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personal introduction, 4 bay Raid1 &…be gentle…Caviar Green drives !?
hi guys
& hello to everyone ! as i like doing when joining a forum here’s a bit about myself, what i do, i like, etc…
please bear w/ me & forgive the length of it but….i SUCK at writing haiku sized posts ! 😉i’m a self employed 53 year old artist/silversmith/designer from Portugal living in the Algarve right in the south, avid motorcyclist, bass player, traveller, gourmet/gourmand & overall bon-vivant !
since the Pentium I I’ve flirted w/ computers but only ”bit the bullet” when a cousin introduced me to his new iMac a few years ago – it was love at 1st sight : my house being minuscule it’s ”all in one” form factor was PERFECT so the following week i got 1 & have been using Macs for 6 or 7 years w/ satisfactory results !after learning my way around & gaining some confidence in my skills, i started digitising/importing into iTunes my rather large music collection of LP’s & CD’s in lossless – several thousand albums acquired over a period of 40 years.. – using W.D. My Book USB drives to store it all.
this has been a painstacking process, taken SEVERAL months of my life, all worth it considering it gave me back HUGE amounts of space in my house : several large LP & CD storing bookshelves gone + record players, CD players & related hi-fi furniture – my small living room actually looks ….HUGE !!…LOL…
learning about drive failures + worrying about loosing it all, led me to get 2 NewerTech Guardian Maximus FW800 enclosures, each loaded with 2 W.D Green Caviar 3TB drives, set-up in Raid1 : i admit the drive choice was merely based on quietness, price, BEFORE gathering info on green drives suitability for Raid, etc…ooops, live & learn ? i hope..
however i’ve been VERY lucky : everything runs like the proverbial swiss watch – quiet, unobtrusive, SUPER EASY to use, i couldn’t have asked for more….these days my system consists of an APC UPS > a late 2009, 27” iMac 2.8GHz i7 w/ 16GB of RAM on Ergotron arm wall mount as a hub to said drives ( total of 18TB.. ) a Wacom Cintiq 21UX + Ergotron arm desk mount, a HP all in one.
it plays my music via optical to a Cambridge Audio DacMagic > Roksan Kandy amp > B&W speakers e my movies to a 50” Panasonic plasma via HDMI
a Fiio headphone amp + a pair of Sennheiser cans & a Zoom B3 effects unit/USB interface allows me to listen to music/play my bass & provide my neighbours some peace & quiet later in the evening…it takes VERY little space in the desk i custom built for it all & consequence of chance & certainly NOT my ”tech-saviness”, this set-up has NEVER missed a beat & works amazingly well.
curious ? check it out here :https://www.flickr.com/photos/13706825@N03/sets/72157634226743671/
still having a thousand + albums left to import, i NEED to go bigger – a 4 bay, Raid1 set-up striking me as the next, obvious step !?
being a bit short on cash at the moment, i would like to use the 4 Green Caviars i have in said box ( 2 drives mirrored by the other 2 ) & would load the My Book drives in the G.Maximus FW enclosures after removal from their enclosures – one set in Raid1 for Time Machine duties, the other also in Raid1 for my iPhoto library, BluRay & DVD collection + assorted bits & bobs..when money allows then i would get 4 more drives to copy the whole 4Bay box music content & stash them unplugged/off-site to ensure a ”safety by numbers” kind of approach & here comes the million dollar question, one i’ll ask you to be gentle w/ your answer :
does anyone here know of ANY 4 bay, Raid1 capable enclosure ( preferably FW800, my iMac NOT having Sata nor USB3, Thunderbolt, etc.. ) out there that could use the Green Caviars satisfactorily ?
please trust me when i tell you that before burdening you w/ this question, i looked around & tried to gather as much info about the subject & yes i’ve read lots about the issues of these drives in Raid arrays but given my absolute success with my G.Maximus enclosures & the fact that Synology lists these WD30EZRX as BEING compatible for SEVERAL of their 4 bay, Raid enclosures it just left me feeling i might have missed something & wondering !?
i tried to contact Synology but their website is set so one HAS TO BE a product owner to do it so that was a no-no !?..i’ve also ”canvased” CreativeCow forums ( LOVE the name by the way 😉 .. ) BEFORE posting this & risking boring you to tears w/ this subject
again apologies for the length of my post, THANK YOU ALL very much for your patience, ANY help or tips on this matter WILL BE very appreciated
best regards from ”across the pond”
Nuno
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13 Replies
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Nuno,
A short & sweet answer to your question.
“Green drives are not for use in a RAID environment” They are slow, they will spin down at inappropriate times (power saving feature) & are simply not made for RAID.
Single external drive – not critical applications? MAYBE, but I wouldn’t trust them for even that much.
Jonathan Schilling
Vertical Sales Manager
Proavio Storage by Enhance Technology Inc.
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X106
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: jon@proavio.com -
Hi Jon
& congrats : your haiku beats mine hands down ! 😉
but i do appreciate your input, i guess it’s back to saving some €€ for decent drives then
cheers
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Nuno,
& I wasn’t even trying to write a Haiku.
Go figure.
Jon
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compared to my post ?
super minimalist at the very least but SO to the point that, DAMN ! i can’t even resent you…LOL…but i promise i’ll behave & get some WD Reds or so
cheers ! 😉
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I would question why you need RAID at all. People make the mistake of thinking RAIDs are a backup strategy, they are not. RAIDs are designed to maintain uptime in mission critical situations, that doesn’t sound like your situation. RAID 5s can boost performance and again that doesn’t sound like your situation.
The problem with RAIDs as a backup is that you can have file system failures (corruption, etc.) in this case both drives will be affected. You can have drive enclosure failures, RAID 1 won’t protect you here. You can have a fire.
My suggestion is to keep your Green Drives. Shift to single drive JBOD, there are cheap 4 bay JBOD enclosures for around $120 and run mirrored backups periodically. There is plenty of software that works well for this. Chronosync on Mac, SyncBack on PC. Then store your backup drive offsite (a friends house?) in a hard drive case when not syncing them.
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Hi Brett
& thank you for your input !
it’s funny you should mention this because, as at this time my ”toy allowance” has been depleted by….the purchase of other toys, what else ? – it’s a nightmare ! 😉 .. – i decided to order a couple of Western Digital Red 3TB drives to copy my Green Caviars !!
this way i WILL have a couple of extra copies besides what i already have & yes, what you say about placing them elsewhere sounds right : all sorts of things can & do go wrong sometimes..as far as Raid1 is concerned although i have read time & again about it NOT being a back-up strategy, i thought that by producing exact, extra copies kept here, there & everywhere…it would end up working as one without the fuss of physically having to copy drive after drive : just pop a new drive in Raid enclosure & hop, there it goes copying it to the newcomer !
or did i get this wrong as well ?cheers
Nuno
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I don’t have a lot of experience with RAID 1, so I could be wrong here. But in general RAID is tied to hardware. So if your enclosure ever breaks you are SOL. And you can never separate the drives and bring them back together again. Because they won’t be identical anymore. You are playing with fire when you separate RAID drives. They always need to stay together. And the drives need to be identical models. A mirrored backup eliminates those issues. It just seems to me RAID needlessly complicates what you’re doing which is rather simple. Remember syncing software will only copy what has changed since the last time, so it’s not that time consuming.
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Hi Brett
so basically what you’re saying is that i didn’t need to buy these enclosures ( please take a look here :
https://macupgrade.eu/catalog/guardian-maximus-hardware-raid1-0gb-kit-p-793.html...
& i would be safer so to speak basically using one of my all time favourite softwares : Carbon Copy Cloner !?& if i remove one of the mirrored copies ( in Raid 1.. ) from the above enclosures & install it in any other enclosure i won’t be able to access the data in it ?
that being the case, NOW i’m riddled w/ anxiety !!…LOL….oh my goodness ! & to think i stopped acquiring W.Digital My Books after reading their enclosures encode the data w/ some proprietary thingamajig so NOTHING else would read the drives !?..
seems i got it all wrong then :-b OK, off to the corner i go… 😉
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sorry but when checking the link i included in my post to make sure it was correct, i verified that for some weird reason the link directs you to a ”sorry but we’re closed until april” page that doesn’t even exist !?
if you have the patience just paste Guardian Maximus Raid1 0GB in the search box
again my apologies
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[nuno baptista] “& if i remove one of the mirrored copies ( in Raid 1.. ) from the above enclosures & install it in any other enclosure i won’t be able to access the data in it ?”
That is very likely the case, because it is a hardware RAID. Even software RAID would not be a plug in and go operation. If you already have the enclosure and drives. Why not go with a RAID 1 + offsite spare strategy. You would be triple protected against hard drive failure and still have the offsite, separate drive backup. And Carbon Copy Cloner should work fine for this.
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