Buying a new computational device!

    Quote from Jetsetlemming

    RAID is not a backup. It is not file protection. Do not use RAID expecting it to save your shit. Running two drives at once, putting them both through the exact same workload next to each other inside the same computer, attached to the same power supply and motherboard, means that if one has catastrophic failure most likely both will. Take that extra HD and stick it in an external enclosure. Keep it off unless you're actively using it and make backups every time you do something worth backing up.

    Sorry but that is simply not true, at all! I don't know where your getting that information from, but having two HDs working simultaneously in a RAID array is being done for at least 20 years, and every motherboard on the market today can easily handle much more than that (I've personally set up a 4 HDD RAID array and it's working flawlessly). They may be connected to the same motherboard but the "circuits" are isolated from each other, if that didn't happened every time one of your hard drives failed you would have to buy a new motherboard as well. The same goes for the PSU, having two HD puts almost no stress on the PSU, if you check for example this PSU calculator http://www.silentmods.com/modding/PSU_W ... lator.html you can see that for example having two DVD drives uses more power than having two hard drives. As for the fail rate of using a RAID array I'll just quote wikipedia:

    And i never said that RAID was the same as a backup (I even said that you should keep doing regular backups while using a RAID array), but it is in fact, by definition, a method (and a very efficient one) of file protection. And it's funny that you mention external hard drives, because they have a much higher failure rate than internal hard drives tend to have. I've 3 of them sitting in my desk atm which are as useful as brick, luckily we have a 4 HDD RAID1 array

    i bought an ssd for my new pc and i am super happy with it i think i will upgrade my other machines with ssds aswell !

    so ssds highly recommanded !

    Honestly I think anything beyond £100 for a GPU is a bit of a waste unless you have a real need for a high end one. 8800GT's run more or less anything really well. Shame I had to replace mine with a 9800 which is fine but runs hotter.

    The two most common cause of HD failures are the hd living out its lifespan and failing (once the warrantee period is up), and power surges. The likelihood of something random happening to damage one hard drive to the point of making its data unrecoverable while not happening to another hard drive inside the same machine is roughly in the "struck by lightning"/"win the lottery"/"Get rich quick for reals" level of odds.

    Being in an external HD enclosure will give the hard drive far less stress than constant usage, keep it away from dust, and make it immune from the effects of other hardware failure.

    I think the RAID array is useful for protecting against the random failures and the lifespan failures. Random HDD failures (which are due to the physical drive itself) do happen, and the likelihood of two random failures (even if they have a common cause, such as temperature or vibration) happening simultaneously are very low. Same goes for lifespan. Power surges should be protected against with a surge protector obviously.

    If you properly protect against the common failure modes of a hard drive, the only possibilities for failure would be either normal lifespan failure or a malfunctioning device (manufacturer's error). Keep the temperature down and minimize vibration, use a surge protector. Basically the RAID array is effective against protecting from truly random drive failure(ie, the cause is entirely internal to each device) and lifespan failure.

    Interesting read on the subject:

    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bianca/fast07.pdf

    Figure 2 on Page 8 shows the probably distribution of failure over time for a hard drive.

    Starting on page ten it discusses failures in a specific time period (such as a few hours, as in the time it would take to detect a drive failure and replace the failed drive in an array)

    Figure 10 on Page 13 shows the time between replacements on HTC1, which is composed of 3406 hard drives. When one drive failed, the lowest expected time until the next failure(out of 3406 drives) is around 4 days.

    The probability in HTC1 that a drive will fail within an hour of another drive failure is maybe 5%. With much fewer drives, that probability will obviously drop.

    Quote from Jetsetlemming

    The two most common cause of HD failures are the hd living out its lifespan and failing (once the warrantee period is up), and power surges. The likelihood of something random happening to damage one hard drive to the point of making its data unrecoverable while not happening to another hard drive inside the same machine is roughly in the "struck by lightning"/"win the lottery"/"Get rich quick for reals" level of odds.Being in an external HD enclosure will give the hard drive far less stress than constant usage, keep it away from dust, and make it immune from the effects of other hardware failure.

    The truth is actually the opposite of what you said, the probability of two HD failing simultaneously is really, really low. I've never seen it happen in my experience, neither did my co-workers.

    Power surges are really not one of the main causes of HD failure, it's really unusual for it to happen, and you should be using a UPS with surge suppression anyway to protect your other components. The biggest cause of HD failures is in fact dust. If particles of dust get inside the HD drive you will start to get lots of bad sector warnings, and eventually the read/write head will stop working making the HD useless.

    And again external hard-drives are not as reliable as you might think, most of the enclosures don't keep dust away from the inside, if you ever open a external hd you will find lots of dust in there, and the fact that people carry them everywhere causes much more physical damage than having a internal HD properly secured inside your computer case. The circuit boards inside external HD also break very easily, but that's because most companies use really cheap components and bad manufacturing processes to build them. Like i said before I've 3 of them sitting in my desk at the moment which are completely dead.

    I'm sorry to insist on this but you really shouldn't be misinforming people about proper ways to secure their data. RAID1 arrays are a standard in any system in which data protection is important these days, along with having a (usually) off-site backup server (this only applies to companies), and doing regular backups to an external support to quick fixes.

    Quote from barrakid

    The truth is actually the opposite of what you said, the probability of two HD failing simultaneously is really, really low. I've never seen it happen in my experience, neither did my co-workers.

    Power surges are really not one of the main causes of HD failure, it's really unusual for it to happen, and you should be using a UPS with surge suppression anyway to protect your other components. The biggest cause of HD failures is in fact dust. If particles of dust get inside the HD drive you will start to get lots of bad sector warnings, and eventually the read/write head will stop working making the HD useless.

    And again external hard-drives are not as reliable as you might think, most of the enclosures don't keep dust away from the inside, if you ever open a external hd you will find lots of dust in there, and the fact that people carry them everywhere causes much more physical damage than having a internal HD properly secured inside your computer case. The circuit boards inside external HD also break very easily, but that's because most companies use really cheap components and bad manufacturing processes to build them. Like i said before I've 3 of them sitting in my desk at the moment which are completely dead.

    I'm sorry to insist on this but you really shouldn't be misinforming people about proper ways to secure their data. RAID1 arrays are a standard in any system in which data protection is important these days, along with having a (usually) off-site backup server (this only applies to companies), and doing regular backups to an external support to quick fixes.

    I don't mean power surges as in external ones, but internal ones from other bad hardware. I've seen every single piece of hardware inside a computer, down to external things connected by USB, destroyed by a dying PSU, and when you're giving computer advice to people who don't really know about hardware, you can't count out low budget PSUs, motherboards, etc.

    RAID1 is still not a favorable solution to just using external storage, IMO. Above all else, it's cheaper, portable, and uses less space than backing up every individual thing like system files. There was a 2TB "green" Western Digital drive on sale on Newegg for just $100 a couple days ago, and the external enclosure I use personally only cost $15.

    Quote from barrakid

    The truth is actually the opposite of what you said, the probability of two HD failing simultaneously is really, really low. I've never seen it happen in my experience, neither did my co-workers.

    Power surges are really not one of the main causes of HD failure, it's really unusual for it to happen, and you should be using a UPS with surge suppression anyway to protect your other components. The biggest cause of HD failures is in fact dust. If particles of dust get inside the HD drive you will start to get lots of bad sector warnings, and eventually the read/write head will stop working making the HD useless.

    And again external hard-drives are not as reliable as you might think, most of the enclosures don't keep dust away from the inside, if you ever open a external hd you will find lots of dust in there, and the fact that people carry them everywhere causes much more physical damage than having a internal HD properly secured inside your computer case. The circuit boards inside external HD also break very easily, but that's because most companies use really cheap components and bad manufacturing processes to build them. Like i said before I've 3 of them sitting in my desk at the moment which are completely dead.

    I'm sorry to insist on this but you really shouldn't be misinforming people about proper ways to secure their data. RAID1 arrays are a standard in any system in which data protection is important these days, along with having a (usually) off-site backup server (this only applies to companies), and doing regular backups to an external support to quick fixes.

    well if that isn't a technological bitch slap then i don't know what is

    I think RAID is overkill for most people. If you mirror your primary drive you're wasting so much space on system and program files. If your goal is uptime then it makes sense but if we're talking personal data you're better off backing up online, using software or both.

    Yeah, all of my "really important" stuff (read: schoolwork) goes in my dropbox folder, so its all backed up online and on my other computer.

    Although, with hdds as cheap as they are now, if you're building a whole system you could just buy a mobo with raid support and an extra hdd for like an extra hundred bucks.

    I also use dropbox as my primary backup. I only keep the irreplaceable stuff there. For music/movies/games I have a script that exports a list of them and I back that up.

    I do keep a duplicate HD of my photos at my moms house though. I physically back it up every 2 months and encrypt it. My ex girlfriends wouldn't be to happy about that :x

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