RAID for Dummies(or dummy)

[jasong]

I'm thinking about investing in a couple(or more) hard drives, and I want to implement RAID, if possible. Now, I know almost nothing about the technology, except about 1.5 hours of off and on reading of information.

I'm not sure how many hard drives to buy. I want to use parity to protect the data, and have another hard drive that's connected and ready to step in if a drive fails, this last one wouldn't have any data on it at first.

Should I figure out what RAID level I want to use, buy the drives, and educate myself about what to do as their being shipped in the mail? Or is there stuff I need to know before I decide? I'm thinking the two things I know I want to get atm are Firewire(the website said it should use a Oxford 911 chipset, which I've never heard of) and I'm going to use NTFS.

I've still gotta study the RAID level infomation to see how I want to start out with the drives. If it's possible to upgrade mirroring to another standard(I'm still trying to memorize the numbers), I might just start with two drives.

Anything anybody wants to warn me about?

[IronBits]

Read all the freely available articles you can find on the internet so you can become a guru, then feel free to come back and tell us your tall stories.
Google is your friend.

[PCZ]

Yes

1: Don't come on here crying when you have lost all your data.
2: Refer to 1

[LAURENU2]

Yes

1: Don't come on here crying when you have lost all your data.
2: Refer to 1

jasong don't listen to PCZ :thumbs:
I could alway use a good laugh:lmao:
So go forth jasong and mess-up:rotfl:

[em99010pepe]

So go forth jasong and mess-up:rotfl:

We really like to learn from each other mess!

[jasong]

Yes

1: Don't come on here crying when you have lost all your data.
2: Refer to 1
Does #1 assume I AM or AM NOT going to try to attempt RAID?

[LAURENU2]

Does #1 assume I AM or AM NOT going to try to attempt RAID?
Yes one of the options you gave
and No to the other:bang:

[IronBits]

Does #1 assume I AM or AM NOT going to try to attempt RAID? It assumes nothing, if/when you fire up a Raid system and lose all your data... don't come back here :cry: - however; feel free to tell us your horror stories as you go along. :D

[jasong]

I apologize if this is a silly question. I've tried to picture it in my head, but I failed.

If you have a RAID array(not sure if I'm using the term correctly) set up, and you want to expand to 1 or more additional hard drives, is it possible to do without destroying the starting array? If the answer is,"It depends on your initial and ending configuration," then I'm going to add to that:Initial setup is two mirrored drives, going to 3 to 1 parity on 3 drives, then later going to 4 to 1 parity on 4 drives.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

The answer Jason is quite simply probably yes as your adding a drive and using mirrored parity as the parity tables aren't all in the one place and mirroring requires an even number of drives anyway.
So 2 drives mirrored parity (not much pointed in parity at this point) to 4 drives mirrored the 4 drives mirrored parity would probably work with the minimum of rebuild.

[jasong]

Actually, gopher, I think you misunderstood me. While this imaginary(at the moment) array would start out mirrored, as I added drives, only one drive would be the parity drive. So, at first it would be mirrored, and then it would be one drive doing parity for two, and then later, maybe one drive doing parity for three.

[LAURENU2]

you need to do some READING on Raids and the SUN

[maefly]

AFAIK, once you set up a RAID, that's it. You cannot change it without re-formatting all the drives with another configuration.