G-Raid Storage

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Alan Maughan

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Guys,

I would very much welcome your thoughts on this.

I am looking to set up a new storage and back up system. I have been recommended to use this G-Raid

This product ships in Raid 0 which is not what I need. I have been told by a friend and also the guy in my local Mac store that it comes with software which allows me to configure it for Raid 1 aka mirrored which is what I need. In raid 1 config there will then be 2TB backing up the other 2TB in the case of the 4TB drive Im considering.

When I spoke to the guys at Hitachi they said they don't support this config even though its possible with the software they supply, the seems keen I just bought the more expensive alternative they sell.

I have looked at the My Book Studio II option which can be configured either way but because of the 5400 drives Im concerned it may be too slow if I store my lightroom catalogue on there along with my images, its also not so portable. I want to store the LR catologue so I can have my entire photo library on the portable drive and it will switch easily between my iMac and MBP and still retain the adjustments I make.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.
 
First things first raid is not a backup, even though it is mirrored it is still vunerable to the same issues as a single disk.

Even with raid have a separate drive with a backup of your data.
 
Alan Maughan said:
I am looking to set up a new storage and back up system.
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As Neil says that is 2 items not one box with 2 things in it. If the controller fails you could well lose 2 healthy drive contents.

You are looking for just a fast plug in hard drive? the usual solution would be some kind of network storage device or server that connects to your network by gigabit Ethernet if you need fast access. Then you have something else that you back it up to if it is your only storage.
 
Guys,

Your advice very much conflicts with what I have been told by others.

I was told that inside G-Raid their are 2 completely separate drives which can be configured in either Raid 0 aka striped or Raid 1 aka mirrored, mirrored allows you to use one for storage and it back up to the other. If either disk breaks the other still retains the information. If the the controller breaks its just a broken controller, both disks are still in tact and a new controller is required.

I have heard the above from 3 or 4 different sources so either you guys are wrong or those guys are wrong - either way sadly I'm no further forward.

My initial post outlines what I need so any suggestions to achieve this in a relatively small postable option would be most welcome. :)
 
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Alan Maughan said:
I was told that inside G-Raid their are 2 completely separate drives which can be configured in either Raid 0 aka striped or Raid 1 aka mirrored, mirrored allows you to use one for storage and it back up to the other. If either disk breaks the other still retains the information. If the the controller breaks its just a broken controller, both disks are still in tact and a new controller is required.
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This is all very true, but what happens if the power supply fails and takes out both drives or the controller fails in a way such that it writes duff information to both drives?
 
arad85 said:
This is all very true, but what happens if the power supply fails and takes out both drives or the controller fails in a way such that it writes duff information to both drives?
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Or indeed a criminal element breaks in to your house and nicks it or your pipes burst and it gets water damaged.

You should keep backups as far away as reasonably practicable.Assume the worst - fire, flood, pestilence, truck crashing through the house... it's unlikely to hit your backup if the backup is (as in my case) 75 miles away at a top secret location (code name: MUMSHOUSE)

Or how does this make you feel?

My <backup device> packed up yesterday. One minute it was working fine; the next, it sounded like a washing machine full of hammers. The hard disk is gone, which is a pain – it had my iTunes library, three years of home movies and ten years of digital photos.

I had a backup, of course, so it’s just a pain in the arse rather than a complete disaster. But if I’d put my trust in my <backup device>, if I hadn’t assumed that it would pack up eventually, I’d be up S--- Creek without a boat – and quite possibly divorced. Losing every single video of your daughter is not the sort of thing that makes you popular with your better half.

I can’t stress this enough: hard disk failures are more common than you might think. I’ve had two in the last six months. If you don’t have a backup of all your irreplaceable files – the digital photos, the footage of baby’s first steps, the novel you’re going to finish this Christmas – Murphy’s Law says that sooner or later you’ll lose the lot.
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Alan Maughan said:
Guys,

Your advice very much conflicts with what I have been told by others.

I was told that inside G-Raid their are 2 completely separate drives which can be configured in either Raid 0 aka striped or Raid 1 aka mirrored, mirrored allows you to use one for storage and it back up to the other. If either disk breaks the other still retains the information. If the the controller breaks its just a broken controller, both disks are still in tact and a new controller is required.

I have heard the above from 3 or 4 different sources so either you guys are wrong or those guys are wrong - either way sadly I'm no further forward.

My initial post outlines what I need so any suggestions to achieve this in a relatively small postable option would be most welcome. :)
Click to expand...

whoever told you raid is a backup should be shot for having no idea what raid is and its limitations, does my nut in. put it this way, part of my day job is looking after a SAN storage solution for a national retailer.. (who incidentally copy data from one array to another and copy off to tape library)

raid is not a backup solution, its a redundancy solution for 24/7 uptime systems. a raid array should be treated with the same limitations as one disk.

raid is vunerable to: fire/theft/flood, file deletion, file corruption, hardware failures such as array controller issues (ive seen server grade raid array controllers fail and nuke all attached drives, that was a long night i can tell you..) to name a few.

best solution is at least two physical disks (remember, treat a raid array as one physical disk) with one copy rotated off site.

in my case i have a raid5 array which is sync'd with a local backup raid0 array (raid0 as its only a local backup), also sync'd to USB hard drives and rotated off site, important client RAW files archived to blu-ray and also taken off site.
 
OK guys, thanks for taking the time to help me, this information is starting to make sense to me. Maybe if I explain a bit about me and my needs you can then help more with recommendations.

I dont consider myself a pro although I have built things up to the point now where I take a lot of pictures of my clients and I now offer them for sale. I travel both nationally and internationally to do this and at times there will also be video files captured

I use Lightroom (now v4) to manage the images etc. At home I have an iMac and while traveling a MBP. I need to store my LR catalogue on an external drive so that my entire library is portable and can be accessed either with the iMac or MBP so that changes made to files on one machine are visible when using the other. My current LR catalogue is about 600gb and it will most probably grow by about 500gb a year I would anticipate.

I can see the need for separate drives now - I guess the G-Raid drive I mentioned configured to Raid 1 would give me some security from a single disc failure while traveling but little else.

I would very much appreciate any suggestions as to how to achieve what I need within the limits of my budget which could be say £500 maximum at this stage. A system that I could expand over time would be ideal.
 
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i that case what i would do personally is a main storage system while youre at your main location, preferably a 4 bay unit allowing for expansion in RAID5. then have a couple of portable drives to use offsite and rotate.

£550 would get you a Synology DS411j 4 Bay NAS and 3x 2TB Samsung HD204UI, initially giving you roughly (not allowing for RAID and NAS OS overheads etc) 4TB with a spare disk. that would allow for expansion to 6TB with spare by adding a forth 2TB drive.

that doesnt leave any budget for portable drive(s) though. when youre travelling do you always have access to power, or would the portable drive(s) need to be self powered?
 
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My solution is to run a small linux server (its an HP Proliant N40L - currently about £250 with £100 cashback so £150 net, comes with a 250GB disk but you can remove/replace that one with a larger one and 4 drive bays which you can populate over time) which is running a mirrored array... separately once per week I copy off all the most important data to an external drive (2TB) - every month or so when I visit my mum, I take the external drive with me and swap it with the external drive at her house.

Because I have been caught by systematic design flaws and failures in the past, the external drives are from 2 different manufacturers - nothing prepares you for the day you open a lab of 30 machines and every last one has an identical drive failure due to a manufacturing defect...
 
My suggestion would be two external drives, one which stays connected to the iMac and one which is usually based off site, but you take it with you when you're on the road and regularly sync them together.
 
If I go for 2 separate Firewire 800 disks how will I be able to back them up when my iMac or MBP has only 1 FW port?

Sorry for being a pain but after reading the help in this thread I now realise just how important having 2 entirely separate drives becomes, the problem for me is I still cant see the solution. I would prefer the drives to be free from the need for external power but I think the reality is they will need to be mains powered to get the speed I want.
 
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As above, I connect my portable drive through my desktop drive.
 
neil_g said:
FW800 are normally daisy chainable, look for this feature (the drive will have 2 FW ports)
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Oh dear, this is turning out to be a really crazy business.

I spend 30 mins on the phone earlier to a guy who said I couldnt daisy chain 2 of these

Are you saying Neil that the minimum I need is 2 x ext drive and both need 2x fw800 ports. This will allow them both to appear on my desktop once daisy chained and allow me to back up one with the other?

If so this seems a simple enough solution.
 
You could daisy chain two of those, as looking at the back image they have two FW800 ports.

Only one of your drives actually needs two FW800 ports, one to the computer and one to the other drive.
 
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