Best backup solution for home

Question

After losing 4 supposedly decent quality internal HDs in 4 years I have decided that full mirroring of my HD is necessary on the next PC I buy (which will be purchased soon). What is the best way to do this?

Should I go for a RAID setup or use an application like Acronis True Image?

I think RAID updates the mirror image constantly whereas an application like Acronis True Image does it intermittently (ie when you choose to do it). Is this true?

If RAID does it on the fly does this slow your system down? I do video editing and semi pro sound production.

Which method makes for the easiest recovery of the disk image to get you off and running when you replace the dead HD?

What effect does updating your motherboard or CPU have on the whole deal?

Edit:
Should I implement RAID via a Windows GUI or the via the BIOS GUI?

I think RAID 1 is what I need. Do you agree?

Answer 1

RAID (in a mirror configuration) exists solely to mitigate the risk of losing data due to HDD failure. It is not a backup solution in the sense that you'll be able to find a file you accidentally deleted.

It does not require maintenance, as it silently keeps your HDDs synchronized in the background. It has no noticeable (if any) effect on your read/write operations.

The nice thing about it is that in case of HDD failure, you can recover with minimal hassle. Take out the bad drive, put in a new one, let the RAID controller do its thing and you're ready to pickup where you left.

There are some things you should know about it though. First, if you take one of the HDDs out and use it elsewhere (for example in a HDD case), your system will have to re-synchronize your HDDs when you put it back, even if you didn't write anything on it. That's because OSes write to HDDs in the background (updating file access times etc).

Another thing is that if you want to put your operating system on a RAID configuration (as opposed to just some logical partition), you'll need to reinstall. At least when using windows. Don't know about linux, but I assume it's the same there. You'll need to provide the RAID drivers at the beginning of the installation so the OS will know to utilize the RAID controller.

Know that RAID will not protect you if something really bad happens to your PC. If for example your PSU decided to blow up and take the rest of the electronics with it you could lose ALL your HDDs and your data with them.

Applications like Acronis on the other hand are meant for backup. You need to manually run them, or at least set them to run automatically. If your drive dies you will lose everything since the last backup.

On the plus side you can use these to backup to an external drive that's usally offline. That way even if something really bad happens (lightning strike) your data are safe in your external disk.

As far as recovery goes Acronis at least is pretty easy to use. You can boot up with the CD, tell it to restore the image it took and you're ready.

Upgrading M/B or CPU has no effect on your backup solutions. If you're using RAID, just make sure the new mobo has a RAID controller. Other than that it's a matter of having to reinstall your OS for a new motherboard.

All in all if you have the money why don't you go for both RAID and a backup program and cover all the bases?

Answer 2

Get yourself a Windows Home Server or build yourself one with any spare hardware you have collecting dust. You can run regularly scheduled backups on all connected computers from WHS.

Answer 3

Manos was very thorough at explaining the difference between imaging and RAID configuration. I'll take a moment to address the RAID-specific options available to you.

RAID exists in two approachs:

Software RAID. Software RAID leans on the operating system to pull the strings. It will impose a tax on your CPU. This is fairly minimal in modern PCs. It's widely available on many modern motherboards. See the motherboard specifications for details. In particular, the Intel Core2 Duo/Quad, i5, and i7 compatible motherboards have a chip series called the ICHxr where 'x' is 7 through 10. Any of these chips support a fantastic RAID solution called Intel Matrix RAID. More on this later.

Hardware RAID. Hardware RAID utilizes a dedicated piece of equipment to handle the mirroring. It will not utilize your CPU any more than a lone disk would. Hardware RAID typically supports more RAID configurations. More on this later. However, hardware RAID can become very expensive.

Which one is for me? For the consumer market, this is almost invariably going to be Software RAID. Cost is the main reason, here: Software RAID imposes a smaller startup cost and may be a smaller recovery cost in the event of hardware failure.

What if I replace my Motherboard? My CPU? The CPU will have no bearing on either software or hardware RAID solutions. In event of software RAID using the onboard controller (such as ICH10r), as long as you perform a like-4-like exchange, it'll be problem-free. Also, the ICH series chips are backwards compatible. Downgrading to an ICH7r later will allow you to keep your RAID intact.

Under the hood. Keep in mind that the RAID controller disguises itself as a hard disk: In otherwords, the operating system doesn't see 2 disks configured in such and such way... It sees a single hard disk; what happens under the hood is soley up to the RAID controller.

Types of RAID. Under the hood, the RAID controller may be configured in to a variety of types, called levels. Different levels offer a blend of performance and data-safety. I'll briefly cover the levels available to most software solutions, and why you might want them.

RAID 0: Striping array. Files are sliced up in to smaller chunks and divided amongst the disks in the array, reducing the amount of mechanical work required. +Read/Write performance. Can survive 0 disk losses before information is lost.

RAID 1: Mirroring Array. Files are duplicated amongst disks in the array, increasing mechanical work but giving "real-time" data-safety. -Read/Write performance. Can surive n-1 disk losses, where 'n' is the number of disks in the array.

RAID 5: Striping with distributed parity. Like RAID 0, files are split for performance gains. In addition, special parity data is spread across all the disks in the array which allows recovery in the event of a single disk failure. Requires no less than three disks. +Read/Write performance. Can survive 1 disk loss with severe performance penalties until the disk is replaced.

RAID 10/01: Combines RAID 0 with RAID 1 for the best of both worlds. Downside? Requires at least four disks. Can survive a single disk loss without any appreciable performance penalty prior to replacement. A second loss will result in data loss.

Intel Matrix RAID. I'll cover this briefly. Matrix RAID is available on any motherboard which has an ICH7r, 8r, 9r, or 10r chipset. Most motherboards which socket the Core2 Duo, Core2 Quad, i5, or i7 CPUs will have one of these chipsets. Matrix RAID is different from other software RAIDs in the fact that it is no longer mandatory to use an entire disk volume in a RAID. Instead, you may use only a portion, pre-defined, for a particular RAID.

Why is this important? Say you have 2x 1.0TB disks. You may take the first 50 GB of each and place them in RAID 0 for a fast operating system and use the remaining ~900 GB in RAID 1 for data safety.

Unless you're a real performance hound, this is probably not going to make much of an impact for you. Keep it simple and stick to entire disk volumes.

Answer 4

I will suggest you a little bit other thing:

use iSCSI SAN solution StarWind. It will utilize your existing network, and there are such backup functions as mirroring, replication, CDP, even active-active High Availability with automated failback.

Answer 5

Rebit is wonderfully good for home backups. Install the software, plug in an external drive, and you can stop thinking about backups. It was good enough for me to buy three copies, and I swear I have no financial interest in the company at all.

Answer 6

Two configurations I have used. First one:
1 36 GB Raptor (10k rpm) os/app drive
2 250 GB drives in RAID 1 (mirror) for data
1 250 GB external backup drive (backed up with Acronis weekly)
I left enough free space on the 250 GB to store an image of the OS drive, so I really had just over 200 GB of space to use on the mirror.

Next config was this:
2 320 GB drives in RAID 1 for os/apps/data
1 320 GB external (eSATA) drive backed up with Vista regularly
With optional addition for video processing:
2 74 GB Raptor drives in RAID 0 (striped)
You could use just one Raptor for your video processing, but a stripe would save you some time if you do it a lot. Just don't store anything on a striped set that you don't want to lose.

I set up the mirror with the on-board (Gigabyte) RAID BIOS, then installed Vista and did not need any additional drivers like I did with XP. The RAID is then managed with the Intel Storage Matrix Console, where I have watched it rebuild a volume before. You could get a dedicated RAID controller, but I've been fine with the motherboard controllers and don't even know how much a controller would cost. Drives are cheap, and based on my computing habits and practices, I am much more concerned about a physical drive failure than I am with getting a virus or something.

You would need to break the RAID array and use disk imaging software if you upgrade your motherboard. Changing the CPU shouldn't affect it at all. I do not perceive any slowdown with my system using RAID, and even if there was a slight slowdown I would still use it. I buy drives 3 at the same time, getting as much space as I can before a big price jump. You need 2 of the same for RAID and I use the other one for backup. If one RAID drive fails you can get a new backup drive and use the old backup drive to rebuild the mirror.