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Zkuq on 04 July 2016
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Ganoncrotch said:
Zkuq said:

Ah, excellent points. Thanks!

That sounds pretty good for protecting against data loss in hardware failure situations. I use an external HDD for all my valuable/storable data though (e.g. music, documents), so I'm not sure how RAID would work with that. I also imagine it's a lot less stressful for the disk if it's there for storage purposes only without need for constant reading and writing, so I would think it's going to last way longer than an internal disk. Also, these days if I want a backup solution, it had better protect me against randomware as well, and RAID doesn't do that, does it?

If you mean ransomware [1] then no, if you have any drives on an effected pc, even if they are network mapped drives then some of the fuckers like kryptolocker and such will absolutely mangle all of your files. A raid offers zero protection from these it's basically just a harddrive to the PC and everything that allows can happen the only thing it does is in a raid 5 scenario it basically spreads the data over the 3 drives in a way that one of the 3 drives contains just a marker which can be used to restore the other drives info if lost, so over all 3 drives if you pull one drive out the information is all technically still there so one drive can physically die and you lose zero files

As for a removable drive getting less wear and tear it's true if you don't use that drive it will be saved from some of that, but at the same time if it's out in the open it has a chance to get effected by other things like just being knocked off a ledge or vibrations on a desk which will take a toll on the hardware too. [2] at the end of the day, the only way you can save your data absolutely is to back it up somehow on 2 devices, then if one fails, make a new backup. [3]

[1] Of all the typos I could make, I just had to make the one that still sounds like a word... Yes, I meant ransomware (I wrote 'randomware' first this time too). And sounds like what I thought, thanks for confirmation!

[2] Luckily mine is on the floor, under some wires next to the wall so I can't accidentally step on it.

[3] I know. That's why I'm a bit lazy with that. Manual backups are no fun, and it still requires another device. I have one, but it's capacity is smaller than the one's I have now and it requires external power. Cloud backups are always another option too, but it costs money, and I'm pretty sure that to back up a 2 TB drive, it's going to be a lot of money. I'm sure once I'm done with my studies and get a job, I'll also get some backup storage but until then, I'm just hoping I have enough luck. At least I don't have anything super important so losing everything shouldn't be catastrophic.