I keep hearing from people in tech communities that keeping things in RAID is somehow better than just slapping it on a hard drive backup, but… why? What even is RAID storage and why is it better?
I spent last night looking up RAID servers on Amazon to get me an answer but I left with more questions: Do all the hard drives in RAID need to be the same size? My entire family switched their laptops due to the work from home orders, so I have a bunch of unused SSDs and HDDs lying around the house, can I just throw those in a RAID server and have it work?
Can I install an operating system on a RAID server? Would it run faster/slower? If I have a MacBook and can install Windows on my RAID server, would it work a bit like bootcamp? What happens when I’m not connected to it?
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!
EDIT: I think I get it now: It’s a system that’s automatically backing itself up to… itself essentially. You do this by creating redundancies within the RAID system (multiple SSDs). If that’s not it, please tell me.
So final question: can I use a RAID server NOT in RAID? As in can I put multiple hard drives in a server, then plug the server in to my Mac and have it appear as several individual drives? Almost like a HDD mounting system on steroids.
In: Technology
>EDIT: I think I get it now: It’s a system that’s automatically backing itself up to… itself essentially. You do this by creating redundancies within the RAID system (multiple SSDs). If that’s not it, please tell me.
RAID is not a backup. RAID is a form of data redundancy. While some people use a server that has a RAID disk array to backup data from their computers (such that the data now exists on their computer and on the RAID server in their basement or the back office) the RAID array by itself is not a backup.
What it is, and this is key, is a *redundant* system. If one disk dies, you don’t lose the data on it because that disk can be “rebuilt’ using the data spread across the other disks. Different forms of RAID support higher number of disk failures (at a higher “cost” of disk space being dedicated to the redundancy part).
>So final question: can I use a RAID server NOT in RAID? As in can I put multiple hard drives in a server, then plug the server in to my Mac and have it appear as several individual drives? Almost like a HDD mounting system on steroids.
Yes, you can absolutely skip using a server/computer capable of RAID configuration and simply use it in “JBOD” (Jumble of Disks) format where you’ve just got a bunch of disks in a computer that are network accessible.
That said, you need to start with what you want accomplish and work backwards.
If you don’t know what the goal in setting up this hardware is, then you’re going to end up wasting time and money.
What do you want out of this project? Do you want a home server that has lots of storage to backup files from multiple computers (and possibly serve up media like family photos and your movie and TV show collection)? Do you want a computer that has an incredibly high read/write speeds for some specific application you require like database management or rendering?
Configuring a device for RAID is a specific thing for specific tasks. If you have no idea what those tasks are and have no need for them, then there’s no real reason to bother with it.
For example if your only goal is to have a backup of important files and those files aren’t changing frequently… then just buying a $200 high capacity external hard drive and copying files over to it once a week will meet you needs without spending a ton of money on a multi-disk home server.
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