My idea for a new RAID configuration standard

[jasong]

I'm not really familiar with RAID, having never used it, so if this idea has already been explored then, please, be kind. :)

The problem I see with RAID configurations today is that every hard drive has to be the same size, or space is wasted. I think it would be great if a computer could use it's spare processing power to look at each hard drive and come up with a method that assigns as much available space as possible, and makes sure all information gets duplicated on at least two drives, including the information about where everything is located. If you had two drives that were different sizes, obviously space would be wasted, but as more drives were added there'd be more and more options. You could even attach extra drives that would simply tell their size, get formatted, and power down until, sometime down the road, a drive fails. Then information would automatically get passed along.

One could add rules saying that certain files should go on faster drives, and that the backing up of data doesn't need to happen in real time.

What do you guys think?

[jasong]

And now it's in Tiger Direct, about 2.5 months later.

Click here. (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=3143432&sku=D162-1000)

[Bok]

But it's NOT RAID as far as I can tell.. if a drive fails you'd lose the data. It's no different than just attaching 4 drives in your PC..

Bok

[Sleepsalot]

Bok is right this is not a raid storage it is just an add as you need it enclosure it has nothing to with raid.
Wayne


But it's NOT RAID as far as I can tell.. if a drive fails you'd lose the data. It's no different than just attaching 4 drives in your PC..

Bok

[jasong]

I assumed when I saw it, it was an improvement on RAID(since you could mix-and-match) What do you make of the following? I'm not sure how to interpret this sentence:

Knows where your data is stored on the disks so Drobo knows the most effective way to protect your data and repair itself in case of a disk failure or data corruption.
The whole repairing itself bit might indicate backing up the data on more than one drive, but it's very vague.

I really don't know what to think.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

it's probably a JBOD unit since it don't need all the drives the same..
RAID spec is erm well all set-up to deal with different size drives as long as there are hmm let me see 6 raid specifications and some of them you can mix n match, of course the most common 2 are RAID-0 & RAID-1 - being striping and mirroring, since these are the easiest generally to implement the others if memory serves me correctly are similar in nature yet different. RAID is more fault tolerant the more drives you aid - although saying that a MASSIVE RAID No-No is to have your "Windows" drive and your data drives in the same raid array not good if a drive goes bye-bye as it's nothing to recover too :bang: Been there had that happen - I didn't set it up.... best idea is 4 drives of similar size - RAID 1 / 0'd that is striped across 2 of the drives and the other 2 mirror the first so you have the fault tolerence of RAID 0 with the instant recovery of RAID 1. Okay so you only have 500gb if you fit 4 x 250Gb but at least if 1 fails you've not lost anything and it tends to tell you right away .... I'd google "RAID" if I was you jason and read..
Oh my that is quite a long post for me, lol.

[jasong]

Someone on IRC gave me a Wikipedia link, so I'm a little better educated. I still think that having to buy identical drives is a bit of a hindrance, and being able to mix and match would offer more choices.

That Drobo page really bugs me, I hope Tiger Direct takes the time to clear up the ambiguity.

[jasong]

Okay, I watched the video in the link I provided above, and I'm 99% sure Drobo is precisely the idea I came up with in the first post.

Drobo is an improvement on RAID, in that you can mix and match drive capacities. It is most definitely NOT JBOD(Just a Bunch Of Disks)

[birdman2584]

Yeah, That looks like a pretty neat gadget for those of us who dont know how to set up a RAID system or anything. Too bad it costs $500...Good find Jasong.

[Digital Parasite]

ArsTechnica looks at this Drobo product here:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/storage-robot-at-your-service-a-review-of-the-drobo.ars

It does not use "RAID" but it does provided protected storage so you can have drive failures and still recover.

[jasong]

It's gotten three reviews on Newegg, all of them are what I'd consider negative reviews.

I got curious when one reviewer mentioned a "Time Machine," apparently something attempting to get the same market as the Drobo. Edit: It turns out to be a Mac feature.

[meep]

Interesting.

Nice concept, but looking at the benchmarks it is slow, which is to be expected because I expect it is just duplicating writes using a shadow copy equivalent... interesting that it needs an agent installed, i wouldn't bet against the duplicated writes actually taking place on the desktop.

It falls down on price and performance... if you have different sized drives which due to the smallest drive being significantly smaller than the largest, which attracts you to this product as you have a high level of wastage, then for $500 you can just replace them. Then you can have 4 large drives in R5, internal in your chassis and which will run faster, use a hardware raid ctlr and wizz along.

[jasong]

It falls down on price and performance... if you have different sized drives which due to the smallest drive being significantly smaller than the largest, which attracts you to this product as you have a high level of wastage, then for $500 you can just replace them. Then you can have 4 large drives in R5, internal in your chassis and which will run faster, use a hardware raid ctlr and wizz along.
I totally agree there. This company should've just made software, and then a website that taught people good ways to stack external drives.