Re: Western Digital "MyBook" as RAID?

AZ Nomad wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:22:51 -0700, Joerg <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



AZ Nomad wrote:


On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 22:06:33 GMT, Robert <Robert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



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.

bull***.

Have you ever used a raid system in your life?

If you get a corrupted file, software (and hardware raid) will pass the
corruption to all drives in a mirrored array.


The purpose of raid is to provide enough redundancy to recover from drive
failures. If a drive in a mirrored volume fails, the other(s) can provide
the data.



I guess Robert meant corruption because of defects or failures in the platter itself. But yeah, if a corrupt file is written onto disk A and then mirrored it will of course be corrupt on disk B. However, that should (theoretically) not happen if the file hasn't been touched after corruption.


If either drive in a mirrored system get such soft errors, the file
will be trashed. RAID isn't a backup mechanism. It is a mechanism for
continueing after complete drive failures and to gain extra performance by
using multiple drives.


Yes, it looks like RAID may not be the answer here if it can't discern enough in terms of corruption. Maybe I just use the LAN drive and connect a USB drive to that for regular backups by hand or automatically.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
.