Re: Western Digital "MyBook" as RAID?

Robert Latest wrote:

Joerg wrote:


No problem, although I am not quite the expert to set this stuff up. However, it would have to run in the background like RAID. I could imagine a backup to freeze on me when a file that is just being backed up is accessed. For example a huge CAD file. That would happen all the time here in the office, all day long. In fact, that is just the problem. Right now I back up during lunch and after hours. Kind of a pain because I have to come back and turn the machines off.


I haven't really followed this thread, but the thing that's called "software RAID" does what you need, on physically different disks (at least in the Linux world).

AFAIK "hardware RAID" doesn't just refer to physically separate disks but to an array that appears to the outside, by virtue of a special hardware controller, as a single disk. The advantage of HW RAID is that it takes the load of controlling the disks off the main processor, or it can cleverly interleave the files on the separate disks so that streaming access is much faster (useful in video editing applications).

But if all you need is silent, transparent mirroring of files on two disks, SW RAID is for you. If one disk fails, the other one takes over and gets mirrored back as soon as you get a new disk.


AFAIU, according to AZ Nomad RAID could override a good file with a corrupt one, essentially trashing both. But then again, so would a backup routine except there you'd still have the previous backup.


In Linux, all this is built into the standard kernel so you won't notice RAID at work except for a minor performance hit. I'm sure something similar exists for Windows as an add-on but I don't know *** about Windows.


This WD LAN drive essentially behaves like a small Linux PC on the LAN as far as I understand.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
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