Carson S wrote:
What is your experience with them? Have you noticed a decrease in performance when processing because the drives are mirroring?

A lot will be dependent upon whether you using hardware or software for the control of the raid and the access speed (write / write) of the drives.  I personally prefer hardware control of the RAID 1 as I have found it to work much better in the applications that I have used it in.

What I like about RAID 1 is the disk mirroring or duplexing as it is also called, in that any read request can be handled by any drive in the set thereby decreasing access times and improving performance. The speed of the read / write operations is limited to the speed of the slowest dive in the set so I always use the exact same drive in my sets.

I think the most important advantage of using RAID 1, is that in the case of a drive failure, the array or set of drives continue to function as long as at least one drive in the array is still operating.

I am getting ready to purchase the Western Digital My Book Duo 8TB to store my images on my home network:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-dual-drive-h … KRXT2SFHKX

I already own two each 4TB  Western Digital My Book external drives.  Once every a week, I will copy all my data to one of these drives and take it off site for storage.  I will be rotating the 2 drives being stored off site as well.

J-PhotoArt wrote:

A lot will be dependent upon whether you using hardware or software for the control of the raid and the access speed (write / write) of the drives.  I personally prefer hardware control of the RAID 1 as I have found it to work much better in the applications that I have used it in.

What I like about RAID 1 is the disk mirroring or duplexing as it is also called, in that any read request can be handled by any drive in the set thereby decreasing access times and improving performance. The speed of the read / write operations is limited to the speed of the slowest dive in the set so I always use the exact same drive in my sets.

I think the most important advantage of using RAID 1, is that in the case of a drive failure, the array or set of drives continue to function as long as at least one drive in the array is still operating.

I am getting ready to purchase the Western Digital My Book Duo 8TB to store my images on my home network:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-dual-drive-h … KRXT2SFHKX

I already own two each 4TB  Western Digital My Book external drives.  Once every a week, I will copy all my data to one of these drives and take it off site for storage.  I will be rotating the 2 drives being stored off site as well.

That is exactly the same situation I am currently in, which led me to consider the My Book Duo as well

Shot By Adam wrote:
I'm running a RAID 1 system with 4TB drives via USB 3.0 and it runs great. I see no significant slow-down at all when processing images due to drive speed issues. It's a nice, easy way to make sure everything is always backed up...cheap too!

Cool! Thanks, Adam

ontherocks wrote:
we just bought a WD MyCloud Mirror at best buy which has 2 2TB drives in raid 1 configuration. so far it seems like a nice unit. you can view the temperature among other things. i bought the extended warranty because in the past i've had trouble with the raid controller dying on units like this.

The controller dying is a very disturbing failure mode.  When that happened, did the hard disks get damaged?  Were you able to recover the data?

Managing Light wrote:
The controller dying is a very disturbing failure mode.  When that happened, did the hard disks get damaged?  Were you able to recover the data?

ontherocks wrote:
people might think RAID is bulletproof but not if it's the controller that fails (versus one of the drives). so i think regular backups are still a good idea even if you have mirrored raid.

I agree entirely.

For some years, I used a RAID 1 set-up, thinking that I was properly protected, until I discovered that one disc, while still perfectly sound, had stopped mirroring several months earlier.

These days, I rely on Time Machine for hourly back-ups, Super Duper for 12-hourly back-ups (to two separate drives, each drive being updated once a day), and also back-up each shoot to blu-ray discs.  That may sound like overkill, but, without going into the horror stories that have happened to me over the last 20 years, I can assure you that it is just enough to do the job.

dmtxphoto wrote:
Raid 1 is for high availability in case of drive failure, not human error, viruses etc.  use a backup program to copy to a second location

fixedit4ya
there are many different types of RAID and as many different implementations of each.  the concept was invented with the cost of storing data was much higher (relatively) and the possibility of failure much more prevalent.  things still fail but its much more likely that you replace your server  or upgrade to a larger disk before your drive fails. 
I do an incremental backup the night after every shoot or editing sesh.  I dont delete off the card until data has been stored on the drive and backed up twice (as a minimum).  theres a RAID controller on the mobo for my desktop. I dont use it.  id rather use drives as discrete separate physical devices that can be taken offline or offsite as required.

Rob Photosby wrote:
These days, I rely on Time Machine for hourly back-ups, Super Duper for 12-hourly back-ups (to two separate drives, each drive being updated once a day), and also back-up each shoot to blu-ray discs.  That may sound like overkill, but, without going into the horror stories that have happened to me over the last 20 years, I can assure you that it is just enough to do the job.