Is RAID 1 a good way to protect against data loss in comparison

>>57459218
Also have to add that internal drives aren't really any more expensive than external drive, and I don't care about the data being portable or not.

>>57459218
>it would give a little bit of a performance increase as well.
No, and why would it?

Anyway, both solutions have advantages and disadvantages.

>>57459218
RAID is not a backup. It does cover you for single disk failure, which is good, but in general, if you're accessing the data on that system routinely, it's not a backup.

Use RAID on important machines that can't go down, and on systems where you can't afford to lose whatever work is done between regular backups.

If you have an old box with lots of bays, load it up with big slow drives, and use something that supports RAID6 or ZFS's RAIDZ (NAS4free or FreeNAS, etc). Set up automated backups to run at least nightly, and don't worry about RAID on your desktop.

Also, check restore the validity of your backups every few months.

>>57459369
>No, and why would it?
You don't know shit. Multi-threaded reads can be accelerated with a RAID 1 array.

>>57459404
>Multi-threaded reads can be accelerated
Nice in theory, how's it practically?

>>57459384
>RAID is not a backup
I realize this, but I think it would suffice for keeping relatively unimportant data, but a lot of it, safe. Like the odds of a single drive failing is a lot bigger than my entire rig blowing up, which would take out even RAID. Obviously I keep important documents and such backed up separately, but that easily fits onto a USB.
Basically I feel like RAID would be a good idea for me but since I'm not completely familiar with it I wanted to know if I might've missed something, which indeed doesn't seem the case.

>>57459462
At least linux md-raid works perfectly. The load balancer just makes the multiple read threads read from different disks, md-raid1 can even be configured so that it gives out raid0 level read speeds for a single thread

>>57459218
If the data doesn't change often then an external drive is fine and fairly practical solution. Also nice Maki

>>57459218
Raid is for availability. If a drive fails you won't lose new data since the last back up and you don't have to restore from a backup saving you time.

If hardrive failure is your only concern then yes.

>>57459218
>Is RAID 1 a good way to protect against data loss in comparison with something like keeping things backed up on an external drive?
No, because any sort of failure that takes out your entire PC will take out both drives. If the SATA controller goes full retard, you lose everything. If the PSU goes belly up and fries everything else, you lose everything. If you go full retard and get some ransomware that encrypts all your shit, you lose all your data. If you accidentally Shift+Del on all your shit, you lose all your date (well, this might be recoverable).

None of those can happen with an external drive that is only connected when a backup is in progress. In the case of RAID1, it makes almost no sense to choose that over offline backup unless you're running some server and don't want downtime because of HDD failure. Since you sound like a home user, there is no point in using RAID1 when you can just back your shit up every weekend or something. RAID1 isn't cheaper and it isn't more reliable, so if you're going to buy another HDD use it for backup. RAID obviously provides some safety and can be an acceptable (IMO) compromise for a home user when you're doing RAID5/6, since you're getting safety against HDD failure but not buying 2x the amount of drives to do so. If you're going to be buying 2x the amount of drives and don't care about uptime go offline backup 100%.

For all of you saying "raid is not backup" you fail to realize that raid is a technology, the primary use case and design was for avalibility, but that being said for a home user application its suitable for backup.

It won't save you against multidrive failure like house on fire or power surge, but what's keeping a user from intentionally removing a disk from raid 1array and placing it off site, then adding a new disk??

>>57461068
>but what's keeping a user from intentionally removing a disk from raid 1array and placing it off site
Nothing, but OP didn't ask about that or say that he intended to do it.

>>57461161
I'm just saying technology can be reappropriated according to use case. It might not be optimal but you don't expect users to buy tape drives and cloning software do you?

>>57461234
No, but buying an external drive and copying your new shit to it once a month is pretty reasonable for a home user, definitely simpler and easier on the drives than using RAID1 and pulling drives out, then rebuilding the whole thing whenever you want a backup. With a normal backup you only need to transfer the things that change, if you're going to be pulling drives out of RAID1 and replacing them the entire thing has to be rebuilt AFAIK. Is there any RAID1 solution smart enough to sync an old version of a disk up to the new one without just copying everything over?

>>57461068
>what's keeping a user from intentionally removing a disk from raid 1array and placing it off site, then adding a new disk?
downsides when using mismatched drives (write speed, capacity)
can't be a different storage medium
can't back up selected data, only the whole drive
need to use more drives (2 in array + 1 as the 'offsite backup'), instead of just online + backup

RAID is a perfectly good solution for basic backups. It protects from drive failures which would otherwise mean loss of data. Fuck all others who think RAID is not a backup.

>>57461327
I'm not saying its ideal, but more or less it works.

>>57461377
This
Of course if your computer explodes you'll lose both drives but that wasn't the question
Yes RAID1 of 2 drives will essentially backup them permanently
Read speed will go up, write speed will not

>>57461377
it doesn't protect from data corruption or data loss from reasons other than drive failure

fuck all who keep insisting RAID is for backup