Want RAID but don't want to Reinstall?

[AntonThaGreat]

I'm going to share an exciting discovery I've found that lets you enable RAID without reinstalling!

For the people that don't know what it's for: Two Hard Drives, Mirrored. In case one goes down, you unplug it, start the machine, and keep going. Replace the dead drive, and resynchronize the drives, and you're safe again.

Works wonderfully with Intel Matrix raid, haven't tried it without setups yet like AMD's raid. I'm not even sure if it's possible. I've only encountered Intel Matrix RAID so far, so there's that.

It's called RaidFix and you can download it here:
http://mike.geek-republic.com/software/raidfix/

You click one button, and RAID is installed. Then you install intel matrix raid manager and set-up your RAID. It's fantastic, especially because you don't have to reinstall windows. I've tried it with Windows 7 and cannot vouch for any other version.

So if you have a Intel Matrix raid chip, and still don't have raid. GO TO NEWEGG and buy a harddrive of the same size as your primary one and do this IMMEDIATELY.

I cannot overstate just how much data-loss sucks.

[evilgoodwin]

RAID is how the machines will take over. When we take out the main drive, the backup will know. And then it will act.

And then we will die.


Winter 2011. Rated R.

[KidCactus]

I'm also running two drives in a RAID 1, in my Mac Pro. But only with Apple's RAID software, no dedicated hardware controller. I've actually never ever had a HDD crash, but I'm sure it will happen some time.

I really should backup some of the most important stuff too, but I hate running Time Machine in the background, the noise from my drives when the backup is running annoys the hell out of me.

[AntonThaGreat]

I'm also running two drives in a RAID 1, in my Mac Pro. But only with Apple's RAID software, no dedicated hardware controller. I've actually never ever had a HDD crash, but I'm sure it will happen some time.

I really should backup some of the most important stuff too, but I hate running Time Machine in the background, the noise from my drives when the backup is running annoys the hell out of me.

I just dealt with 3 seperate cases of data loss:

My 500GB HD died a few months ago taking all my years of music, installations, and other misc data with it.
I was updating a client's server with a 500GB drive with of over a decade of data on it to protect them from data loss. (crucial to their business, if they lost it, they would be severely crippled, their previous tech was a moron.). Installed a Mirror RAID array, and the old hard drive failed a week after. :eek: Close one.
A computer I built for another client, fresh--maybe 6 months old, just had a hard-drive fail in their Mirror RAID array.


If you have a laptop or something of the sort that cannot support a real Mirror RAID array, I highly recommend getting a NAS. (Network-Attached Storage (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage))

Two good ones that I've dealt with are:
NetGear Stora (http://www.google.com/search?q=netgear+stora&tbs=shop%3A1&aq=f) Very simple to install/setup and relatively inexpensive.
Drobo (http://www.google.com/search?q=drobo&tbs=shop%3A1&aq=f) More expensive, but more powerful as well.

[digitalErich]

I waited years for Drobo to release a model with native NAS functionality (as opposed to that addon solution they had) and they finally did it last year. I'm going to pick up one this summer.

[Vandabo]

I've had nothing but problems with RAID... had a few computers in our corporation have RAID controller failures. No data loss luckily, we just switched them back to a single drive layout and they worked fine after that. If we were really sensitive about downtime it might be more worth it, but we have on and off site backups going on anything that matters.

It's a cool technology and I'm sure it will just get better, but I don't really need or want it right now.

[KidCactus]

I just dealt with 3 seperate cases of data loss:

My 500GB HD died a few months ago taking all my years of music, installations, and other misc data with it.
I was updating a client's server with a 500GB drive with of over a decade of data on it to protect them from data loss. (crucial to their business, if they lost it, they would be severely crippled, their previous tech was a moron.). Installed a Mirror RAID array, and the old hard drive failed a week after. :eek: Close one.
A computer I built for another client, fresh--maybe 6 months old, just had a hard-drive fail in their Mirror RAID array.

I actually deal with failed RAID drives on a daily basis (I work in a data center with a few thousand servers), so I'm well aware of that it does happen. That is also the main reason I finally set up a RAID at home. I guess I just have been very fortunate that I've never had one break down on me at home yet, even though I've had the same drives in my system for years, in a computer running (almost) 24/7. :)