Use RAID to backup audio recording?

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Using Plll with Wxp pro for PC based audio recording. Have no experience with
RAID although I somewhat understand the concept. Am using an intel board with
two HDs. Would like to replicate recorded audio files in real time onto the
two separate HDs for safety. Can this be done with RAID1?

Do not know if MB has a RAID hdwr controller but have read it can be done
with Wxp disk management. Here is the setup

Disk 0 17gb - 14gbFAT (have read audio files do better with FAT) and 3gb
unpartitioned for RAID
Wxp installed on the 14gb partition

Disk1 8gb FAT (hopefully I can use Wxp disk management to create an
unpartitioned space on this disk)

apparently I need an unpartioned space on each of the HDs to do this.

Any help appreciated.
Thanks
 
Using Plll with Wxp pro for PC based audio recording. Have no experience with
RAID although I somewhat understand the concept. Am using an intel board with
two HDs. Would like to replicate recorded audio files in real time onto the
two separate HDs for safety. Can this be done with RAID1?

Do not know if MB has a RAID hdwr controller but have read it can be done
with Wxp disk management. Here is the setup

Disk 0 17gb - 14gbFAT (have read audio files do better with FAT) and 3gb
unpartitioned for RAID
Wxp installed on the 14gb partition

Disk1 8gb FAT (hopefully I can use Wxp disk management to create an
unpartitioned space on this disk)

apparently I need an unpartioned space on each of the HDs to do this.

Any help appreciated.
Click to expand...

RAID IS NOT A BACKUP METHOD - RAID is a hardware redundancy method.

It means that if one (and only one) drive dies in a RAID ARRAY, that
your system may not lose any data. RAID is something that can increase
read or write performance, but RAID-1, called MIRRORING, while it does
create a second exact/realtime copy that can be used if one drive fails,
IS NOT A BACKUP.

XP does not do soft RAID.

Generally one purchases a RAID controller card, has a source drive and
an unused drive, and then (in your case) MIRRORS the source drive to the
second drive using the RAID Controller card.

Software RAID is very susceptible to crashes and stability based on the
stability of the OS.

If you want to do something simple, get a USB2/Firewire External drive
and setup a XP schedule that uses ROBOCOPY to copy your files to the
external drive as often as you want... This means you can take your
files to another location.
 
Trio3b said:
Using Plll with Wxp pro for PC based audio recording. Have no
experience with RAID although I somewhat understand the concept. Am
using an intel board with two HDs. Would like to replicate recorded
audio files in real time onto the two separate HDs for safety. Can
this be done with RAID1?
Click to expand...

Sorry to say that RAID is on my list of computer technologies that shouldn't
be used by people who don't fully understand what they do and how they work.

If you've not used it before and you don't know how it works (and from your
description, I'm sorry to say you don't) then you'll be much happier in the
end if you find an alternative backup method.
 
Robert Moir said:
Sorry to say that RAID is on my list of computer technologies that shouldn't
be used by people who don't fully understand what they do and how they work.

If you've not used it before and you don't know how it works (and from your
description, I'm sorry to say you don't) then you'll be much happier in the
end if you find an alternative backup method.


Thanks for the tips. We lost about 6 hours worth of raw recorded audio when a HD based recording studio went belly up . Now with our own PC recording we were trying to avoid this. We generally burn "keepers" to disk, but only when a song is "acceptable. Therefore, there is a small window of time between when songs are recorded and when they are burned to disk that they are susceptible to loss due to HD failure. Guess we'll just start burning keepers more often.
Click to expand...

Thanks
 
If all you want to do is provide short term "protection" of songs that
haven't been finalised then you can do this with a RAID "Mirror" (aka RAID
1). This isn't the same as a "backup", which is why I (and presumably
Leythos) answered the way we did.

A RAID mirror will write the same data to two disks at once, and will
certainly help you if one of those disks crashes. It's no protection against
accidentally deleting something, or "messing up" your files by accident, or
anything like that.
 
If all you want to do is provide short term "protection" of songs that
haven't been finalised then you can do this with a RAID "Mirror" (aka RAID
1). This isn't the same as a "backup", which is why I (and presumably
Leythos) answered the way we did.

A RAID mirror will write the same data to two disks at once, and will
certainly help you if one of those disks crashes. It's no protection against
accidentally deleting something, or "messing up" your files by accident, or
anything like that.
Click to expand...

he would still be better served by using an External FireWire or USB
drive, and then creating a ROBOCOPY batch file to update the files as
needed - this means he gets a removable backup anytime he needs it, on
demand, without having to change the system config.
 
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