External HD that will stand the test of time??

[William Gibson]

You mean RAID1 surely - Mirrored for a 1:1 backup.



RAID on its own internally for sure is not a backup (which should be kept externally) however backing up to an 2 disc External Raid1 array like the buffalo I mentioned above would create 2 copies of your backup data in a single external enclosure. In the even that one of your backup discs fail you will still have the second healthy backup drive and would not need to run a backup twice to still have a redundant copy.

Woops! Typo! Feel like an idiot considering I have an IT degree. Good catch sir.

[DJ_JCohh]

Thanks again everyone. I ended up going with a LaCie 1TB external.

[Jay Melis]

You mean RAID1 surely - Mirrored for a 1:1 backup.



RAID on its own internally for sure is not a backup (which should be kept externally) however backing up to an 2 disc External Raid1 array like the buffalo I mentioned above would create 2 copies of your backup data in a single external enclosure. In the even that one of your backup discs fail you will still have the second healthy backup drive and would not need to run a backup twice to still have a redundant copy.

I know how raid works... It's not a backup and you shouldn't advice it to the op.
Google "raid is not a backup".

To get you started
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/n...-is-not-backup

[DjLiquitATL]

Thanks again everyone. I ended up going with a LaCie 1TB external.

I've had my Lacie since 2007 - 500GB and only thing that went bad was power adapter one time. replaced it and it has worked great going on 6 years. creating a backup on an external hard-drive that you can boot from is a must...just in case you laptop hard-drive tanks on you.

[deevey]

I know how raid works... It's not a backup and you shouldn't advice it to the op.
Google "raid is not a backup".

I think you missed the whole idea of an EXTERNAL USB raid Enclosure which would mean you have 3 mirrored copies of your data - 2 of which would be on the same external enclosure and one on your computer.

1. Your Computer drive

2. Your External Drive set up as Raid1

I agree that an Internal raid is NOT a backup, nor is a RAID0 in any form. External USB RAID1 setups are a different breed altogether.

[DigitalQw3rty]

I think you missed the whole idea of an EXTERNAL USB raid Enclosure which would mean you have 3 mirrored copies of your data - 2 of which would be on the same external enclosure and one on your computer.

1. Your Computer drive

2. Your External Drive set up as Raid1

I agree that an Internal raid is NOT a backup, nor is a RAID0 in any form. External USB RAID1 setups are a different breed altogether.

I agree. Raid is great as a main drive set up because its fast but its terrible for back up because all your data is spread between multiple drives so if one should fail you loose all you data.

[Jay Melis]

I think you missed the whole idea of an EXTERNAL USB raid Enclosure which would mean you have 3 mirrored copies of your data - 2 of which would be on the same external enclosure and one on your computer.

1. Your Computer drive

2. Your External Drive set up as Raid1

I agree that an Internal raid is NOT a backup, nor is a RAID0 in any form. External USB RAID1 setups are a different breed altogether.

I know what you mean, but the bigger the hdd is the more demanding the task of the chipset on that external hdd are going to be, especially when you are rebuilding one hdd to another.
The chipsets in consumer grade raid enclosures aren't that great. Most of these are not interchangeable, so you need to get the same type of chipset, if the chipset would die ( this happens more then you would think).

If your chipset fails you just reduced your 3 data copies to one. The changes of 1 raid1 setup failing vs 2 copies of the same data are bigger.

A regular user really is better of just buying separate hdd's and making more backups. It also keeps things simple... If the OP needs to ask this kind of question, then don't bother him with raid.

When you can buy 4tb hdd's and 512g ssds... There really isn't any use for a regular user for raid. There are uses, but this is not one of them.