There are several reasons why someone would want to use raid. You might
want to combine smaller disks into a larger storage unit, or into a
faster storage unit. You might want it to keep your data safe in the
event of hardware failures occurring between backups (because raid is
/not/ a substitute for backups!). But the big reason in many cases is to
minimise down-time - you want to keep the system up and running even if
there is a failure, rather than having to rebuild things and restore
from backups.
I don't find those solutions very satisfactory. So in the early 80's, I
came up with what I thought was a near perfect solution. While many talk
about and making a big deal about software backups, I think that isn't
good enough. Maybe because I am an electronic engineer, I see all kinds
of flaws here.
So while software backups are only partially helpful, I find hardware
and software cloning to be a far better solution. And no service plan on
Earth for any amount of money is better than what I have. And one of the
key factors that everybody seems to miss is to buy hardware in at least
in pairs.
Say for example, right now something happens with this computer I am
typing on. It could be anything you can think of. Power supply, fan,
CPU, RAM, hard drive, keyboard, monitor, motherboard, etc. failure. And
none of it matters because in 2 seconds I am back up and running again.
If the hard drive is at least ok, I just pop it out and slip it into
another M465 and I am up and going again. If the hard drive is partly or
the whole problem, I just grab the latest clone (I keep about 11 clones
for this machine alone) and I am off to the races in 4 seconds. And I
have it automatically synced with my latest data files.
Not only is this method more reliable than anything I have ever seen,
but it makes troubleshooting a real snap. As sometimes a problem pops up
and you generally have to jump through a number of hoops to see if a
problem is actually hardware or software. Not here, just pop the drive
in another machine and if the problem is still there, it will be
software. If gone, it's the hardware. This is a bit over simplified of
course, but it basically works this easy.
And no matter what the problem turns out to be, no big deal. As I have
spares of both software and hardware. And there is no real pending rush
to repair anything. Take your time if you like. As I have 7 more
functioning spares of this laptop alone and 11 hard drives that all have
to fail before I would be in a really big rush. And quite frankly, I
never see that day coming. ;-)
