[B0b]

lost my RAID 0 Array on Tuesday! father in-law was sposed to come over and install an outside light to the house - i guess he was doing that when all of a sudden my systems shut off.. he didn't tell me that he was starting work and would need to pull the fuse for the outside circuit, he apparently pulled the wrong fuse!

all work since sunday morning to tuesday afternoon - gone, spent yesterday trying to recover, but no avail

so decided that i'd ditch the idea of spending anymore time in trying to recover 2 days work and press on and re-install system and apps.. and re-arranged a photoshoot with a very understanding client..

remember - backup.. u never know whats going to happen! oh and ordered a UPS today as well - gives me a max of 41mins to shutdown my sys (that number depending on how much juice my system drinks..)

[balistic]

oof, that sucks.

Don't set it up as RAID 0 again.

RAID 0 without frequent backups is never a good idea, because it effectively doubles your odds of experiencing a catastrophic failure.

If either drive dies you lose everything.
_________________
brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[eyewoo]

WOW... not sure what RAID 0 is, but if I see it coming, I'm going the other way...

[Impaler]

Redundant Array of Independent Disks, used for either or both increased reliability, performance, and capacity. Basically, the computer sees an array of hard drives as a single drive.

RAID 0 isn't true RAID, since it's not redundant. It splits data evenly among the two drives, decreasing read time and increasing performance. It also effectively doubles the capacity of your smallest drive (so, a 250 gig drive coupled with a 200 gig drive would read as a single 400 gig drive). It's terrible for backup, since there's no redundancy. So, if a single drive fails, the entire array fails. That means adding more drives actually decreases reliability. RAID 0 is great for speed, but you'd better back up daily.

RAID 1, however, is lovely for backup. It mirrors data between two disks, but it halves your capacity (2 250 gig hard drives read as a single 250 gig drive). It also decreases read times, since the two drives are seeking independently. Reliability is also increased exponentially. Let's say you have a drive that has odds of failing every week of about 1:1000. If you add another drive with the same odds, you increase your odds of total drive failure to about 1:1,000,000. (!!!!)

There are different levels of RAID (2,3,4,5,6, 1+0, 10, 100, JBOD), but these two are the most popular.
_________________
QED, sort of.

[Godwin]

Ooh thanks that explained it so well! I never really knew what it meant/did.
_________________
Derelict Studios|Godwin's Space

[eyewoo]

Yea... thnx... that was very clear.
_________________
HonePie.com
tumblr blog
digtal art

[B0b]

JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks btw

[ten]

wow, that really sucks. If RAID 0 is unreliable but you want it because it's is the best config for performance, what are your best options for backing up?

edit -- outdated info --

[Impaler]

RAID 0 is usually more of a gaming configuration, since all the data you use (except for save games) is backed up to begin with. If a hard drive crashes, all you have to do is reinstall your software and you're good to go. In other cases, like with art, video, etc, you would simply back up your RAID 0 like you would with any other hard drive.

The advantage of using RAID 1, aside from reliability, is increased data throughput. This is because the two drives are reading the same data blocks independent of each other. Let's say you have a SATA3b/s drive that transfers data at 300 megabytes per second. If you add another of the same drive to make a RAID 1 setup, you would now have a hard drive with a throughput of 600 megabytes per second. If you add a third drive, you would get a throughput of 900 mb/s (super, super fast!). The problem is, even with all three drives, you still only have 250 gigabytes of capacity, rather than 750. But, you would have a virtually failproof setup; assuming the 1:1000 odds from before, your hard drives now have a 1 in a billion chance of failing.

So, RAID 0 is a cheap and easy way to get massive storage (a terabyte hard drive is well within reason) with otherwise impossible data speeds. You have to back up, though.

RAID 1 gets the same performance as RAID 0, but at the cost of capacity. But you get astronomical reliability and a sense of security. A word of caution: you should still periodically back up a RAID 1 setup. While your odds of failure are sky high, people do still win the lottery, and two hard drives can fail on the same day.
_________________
QED, sort of.

[Lunatique]

I get corrupted files every once a while, so as much I like the idea of RAID 1, I prefer to just manually backup to external drives periodically. That way, if my internal drives have corrupted stuff on it, I can copy over the good copy from the backup. The downside is that anything happens between the periodic backups, I'll lose the data.

[eyewoo]

agree with Luna... in this biz, huge graphics files are created, hang around for a time on the local hard drive and then get shuffled off to backup system.

Like Luna, I also backup my work as I'm doing it to an external harddrive. I also have exact copies of the hardrives off-site.

NexStar is a cheap external USB enclosure that you can put just about any hard drive into.

For all the diddley-shit stuff - email, notes, spread-sheets, tax stuff, letters, stuff that just sort changes in the day-to-day computer use, I use a program Tzan just made me aware of - SmartBackup
. It works really well.
_________________
HonePie.com
tumblr blog
digtal art

[B0b]

err, think you got your RAID's mixed up their Impaler RAID1 (mirroring)= have 250x2 = 250 but with redundancy = 300Mb/sec not 300MB/sec - 1 drive dies, OS tells you but keeps working with 1 drive, replace broken drive and RAID Array will re-build itself and you continue working

RAID0 = have 250x2 = 500 without redundancy = theoretical 600Mb/sec (but actuall nearer a 85-90% increase on speed rather than 100%

RAID0 = have 250x4 = 1000 again without redundancy = theoretical 1200Mb/sec (but actally nearer a 20% increase again) - 1 drive fails, has a write error and you loose everything

i thought i'd be pretty safe with weekly backups but it is now apparent to me that even i am not immune to fatal errors so before i pack up i will set Nero running backing up my work with the option to shutdown after it finishes writing and still have my weekly backup

[Lunatique]

Just wondering--is it a bad habit to use external hard drives without enclosures? I just plug in a power cord and a USB cable and then get to work. I use my sampling libraries for my music that way too, except those stay on my desk in a corner where I normally wouldn't need to touch. My logic is that without an enclosure, I don't have to worry about it overheating--I just need to blow dusk off of them once a while. I have an extension cord that has a power switch on it, so I also don't need the power switch on the enclosure boxes. As far as safety goes, I think if drop a hard drive in a enclosure, it probably won't survive any better than one without enclosure.

Back to the topic of backups.

I have a little system I use that seems to work for me. I basically have a drive that I call the WIP drive--where anything I'm working on at the moment is kept. I also make copies of those files onto my archive drive. As I'm working on a piece, I'll save the file and also copy it over to the archive drive--that way I have two copies at any given time in case the one that's opened goes to hell (irreversible mistakes made). Then periodically, I backup the archive drives, then delete the WIP files on the WIP drive, since I don't need three copies of the same file--two is enough.

[Impaler]

Uhh. What part did I get mixed up? From what I can tell, you just restated what I wrote, but with more practical speed gains (which is still appreciated. )

From Wikipedia:

[balistic]

[eyewoo]

[B0b]

[Spectra]

I have a 5 hard disk config, and RAID 0 is amazing performance with photoshop and very stable.

2x 10 000 RPM raptor HD in RAID 0
(Photoshop, Maya, and window 64 never crashed (1 month and half now that I have this new computer)).

RAID 0 is what I use for my window XP 64, photoshop installation & scratch disk. Also the current version of the file I'm working on, I save it on this disk, and I place older incremetal saves on my other Mirror (RAID 1) hard drive. When the work is done, I place everything on the mirror disk.

2x 250 GB 7200 RPM, in RAID 1 (mirror) for important data and all photoshop files.

1x 300 GB disk for some extra space.
------------------------------------------

-RAID 0 with 2x 10k rpm drives makes an incredible difference since photoshop is very I/O intensive (input/output). You get close to a true 100 mb/sec writing speed. File saving / opening & scratch disk speed is just amazing, a 600 MB photoshop file saves in about 6 seconds, while on a normal hard disk... I can get a coffee, come back and the saving often isnt done...

If you want the performance and automated backup, you need 4x identical drives, in mode RAID 0+1
So you have 2x identical drives doing half the work each for faster performance, and you have 2 other hard drives constantly backuping the frist 2 drives... Thats the ultimate setup, but its a bit costy
_________________
http://www.letual.ca

[B0b]

helps if you have plenty of space in ur case and a big enough PSU as well

[michalczyk]

Loosing data always sucks.
I recently wrote an article about taking backups with the emphasis on the art data like images, 3D files, etc. You may find it useful:

http://www.art.eonworks.com/articles/backup_tips_for_artists.html
_________________
Fantasy art, Sci-fi, Surreal, Space and Abstract art - check out my gallery!

[B0b]

yeah it does suck!

i now have a 10GB hdd to back up all my daily work on - then burn it to DVD/CD when its finished