RAID 1 mixed with nonraid

[Beware the talking cat]

So, in the next month or two, I'm planning on buying myself a fancy new computer, and since this computer is going to have to last me four or so years, I've been wondering: is it possible to mix raid and nonraid hdds on a system?

I am hoping to get a pair of 80GB disks in a RAID 1 for windows and my installed programs, then two to three 500GBs set up separately(for anime storage). This way I'll be protected from hard drive failure wiping out my system but not have to double up the disks for storing anime.


Is this even possible?
Is this a bad idea?
Am I the most brilliant(and handsome) man on Earth?

[Rectifier]

Err, 85% sure you need a Raid 0 and a Raid 1 because they denote different memory locations within the box.

Might want to confirm that before you do anything.

*edit External hard drives should always work if thats what your considering.

[Smidge204]

First, let me get this out of the way...

RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP
RAID IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR A BACKUP

Just in case that wasn't clear already. Everyone seems to think RAID will save their ass when something goes wrong but the only thing it protects against is very specific forms of hardware failure. A good backup strategy and responsible data management (ie: not installing everything under the sun and forgetting about it, not installing trivial software [games] to the system partition, etc) is the ounce of prevention.

That said, it all depends on what your mainboard supports unless you plan on buying a dedicated controller card. Most mainboards do support basic RAID for at least two disks though. As for the other three, I don't know how many mainboards allow for that... IDE connectors are getting kinda rare. Best bet is to get a cheap non-RAID SATA controller card and have them as separate drives.

IMHO: Just get a DVD burner.
=Smidge=

[onizuka-gto]

Usually i never dabble with Mirror raid, it just waste a perfectly good drive.

Mirror drives are useful for highly sensitive content if your on a budget.

Basically if the drive does not fail after three years, it's safe.

Since you mentioned buying more drives, i suggest you buy four identical drives and set up a Raid 5.

This is the best storage solution for your anime collection, to spare you the long reason, as you will probably will look it up, its more economical to mirror raid plus all the benefits of a Raid + 0 configuration.

If ANY of your four identical drives fail, just pop it out, and pop a new one, and you lose no data.



love raid five.

plus i heard of a new Network drive that will even work on THREE DRIVES or even different size drives.

this is amazing, as previously the minimum was four drives and for always identical.

what i've found is that these network storage with these new raid solutions are ultimate solution.

however if your on the cheap, windows can also set up a conventional raid 5, if you don't want to use a safe external NAS with those exotic raid 5 solution then this will work just as well.

Just make sure you have a easy drive bay system, its a pain, going inside just to replace drives.

[Smidge204]

He's not looking to RAID his secondary storage, Oni. Read the post again.

Edit: Oh, RAID 5 is not a good idea for home computing since implementations tend to be very hardware specific, meaning you can't reliably transplant the hard drives into another machine and/or use a different controller board. Hooray for vendor lock-in.
=Smidge=

[onizuka-gto]

He's not looking to RAID his secondary storage, Oni. Read the post again.

Edit: Oh, RAID 5 is not a good idea for home computing since implementations tend to be very hardware specific, meaning you can't reliably transplant the hard drives into another machine and/or use a different controller board. Hooray for vendor lock-in.
=Smidge=

well actually if you are strapped for cash, when you use a software raid 5 using windows, its quite durable.

I've a windows XP raid 5 software array successfully transplanted from a intel system to an AMD system, different hardware.

Not saying this will work all the time, but at leased you know it CAN be done.

But still not sure what you mean by reading the first post?

it's not like he's using the raid for backup is here? its just storage, and i think raid 5 is fantastic. (okay, im still thrilled that you can just pop one out and pop it back in again withthe system on and your data is miraculously still working. :p )

but yeah backup is no substitute to cheap DVD's and a good DVD bulk storage case.

[Beware the talking cat]

I was intending to just have the RAID 1 covering Windows and essential programs: if one of the drives dies, I would just be able to pop in a new one and have no problems.

The other drives are just for storage and I would not want any backup for them; it would just be too expensive.

I suppose I'll just have to use normal backup instead, from what smidge says.

Then again, now I'm going to have to think about getting a RAID 5 instead(edit:nmvd, after a bit of research, I decided against this.).

Anyway, thank you everyone, it's good to know it's not the best idea before I buy anything.