This is a draft, if you'd like to see me continue, just let me know in the comments!
Introduction
A photographer has unique storage needs. They tend to need to maintain an archive of data that can be in the terabytes. They also are working with an active data set (from a current shoot) that's in the 10's of gigabytes.
This article will walk through how a photograph can use RAID 5 to meet those needs.
This article will walk through how a photograph can use RAID 5 to meet those needs.
What is RAID?
First, What is RAID? Go check out Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID for a nice article. The basic idea is that hard drives fail. So, spread your data across more than one so that you don't lose everything if one dies. different levels of RAID provide different levels of protection. In this article I'll focus on level 5 (called RAID 5) which provides a great balance of cost, performance, and value.RAID 5 take three (or more) drives and puts them into a pool called an array. Some fancy math is done so that your data and "parity information" is stored across all three drives. Then, if any one drive fails, the computer can use the parity information to recreate the missing data. This happens on the fly; you may not even notice that a drive has failed. You replace that drive, and the computer rebuilds the data that was on it. Once the array is healthy again, any drive could fail without impacting your work.
I support desktop machines at a business about an hour from my house. I've got RAID 1 (a cheaper option) in those desktops. When a drive fails, the end user doesn't notice. During my monthly visits, I detect and fix the failed drives. They don't even know that they averted disaster.
What is required?
For RAID 5, you need 3 hard drives. Most desktop computers can easily handle that. If you are lucky enough to live by a Frye's, Micro Center, or similar, they'll be happy to help you out. You may need things like this:
- Amazon Link to Drive
- Amazon Link to SATA Cables
- Amazon Link to SATA Power Splitter
Expect to spend about $300 for "value" drives.
How?
Physically connect the new drives to power and SATA ports in your computer. (I'm using a Virtual Machine with small disks. Your large drives and physical machine will be similar)
This has a great writeup on configuring RAID under the new Windows 10 Storage Spaces:
Ransomware
TBD
Conclusion
TBD
1 comment:
Just as a heads up - RAID isn't a substitute for a backup solution. RAID isn't actually even a backup at all. If you delete a file, overwrite a file, or a file gets corrupted no level of replication or parity is going to bring that file back.
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-features/31745-data-recovery-tales-raid-is-not-backup
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