[ileong20]

I am completely new to this, but it has come to a point where all my RAW images are at a very high number where I need to create a better system to store and back up. I have been reading a lot about setting up a RAID system and seems like that's definitely the way to go. Can anyone explain what exactly I need to set up say like a 4 bay of 200gb RAID where I want to be Stripped than Mirrored (Raid 0+1?!).

Now another question is I have a PC that I keep running majority of the time for networking, should I set up the RAID system on my PC? Thanks much!

-IL

[CanadaRAM]

It all depends what your objectives are.

RAID 0 is striping - for speed and spanning a single large volume across 2 drives. but it is riskier because of losing all your data if either drive fails.
RAID 1 is for security, mirroring one set of data on another volume. But it gives you only half the capacity of the aggregate total of your drives.

RAID 0+1 would be two disks striped together for speed, mirrored by another pair.

So: Why do you think you want a RAID? If you're thinking to put it on a networked machine, then it's definitely not speed you are going for, as the network will be many times slower than even a standard ATA/100 drive. The only benefit to a single user of a RAID 0 may be in streaming the data in from your camera or loading it into Photoshop. Even there, it's arguable whether a single user RAID with its overhead, is faster or slower than a single drive.

What I think is you need a large storage and backup system. Remember, RAID is not backup, If you screw up a file, or have a crash, or accidentally delete something, it is messed up on the mirror drive immediately, same as on the primary.

Without knowing what you have, I would consider an external SATA drive bay system, such as a Firmtek enclosure, which will give you the ability to have one, two or up to four 400 Gb or 500 Gb drives online. Then, you can expand your storage simply by getting an extra drive. You can backup one drive to another by copying or using a backup or syncing program. Alternatively, or in addition, you can create a large backup on the PC machine and back up over the network (Slower, though).

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

[fritzair]

I would disagree with Trevor somewhat.
My experience may be different, (G4) but I had much faster read and write with a 0 stripe RAID. It was not twice as fast, but much faster than the single drive.
I would set up a 0 RAID inside the box, and back up the volume outside the box with a large external drive.
This worked great for me.

Mike