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
For most purposes, a RAID array is functionally identical to a single drive. The advantage RAID has over a backup is that it *is* it’s own backup. This leaves you with less overhead earmarked for redundancy, and therefore more storage space. All drives need to have the same capacity, although it may be possible to use differing drive sizes and just use portions of each equivalent to the smallest drive.
Edit” Spelling, Clarifiction
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