karlssongunvor

Q: How do I connect two hard drives to a computer?

I have two  G-Drive external hard drives, and I want to improve my backup by using both in case one crashes. Mine is a new iMac with the Yosemite operating system. I would also like to drag the files to be stored to the hard drive and not use Time Machine....... How do I connect them and do this?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Aug 19, 2015 12:22 PM

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Q: How do I connect two hard drives to a computer?

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  • by Kappy,

    Kappy Kappy Aug 19, 2015 12:31 PM in response to karlssongunvor
    Level 10 (271,057 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 19, 2015 12:31 PM in response to karlssongunvor

    Start by connecting them to a USB port on the rear. You will need to use two ports. One solution for you is to create a mirrored RAID using the RAID setup in Disk Utility.

     

    How to rebuild a software RAID mirror


    RAID Basics

     

    For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs.  Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:

     

    RAID Tutorial

    RAID Array and Server

    Hardware and Service Comparison

     

    Hardware or Software RAID?

     

    RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?

     

    RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.

     

    RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.

     

    Pros and cons

     

    Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.

     

    For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Aug 20, 2015 2:31 AM in response to karlssongunvor
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Aug 20, 2015 2:31 AM in response to karlssongunvor

    Rather than moving things by hand for your backups, I suggest that you examine Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! for your backup needs. I use the former and you can basically set it up to backup everything or only selected items. Doing this manually is futile exercise, IMO.

     

    27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10.4), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Aug 20, 2015 1:48 PM in response to karlssongunvor
    Level 9 (71,294 points)
    iTunes
    Aug 20, 2015 1:48 PM in response to karlssongunvor