3 Reasons to Buy a Home RAID Array

If you’ve ever experienced data loss, you know how terrible losing your photos, documents, videos and other files can be. Businesses spend millions of dollars every year on data recovery, but for personal computer users, data recovery can be far too expensive.

Fortunately, all you’ve got to do to avoid data loss is back up your data. Unfortunately, even the best data backup methods have a few key problems. First of all, they’re not constant, so if you save something before your next backup, you’ll lose it. Second, you can easily miss a certain folder or file when you’re backing up, and even if you’re using one of the awesome new external hard drives that backs up data automatically, there’s a serious potential for user error. Finally, your backup drive can fail, leaving you with nothing.

RAID arrays provide a fix for both of these problems. A RAID is a Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically, a home RAID is an external or internal set of hard drives that writes data to at least two separate disks at a time. This means that if one hard drive fails, you’ve still got the other drive(s) to store your data.

There are a few great reasons to look into getting a home RAID array.

It’s easier than ever. Manufacturers like Western Digital have come out with products like the ShareSpace, a huge home RAID that connects to a home network. There’s very little setup and the system works immediately to keep your data safe and secure.

Other major hard drive manufacturers offering home RAID systems include SeaGate and Maxtor. Whichever one you pick, they’re incredibly easy to set up and use. The only thing you’ll really need to understand is the difference between the three most common types of RAID systems, RAID 1, 0 and 5.

RAID 0 isn’t a true RAID, as it doesn’t offer redundancy–if a hard drive fails, the whole system goes down. Don’t set up a RAID 0 unless you don’t really care about the data stored on the system. RAID 1 is a two drive system that mirrors data, so what’s written on one hard drive is written on the other hard drive. RAID 5 is more complex and most external RAID devices on the market support this technology. RAID 5 systems consist of at least three drives and data is written in a way that when one drive fails, the others still contain your data.

The bottom line is that if you choose a RAID 1 or RAID 5, your data will be kept safe and setup should be a breeze on external systems from brands like Western Digital and Seagate.

They’re cheap. You can get a cheap RAID 1 for under $300 these days. RAID 5 systems are a bit more expensive, but they greatly expand your computer’s storage capacity. A RAID 5 can be used to back up all of the computers in your home and will usually cost from $300-1000–far less than what data recovery on a single hard drive would cost.

They’re reliable. Other than a power surge, there’s very little that could take out an operating RAID 5 system. If you pay attention to your home RAID and make sure that you replace drives when they fail (which shouldn’t happen very often), you’ll have an incredibly reliable backup system right in your home.


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