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Anyone running RAID laptop hard drives

andyoz

andyoz

pfm Member
What do you think. Good idea for a numpty that's not great at keeping laptop backups (only the main NAS files are backed up every night).

I've been lucky enough not to have a hard drive fail on my office Lenovo laptop but see they offer RAID options now. I think it means you lose the optical drive so can't burn CD's but could live with that.
 
If your lappy can take two drives why not just back one to the other? I dont see the poimt of raid in this configuration, also raid is not a back up.
 
I'm just trying to get the most transparent solution that if my work laptop HD fails, I can keep working on for the few days until the bad drive is replaced.

I know it won't avoid loss of data due to theft or the laptop exploding, etc.

It probably only costs an extra £100 to do and that's a lot cheaper than losing a few days work due to HD failure.

I just noticed that RAID is being offered as almost the norm when configuring a new Lenovo W520.
 
andyoz said:
. . .It probably only costs an extra £100 to do and that's a lot cheaper than losing a few days work due to HD failure.
Click to expand...

All depends upon the price you place upon your data and the ability to resume work after the shit hits the fan.
 
auric said:
All depends upon the price you place upon your data and the ability to resume work after the shit hits the fan.
Click to expand...

Its worth more than £100 anyway. I thought it would be a popular option for business users to be honest?
 
Rather than a Raid configuration, I'd recommend dedicating one drive as backup so that in case of data corruption or user error you'll be able to go back in time and restore your main drive back to where you want it to be.

Depending on how much of a risk taker you are, you could just save your data or also keep images of the main drive. The former doesn't require any extra software, while the latter may benefit from it (depending on which OS version you want).

Some laptops (e.g. my Lenovo T410) can take 2 disks, some other have a mini-pcie slot which can be filled by a SSD drive... but many will require an external drive, which is less than ideal.
 
EIffel said:
Rather than a Raid configuration, I'd recommend dedicating one drive as backup so that in case of data corruption or user error you'll be able to go back in time and restore your main drive back to where you want it to be.

Depending on how much of a risk taker you are, you could just save your data or also keep images of the main drive. The former doesn't require any extra software, while the latter may benefit from it (depending on which OS version you want).

Some laptops (e.g. my Lenovo T410) can take 2 disks, some other have a mini-pcie slot which can be filled by a SSD drive... but many will require an external drive, which is less than ideal.
Click to expand...

Acronis can do this backing up automatically and then you can restore your disk to a given time.

All my Thinkpads and some are 10 years old have an ultrabay and that can take a second disk or battery or CD/DVD or a diskette drive yup I still have some..........

Cheers,

DV
 
I have to buy this Acronis thing as we are moving to a new office and our backup regime is less than stringent!

Are you saying that I just spec a second drive in place of the optical drive and let Acronis work away at it? We normally work live off a RAID NAS but I just want to avoid losing the day to day use of my machine of a HD goes down. Most important data, i.e. Word files, are being accessed off RAID storage already.

If I was to use RAID in the laptop, then if a HD fails it will just tell me and will continue on with the good drive as though nothing has happened. If I'm in a backup drive scenario, would I have to replace the broken drive before things revert back to normal?

Our dated backups will be done from the RAID NAS so it is just uninterrupted use of the laptop that I want which appears to be what RAID is all about?

I really don't know what I'm on about though.
 
andyoz said:
I have to buy this Acronis thing as we are moving to a new office and our backup regime is less than stringent!

Are you saying that I just spec a second drive in place of the optical drive and let Acronis work away at it? We normally work live off a RAID NAS but I just want to avoid losing the day to day use of my machine of a HD goes down. Most important data, i.e. Word files, are being accessed off RAID storage already.

If I was to use RAID in the laptop, then if a HD fails it will just tell me and will continue on with the good drive as though nothing has happened. If I'm in a backup drive scenario, would I have to replace the broken drive before things revert back to normal?

Our dated backups will be done from the RAID NAS so it is just uninterrupted use of the laptop that I want which appears to be what RAID is all about?

I really don't know what I'm on about though.
Click to expand...

It would appear that RAID1 is a bodge and as such is worthless.

"Good or non failing drives have to be in HDD bay 0 if you have RAID 1."

Now that tells me that the RAID has been implemented with a single bog standard disk controller. So two things a) if the control fails it might destroy both disks and b) if the disk in bay 0 (internal) dies you have to swap the disks. So there is no advantage in running RAID1.

If it were me I'd clone drive 0 and put it into a ultrabay caddy. If the main disk dies install the cloned caddy and boot from that. Run backups using True Image onto an external drive. You can access the files on there without need to reinstall the failed disk.

Then at your leisure replace duff drive and reinstall.

Cheers,

DV

PS link to the Lenovo manual page http://www.manualslib.com/manual/360108/Lenovo-Thinkpad-W520-4284.html?page=53
 
Then you lose your laptop and RAID doesnt help there either.

1st Step of backup - Your data in a minimum of two separate devices (drives)

2nd Step of backup - Your data in in a minimum of two devices in two separate locations (not in the same PC/Laptop).

There are more steps but the first two are most critical to start with.
 
I'd like to add a third step. One of validating the backed up data and restoring live data from the data you have backed up. Nothing like running through and trying these process and procedures prior to doing it for real.
 
auric said:
I'd like to add a third step. One of validating the backed up data and restoring live data from the data you have backed up. Nothing like running through and trying these process and procedures prior to doing it for real.
Click to expand...

Well generally for the average joe a simple copy and shift unadulterated backup using say Cobian is good enough.

What you say is good for business critical/live applications etc.

But in domestic/small business most struggle with the concept of data in two places.....

So often I hear "Well I backed up my data to the external drive...at least that let me delete it all off my laptop to free up some space!"

Oh dear, let's start again shall we!:(
 
By the way, I believe that most Lenovo business laptops come with Rescue and Recovery, which does the same thing as Acronis...

Basically RAID1 is a high availability solution (If one disk fails, it is possible to continue working with just slightly degraded performance). RAID won't protect you in case of some hardware or system failure though (but short of a spare laptop, you're already exposed to this risk). RAID is also not a protection against user error (deleting or modifying files).

If you want the belt and braces solutions (Ability to restore computer to previous state and ability to continue to work if just one disk fails), you will unfortunately need to have a least 3 places to store stuff. Few laptops can do this without cables or some form of network connection (costly).
 
Looks like it all comes down to a cost be it in time or cash to recover from a disaster vs the value placed upon what may sometimes be irreplaceable data. A question that can only be quantified and then answered by the user.
 
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