Raid 1: 2x 500 Gb External Usb Drives On Laptop

[JetsetBkk]

I have a large amount of data - about 300+ GB of music, movies, photographs, documents - that I used to keep on a couple of external USB HDDs attached to my laptop.

I used to make regular DVD backups of important files, but it's very time consuming and I'd rather backup to another HDD. Also, the larger of the two HDDs has got some bad sectors on it that I can't fix, so I wanted to change it.

So I bought two 500 GB external USB SATA HDDs. I bought two of them with the idea of using the second one as a backup.

At first I was just going to do regular copies from one drive to the other using, e.g. robocopy or similar utility. Then I was reminded about RAID 1 and it seems to be what I need.

My questions are - does anyone have experience/knowledge of:

1. an external USB hardware RAID 1 controller?

2. a software USB RAID 1 utility?

3. pros and cons of the above.

I'm tempted to go the hardware controller route as it would take some of the load off the computer, but I haven't found one that's external and USB connected.

Or, would it be better, simpler to do this without resorting to RAID - just a normal backup utility?

Cheers, JSbkk.

[Veazer]

1) Yes, you can get cases like this or this.

2) Windows server can do it without any additional software, but XP would require some sort of third party solution and I haven't used them, only hardware. But....

3) You probably don't want a full time mirror like RAID provides. There are some consequences of RAID to consider. Every action is mirrored instantly, including mistakes and malware caused problems. If you accidently delete a folder of important data and realize after it's too late to recover, then you've also done the same on the mirrored drive. The same goes for something caused by viruses, etc. Personally, I would opt for a powerful folder sync app like Super Flexible File Synchronizer. I've worked with a few different folder sync apps and it is my favorite by far.

If your laptop has an express card slot, you might consider an external case that offers an eSATA connection. You can get a SATA card and have an extremely fast connection to your drives, much better than USB or Firewire.

Good luck!

[JetsetBkk]

Thanks for the info Veazer.

That's a very good point you make - no. 3) . I certainly don't want to accidentally lose an important file from both drives, so I think you're right: probably better to forget about RAID and go for a regular backup procedure.

I'll have a look at "Super Flexible File Synchronizer" - thanks for the tip.

I don't think my PC Card slot is "express" - it's simply called a "Type II PC card slot". Having said that, I haven't had any problems playing videos or music files over the USB link, but it would certainly speed up the backup process.

[mac.wheeler]

Thanks for the info Veazer.

That's a very good point you make - no. 3) . I certainly don't want to accidentally lose an important file from both drives, so I think you're right: probably better to forget about RAID and go for a regular backup procedure.

I'll have a look at "Super Flexible File Synchronizer" - thanks for the tip.

I don't think my PC Card slot is "express" - it's simply called a "Type II PC card slot". Having said that, I haven't had any problems playing videos or music files over the USB link, but it would certainly speed up the backup process.

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.php

I've used it for years to keep a mirror of the 'my documents' folder on a seperate drive, it works very well and can mirror entire drives if needed.

[astral]

I have 2 300Gb disks on USB2.

No 1 is the master copy.

No 2 is the backup.

I use FileSync http://www.fileware.com/ to keep the copies in sync.

[nikster]

I don't think my PC Card slot is "express" - it's simply called a "Type II PC card slot". Having said that, I haven't had any problems playing videos or music files over the USB link, but it would certainly speed up the backup process.

You can get a PC card with eSata connection. You need the card, and two boxes that both support eSata. It will be way faster than the creaky USB bus, but more expensive.

I always have a system monitor running that shows me the current read/write speed of all HDs - I have never seen USB go over 20MB/s, and usually it's 10 or 12. On both PC and Mac. The hard disk, on the other hand, could easily do 50, 60, or 70 MB/s. eSata would enable the HD to run at full speed.

Firewire is faster than USB as well, but not by that much and it's kind of dying out now that they made the new Firewire connectors incompatible to the old ones.

If you want a free sync solution and are command-line minded you should check out rsync. It's part of cygwin, but there's also standalone packages for Windows. rsync is an age old unix tool that syncs two folders - it can do it over the network but also locally, it only copies changed files, and you can define elaborate exclusions so you don't sync internet caches etc. It's admittedly pretty technical though.

[JetsetBkk]

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.php

I've used it for years to keep a mirror of the 'my documents' folder on a seperate drive, it works very well and can mirror entire drives if needed.

That one is very interesting - it can actually do a binary comparison of files with Unicode characters in their file names, such as Thai music mp3s with Thai file names. None of my other file sync/compare tools can do that.

[JetsetBkk]

I use FileSync http://www.fileware.com/ to keep the copies in sync.

If you want a free sync solution and are command-line minded you should check out rsync. It's part of cygwin, but there's also standalone packages for Windows. rsync is an age old unix tool that syncs two folders - it can do it over the network but also locally, it only copies changed files, and you can define elaborate exclusions so you don't sync internet caches etc. It's admittedly pretty technical though.

I've downloaded FileSync, CSync (cmd line equivalent) and rsync. I'm more than comfortable with command/batch files and actually enjoy writing them, so I'm going to be busy over the next few days seeing which of these tools best suits my needs.

Thanks for all the tips.

[mac.wheeler]

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.php

I've used it for years to keep a mirror of the 'my documents' folder on a seperate drive, it works very well and can mirror entire drives if needed.

That one is very interesting - it can actually do a binary comparison of files with Unicode characters in their file names, such as Thai music mp3s with Thai file names. None of my other file sync/compare tools can do that.

Another nice thing about it is that it's running as a device driver, no annoying client application sitting in your taskbar or additional entry in the startup folder. I've used it for a long time and it's up there in my top 3 life saving applications list.