Any Hard drives bigger than 300gb?

[Bizkitkid2001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArcticFox

Don't worry, we can fix that:

#5: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...131-310&depa=0

oooohhh yeah, i can get a burner. I just wish Media prices would come down. But that would be cheaper in the beginning than a hard drive. Plus, the NEC 8x Burner is only $69, and with a simple bios hack, it can do dual layer discs as well (As mentioned on The Sreen Savers, of course a TechTV show, not a crap G4 show with no Tech info at all)

[ArcticFox]

Yeah, the media prices are killer. For example:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...150-106&depa=0

That's almost double the price of a Lite-On burner.

[VHockey86]

Wow... i cant believe how cheap that drive has gotten. Back in november when I bought one, it was a great deal at around 215 dollars

[HeadBand]

lite-on has one for like $75 that is already dual layer capable

also if external drives are in the picture they have them like up to 4 tb i think

[FatalException]

I don't think you understand the concept of RAID5...

BUt going RAID5 will only give me 160gb of backup storage. With raid 1 I get the same amount of backup storage as I have for regular storage. So that means I can have everything backed up at the same time, and not just 160gb of my 480gb of data.

That is incorrect. RAID 5 is in and of itself ENTIRELY redundant. instead of backing up the data to another drive, it uses a technique known as parity to recover your data if a drive goes bad.

As an example, look at this:
Say drive 1 stores the number 10.
Drive 2 stores the number 30.
Drive 3 stores the number 90.
Drive 4 may then store the sum of those... 130.

Drive 4 would be the "parity" drive. Then, if drive 1 fails, the computer just subtracts 30 and 90 from 130 to get the value stored on drive 1 (10). If any other drive fails, the same principle works too. By sharing the backup and using a complex mathematical algorithm (nothing you need to worry about), it can successfully provide redundancy for 2 drives of data using just 1 more.

RAID 5 is 100% redundant - it is what companies like IBM, eBay, and Microsoft use in their servers so that if a drive fails, they just pop it out and put a new one in... the computer can figure out what was on that drive just by using the information from the other still functioning drives.

In this way, any RAID solution containing 3 drives or more and requiring redundancy (another word for "backup"), should use RAID 5 for performance, cost, and power economy.

RAID 1 mirrors data by just making a copy. Raid 5 figures out what data is missing if 1 drive fails (hence the reason you get the size of all the drives present, minus 1 - that extra drive's data is the parity information). If the parity drive dies, the rest of your information is safe - who cares... it was just the parity info that was lost anyway. If one of the other ones fails... using the parity drive as the "solution" to our mathematical equation, it can perform some simple algebra and figure out what data is missing... and rebuild that drive from the others present.

Raid 5 all the way.

[Bizkitkid2001]

I still don't see how that is possible. How a drive can "guess" what was on a drive. What happens then if 2 drives fail? If this really does work, being able to have a fail proof backup of 480gb of data on a 160gb drive, then how come they havn't found a way to use this technology to allow people to store more data on drives? Example being, people make 3 partitions on there drive, but one of those partitions can be 1/3 of the size of the other two partitions, yet has all the informationed needed to bring back data if one of hte other two partitions got a low level format. Or what about removable media? This type of Mathematical equation could be applied to a usb thumb drive to get data from one computer to another. Use the usb thumb drive to store information needed to backup a certain large folder or file being in the range of 500-700mb(Size of a cd) but with the usb thumb drive only being 256mb, you should then be able to take out the usb thumb drive, and take it to another computer with the same setup, and then "rebuild" the 700mb folder.

See why I am so confused still on how RAID5 works?

I'm not saying your wrong, its just that i've always been taught "Your backup drives need to be as big as the information you are wanting to backup, or else you can't fit everything you need to backup on there"

[FatalException]

Don't get discouraged in understanding this...

Your theory is wrong though as is your conception of how Raid5 works.

(and as a matter of fact, this technology IS used in removable storage - it is the reason you can scratch a CD and still read it... from the rest of the information found around it, it can figure out what the missing data is.)

Your theory about the thumb drive is incorrect, however. Remember in my example, we had 480GB of drive space available from our 4 x 160GB drive grouping. We're missing 160GB of space for the backup parity information... If any 1 drive fails... You still have 480GB of physical space...

640GB - 160GB failed drive = 480GB available. Now, since you only HAD 480GB of space available in the first place, you aren't "making data from nothing" when you plug in a new drive... you're simply restoring the integrity of the parity system by giving it 160GB of data to store the additional info. Now, by comparison, on your 3 partition hard drive - this would be possible if someone made a software to do this (though nobody has to my knowledge)...

Say you have a 120GB drive and partition it 3 ways (C drive letter, D drive letter, and parity info).

That would leave you with 80GB to store information. Then, if you erased either the C or D partition... or the parity... (remember, only 1 drive can fail at a time for RAID 5 to work right and be able to recover), the system would still have 80GB of USEFUL information to rebuild the entire set of 80GB.

120GB - 40GB failed = 80GB available. By splitting the data between multiple drives instead of multiple partitions on a single drive, you are ensuring the system will be fault tollerant. For more information on RAID 5 and how it works (it really does, trust me... I have it setup on my PC right now!) take a look at these sites:

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pro...alk_about_raid

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pro...rodkey=raid_wp

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...eLevel5-c.html

Please bear in mind that the information I have given here is far from sophisticated... It's just a simple description of RAID 5 and why it's the best solution for ANY system with three or more drives and whose owner wants data redundancy and added performance without getting another 3 drives.

[FatalException]

One final analogy would be this: If you had 4 hard drives and had psychic abilities and knew that one was going to fail, you could hook up all 4... but you'd only store data on the 3 that you didn't think would fail. If the 4th one failed, who cares... no data was lost because you didn't store stuff on it.

RAID is like that psychic... it shares the info between the drives so no matter which one of the set fails, it acts as if that drive never had data on it in the first place.

In both cases, with 4 160GB drives, you only had 480GB to store stuff. That extra drive that died (another 160GB) isn't available for storing stuff.

Remember this all happens in the background transparently... RAID cards handle all of the work. As a matter of fact, once you get it up and running, you will see your boot drive, say a 20GB extra drive you just had lying around, and a single HUGE 480GB drive on your RAID controller (if you are running Windows). The reason you don't have 640GB is because that extra drive's info is used as the parity backup.

[ArcticFox]

How much faster/slower is it than RAID 0?

[Bizkitkid2001]

I was just reading the links provided by fatal exception, and one said RAID5 is better for reading, slower for writing.