Thanks Brit, Yeah maybe! It was 5.30 am on a cold morning. That's nice and clear. Cheers,Geoff ----- Original Message ----- From: "SciArt-L Discussion List-for Natural Science Illustration-" To: Cc: Sent:Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:37:38 -0400 Subject:Re: [SCIART] external hard drives Geoff, I think you may still have been asleep when typing this. Here is a good explanation of RAID types: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/ RAID 0: Live Fast and Dangerous. RAID 1: Duplicate Disks (2 disk minimum) RAID 5: Better reduncancy, lose a drive and still keep going. Slower writes faster reads. (3 disk minimum) RAID 10: More bullet proof version of RAID 5 (4 disk minimum) Britt On 6/19/13 4:30 PM, Geoff Thompson wrote: > Hi All, > > I just woke up and wanted to add a little. These cheaper drives sound like what Linda needs for her > client but cheap single ones are not the best for archival storage. > > For one they will not be server-grade quality and for another they are not Raid protected. > > It’s taken me a while to understand how Raid works and I don’t fully understand it. The simplest is > Raid Zero where two hard drives work in sync. That way if one fails you pull it out and replace it > and away you go. The trouble is if it starts to corrupt data before it fully fails the corruption > will be copied onto the good drive > > Raid 1 apparently is safer with two discs but slower. As the numbers go up to Raid 10 the safer the > system gets. So the 4-bay or 5-bay Raid set ups are much safer but of course more expensive. > > However when you get 16 TB of server grade storage for $1,550 RRP with 4 disc Raid, USB 3 & > Firewire, it suddenly looks like a better deal for long-term storage. > > http://www.lacie.com/products/ > > http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=210 > > The LaCie seem to be better value for the price when you get into Raid protection options. > > Hope that helps, > > Geoff Need to leave or subscribe to the Sciart-L listserv? Follow the instructions at http://www.gnsi.org/resources/reviews/gnsi-sciart-l-listserv ------------------------- Email sent using Optus Webmail Need to leave or subscribe to the Sciart-L listserv? Follow the instructions at http://www.gnsi.org/resources/reviews/gnsi-sciart-l-listserv