no way was providing alternative infomation "UTTERLY and COMPLETELY useless to the OP".