0

Given that I suspect my PC to have a suicidal behavior, I'm looking for a RAID HDD to save my data safely. I have very old documents that I don't wanna lose. What are the best solutions for this? Buy 2 HDD and connect them with a dock? A NAS? I want it to be at least as fast as a normal HDD (so SATA cable, I think), and not too expensive if possible.

EDIT: I want this to cost if possible, less than 200€, and I want at least 1TB of data. I want it to use with my PC (desktop). I want to store various documents like pictures, videos, work files, ...

Thanks! :)

Improve this question
3
  • Well I first want to just clear up a misconception I think you have, an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) is a singular disk drive which is susceptible to failure. RAID is a way you can spread data redundantly across multiple drives, so one can fail and you will still have all your data. Saying that, we need more information. Specifically, we need to know your budget, amount of storage needed, how you plan to access it (laptop, phone, over the internet), and what you want to store on it
    – Rubydesic
    Commented Nov 24, 2017 at 1:42
  • I did edit the post with the info you said :)
    – Nerpson
    Commented Nov 24, 2017 at 15:54
  • Just for comparison google drive is $10/month for 1TB. Amazon might be even cheaper. Saves you the headache of managing the hardware yourself. Crashplan is $10/month for unlimited for 1 device.
    – cybernard
    Commented Dec 16, 2017 at 3:36

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0
  1. RAID 0 striping useless no protection
  2. RAID 1 mirroring qty 2 of 1TB gets you 1TB storage
  3. RAID 5 parity data Requires 3 drives and give you the capacity of 2.
  4. RAID 6 parity data(x2) Requires 4 drives and give you the capacity of 2

RAID 5 can handle 1 bad drive and 6 can handle 2.

Your budget means if you do RAID 5 you will spend your entire budget on hard drives.

Now what? Well some versions of Windows has a software RAID 5 or 6, and linux offers similar including the ZFS and btrfs file systems.

Reading will not be significantly impacted by software RAID 5 or 6. However, writing will take a big hit in terms of CPU utilization will spike every time you write to it. If your CPU isn't fast enough your write speed will be limited. You will also have less CPU to run your normal programs.

Hardware RAID solves this, but is completely out of your budget range.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.