I am replacing an old external hard drive used as my Time Machine. I am considering buying a RAID drive. Forgetting price, is this a smart choice? i have an iMac (2013 vintage).
iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)
It is always a good idea to have redundant backups for any computer systems.
There are few options:
1. Mac can have multiple Time Machines -- therefore, you have to manually backup each drive. I do not know if any maximal numbers Mac OS can take -- as far as I know, I did push up to 3 Time Machines without any problem.
2. RAID 1 would be one of the cheapest RAID (cheaper than 5 10 etc) - however, I have few suggestions:
a. Hardware RAID vs. Software controller RAID:
I bought a cheap Sabio software controller RAID case, there was no software for MacOS - I had to use Windows-PC to format/build the RAID 1, then transfer to Mac to partition into GUID. The Sabio can be turned on and "ready to go" as it is connected to Mac Mini via Firewire 800 "without the need to be on before attaching to Mac" Since Sabio is software controlled, I can not just remove one of the drives, in hope I can access the data directly (it is "hot swappable" if you need to rebuild when one drive fails) . This is a really downside of this type because I ran into problem with one of this software controlled RAID enclosures (the enclosure died after 1 year) and I lost all the data on them.
Hardware RAID: my prefer RAID 1 - My San Digital enlosure gives me some peace of mind since it "literally" mirrors both drives and I can access either single drive's data in the event of enclosure failure. The downside of this particular Hardware RAID is -- I need to turn on the RAID first, wait for 3-4 seconds before I can attach to Mac -- otherwise, Mac will give me a notice "drive can not be recognized : initialize?" message.
b. RAID enclosure might have lower-limit in each drive capacity specs (RAID enclosures development is slower than single drive capacity as single drives are more popular in the market). You might find difficult to find RAID enclosures to take 4T x 2 but can find USB drive with bigger capacity -- it really depends on your need.
Just my 2 cents
Good luck
Sam
It is always a good idea to have redundant backups for any computer systems.
There are few options:
1. Mac can have multiple Time Machines -- therefore, you have to manually backup each drive. I do not know if any maximal numbers Mac OS can take -- as far as I know, I did push up to 3 Time Machines without any problem.
2. RAID 1 would be one of the cheapest RAID (cheaper than 5 10 etc) - however, I have few suggestions:
a. Hardware RAID vs. Software controller RAID:
I bought a cheap Sabio software controller RAID case, there was no software for MacOS - I had to use Windows-PC to format/build the RAID 1, then transfer to Mac to partition into GUID. The Sabio can be turned on and "ready to go" as it is connected to Mac Mini via Firewire 800 "without the need to be on before attaching to Mac" Since Sabio is software controlled, I can not just remove one of the drives, in hope I can access the data directly (it is "hot swappable" if you need to rebuild when one drive fails) . This is a really downside of this type because I ran into problem with one of this software controlled RAID enclosures (the enclosure died after 1 year) and I lost all the data on them.
Hardware RAID: my prefer RAID 1 - My San Digital enlosure gives me some peace of mind since it "literally" mirrors both drives and I can access either single drive's data in the event of enclosure failure. The downside of this particular Hardware RAID is -- I need to turn on the RAID first, wait for 3-4 seconds before I can attach to Mac -- otherwise, Mac will give me a notice "drive can not be recognized : initialize?" message.
b. RAID enclosure might have lower-limit in each drive capacity specs (RAID enclosures development is slower than single drive capacity as single drives are more popular in the market). You might find difficult to find RAID enclosures to take 4T x 2 but can find USB drive with bigger capacity -- it really depends on your need.
Just my 2 cents
Good luck
Sam
raid can be many things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
using raid0 as backup is not that safe because just 1 of the discs in the array has to die before all data is gone
raid1 would be safer but raid1 is not faster in terms of speed then a single drive
Is a RAID external hard drive a good choice for Time Machine Backup drive?
