Re: Western Digital "MyBook" as RAID?


"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vyYci.40757$5j1.17789@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello Folks,

Looked up and down the web, called the mfg, read all the docs I could
find. Still no idea. Maybe someone else is already using the Western
Digital "My Book World Edition" as a LAN file server and has an idea.
Here's the scoop:

I just bought the 500MB version which contains one HD. They also have a
1TB version with two HD in there but I do not like the idea to rely on
RAID within one machine. Ok, it's Linux based but would share the
motherboard and other stuff. Not so good IMHO, plus they didn't have it.

Now the docs say you can configure even this 1 HD version for RAID
although that only creates two mirrors on the same disk. Doesn't make too
much sense to me. Additional HDs can be connected via a USB port but there
seems to be no information whatsoever on how to use such an external HD as
the second drive for RAID. Any experience?

In a recent thread the Netgear SC101 was suggested. I studied that a bit
and found too many posts on the net where the whole thing had fried up and
none of the disks were readable, which would kind of defeat the whole
purpose of RAID I guess. Anyhow, there aren't too many LAN drives out
there and I want to avoid a big box. Also, there were some warnings in web
discussions that one should decide on the configuration before actually
doing it because it's supposedly hard to undo.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Software RAID like you're talking about just duplicates files so if one gets
corrupt you have the other to recover from. Like synching files in two
locations but without the benefit of the two locations.

From what I hear from friends working in the IT World "Software RAID" should
be avoided if possible from the many problems it seems to have.

If you just like the idea of duplicate files why not get two Network
attached HD and schedule a script (or tools that provide scheduled services)
to copy files from the "working" drive to the backup drive on a
nightly/weekly basis?

Robert





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