I want to add RAID to my current setup (in sig) i don't need it for speed as such but just for piece of mind knowing all my document, videos, music, ect... are safe. I see many bit techers using hardware RAID but is software RAID good? or good enough for what i want? thanks guys
From what I remember Window's software raid didn't add much of a CPU overhead and did the job perfectly well, the only thing is I don't think windows can boot from a Dynamic disk so make sure your OS is on a seperate disk. The advantage with software raid is that if you don't have Identically sized disks, you can still make use of the extra space. I expect there will be plenty of people who will advise using a backup program to create grandfather-father-son style backups instead of using raid.
In b4 Pooks! RAID isn't going to keep your data safe, only a backup will do that. RAID will allow you to recover from a single hard drive failure more rapidly (mostly) than non-RAID but it won't protect your data from accidental deletion or corruption. If you are going to run RAID (e.g. mirroring) as well as a very regular backup, then you can benefit from a reduced recovery time if a hard drive fails as well as your data being safe. My suggestion would be to use the additional hard drive (that you were going to use in a RAID array) as an external backup drive, buy an external caddy (USB 3.0 or eSATA if your m/b supports it, USB 2.0 if the data volumes aren't huge) and buy Acronis True Image 2011.
Fingers brings up good points. I voted for software raid, understanding this to be the kind of thing where at the end of every day a back up drive is updated with any changes you made to the primary drive. Also, if you are thinking about a real RAID1 set up, I'd recommend server class drives. I have a RAID1 array with 2x2TB Spinpoint F4s and they do like to fall out of sync every one in a while.
It protects against 1 disk failure. If you delete or infect your files RAID-anything is not going to get them back for you
Raid won't prevent accidental file deletion or corruption. Only a good backup policy will do that. What RAID does is help if you have a disk fail on a live system and/or help speed up access to files.
Personally prefer raid. Can't be manually backing up everything as I would never do it. However I'm pretty sure windows does that auto anyway.
Works great right up to the point where you accidentally shift-delete your music collection/work etc.
Having norton protected recycle bin would protect against that, it's basically a glorified undelete function, saved my files a few times.
If your data is unreplaceable then RAID + weekly backups. If its replaceable, but just a real pain in the ass to reaquire (such as a media collection), RAID5 should do just fine. If I lost my 2.6TB media collection id probably have a small nervious breakdown, so its getting to the point where a pair of 1.5 or 2TB drives connected via NAS makes a lot of sense.
Remember raid 5 needs 3 identical disks, raid 1 is purely mirroring with 2. The other advantage of raid 5 is potentially doubled read (but not write) speeds.