Cheapest external RAID drive

[Yannick Hagman]

I'm afraid of data-loss. Enlighten me please, is this possible for about 250$ to buy a RAID?

Are there any?

[rod bradley]

How big a raid -- and what sort, what platform, do you need it protected, how much speed do you need, what kind of throughput? Internal or external? Are you computer savvy so you can do it yourself, or... do you need ready made. Lots of questions, I know, but all things that have to be known before smart advice can be given.

You can make a "raid" consisting of two disks using software for that amount, but that's about all.

Addonics has the least expensive raid enclosures and cards I know of -- these are eSata boxes of various sorts. They work. But $250 for card and enclosure is pretty minimal. But can be done. Then you have to pay for the drives.

But then you're in Europe, so that doesn't do you much good unless you have friends here and they go back and forth.

[Roberto Lequeux]

The 3ware Sidecar is the only one good one that ever got so low, but it isn't the best either. It only has 4 bays though. Unfortunately the heavy discount seems to be over now.

There are some very affordable Dell RAID cards on Ebay for about $100. They need some extra cooling for stability, and they aren't blazing fast, but they would work for an internal RAID-5 that should be fast enough. But with the minimum of three drives it would still be more than $250. Three 1TB drives would hold 1.6TB protected. 1.5TB drives would hold 2.5TB. For speed you might want to use more than three drives, and stay away from using them close to full capacity.

You can get a WD 2TB drive for about that much, and use it in RAID-1 configuration. You would get about 830GB total space have two external copies. You certainly wouldn't want to edit with it though as it would be way too slow.

[Yannick Hagman]

Hi. It needs to be external. Firewire 800. Mac OSX. No e-sata on my Mac.

What about:
http://www.wdc.com/de/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410
?

[Roberto Lequeux]

Hi. It needs to be external. Firewire 800. Mac OSX. No e-sata on my Mac.

What about:
http://www.wdc.com/de/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410
?

I don't know...


You can get a WD 2TB drive for about that much, and use it in RAID-1 configuration. You would get about 830GB total space have two external copies. You certainly wouldn't want to edit with it though as it would be way too slow.

: )

I have their 1TB version... keep in mind, it is SLOW! But if you use it for archiving it will do the trick. Just make sure to set it up as RAID-1 so you get two copies of your footage. You should have about 840GB worth of actual capacity.

[Roberto Lequeux]

Hi. It needs to be external. Firewire 800. Mac OSX. No e-sata on my Mac.

What about:
http://www.wdc.com/de/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410
?

I don't know...


You can get a WD 2TB drive for about that much, and use it in RAID-1 configuration. You would get about 830GB total space have two external copies. You certainly wouldn't want to edit with it though as it would be way too slow.

: )

I have their 1TB version... keep in mind, it is SLOW! But if you use it for archiving it will do the trick. Just make sure to set it up as RAID-1 so you get two copies of your footage. You should have about 840GB worth of actual capacity.

Also, their cooling is backwards, as in a morron designed it with the fan blowing against a surface with just a few 2mm x 4mm holes... Keep that in mind if you use it in direct sun light on a hot day. I opened and modified mine by removing unnecessary brackets and mounting the fan in a different way, it got quieter and the fan runs less often.

[Yannick Hagman]

Hehe. You meant that too then. I better wait till they come out with the next revision then. I own their non RAID Mybook Studio. It works with FCP for me, but somehow doesn't recognize if the computer is on or off. Funny engineering.

[Roberto Lequeux]

You can trust them, they are just not the smartest designs that's all. Mine also seems to stay on unless I unplug it. So I just plug it in only while I need it, which is only for file transfers for back up.