Using a raid hardrive archiving system with a laptop...?

[they call me frenchy]

I have been using the Multiface with my 1GHz Inspiron8100 for a couple
of years now. I love it. It works great. It is a wonderful 16 track
mobile recording studio. I have an OS partition and an audio
partition on my laptop drive and I can record 16 tracks with no
problem as long as I keep the audio partition clean and I freshly
format it before I start a big project.

When I finish the project, I used to dump the data to a big external
hardrive through my firewire drive dock. I cant do this anymore,
because my drive dock is old and it doesnt work with the newer, bigger
hardrives. Quite honestly, I am sick of having harddrives laying all
over my countertops out in the open. Also, I will never use a system
where my data is only on one drive ever again. I have lost some
pretty valuable projects over the years due to dying IBM and WD drives
(both internal and external drives.).

I am thinking that maybe I should either 1) get a firewire raid
interface for my laptop that will handle 4 drives (200GB data1, 200GB
data1 mirror, 200GB data2, 200GB data2 mirror).......or......2) I
could get a cheap dell "server" computer with the four drives in it
plus the OS drive (5 drives total.) This would allow me to use the
laptop by itself and then when I am ready, I can dump the project onto
the server computer which automatically backs up the data through raid
mirroring.

I already hook my laptop to another computer via firewire and move
data back and forth, but I do not have a raid system set up yet. I
heard that WinXP Pro can run a mirrored raid system within the
operating system, is this correct?

How do you folks protect and save your data??? If you only save it
onto one hardrive, then I dont want to hear from you. I am ready for
a redundant backup solution, because I dont trust hardrives. I will
be backing up important projects to DVD-R and taking them offsite for
a 3rd backup in case of fire, but for this conversation I want to talk
about the hardrive raid system.

thx,
frenchy

[tferrell]

I FLAC my raw tracks and back them up to DVD IMMEDIATELY...before I do
anything else. Then I back up my finished mix, nuendo project file and a
..txt file of mix notes to the DVD. Works great. And a lot less trouble
and expense than a RAID system. Allows me to clear my drives and revisit
and re-mix important projects as I learn more.

I know, you only wanted to talk about the raid. But you might consider
this. All drives fail eventually. Of course, DVDs don't last forever
either.

[Mike Looijmans]

I do not use RAID, but I use multiple backups.

For quick backup, I just run something similar to "XCOPY D:\ E:\ /S /D"
which compares the contents of D and E drive and copies all newer files from
D to E. This backup runs around 30MB/second, so it's quick enough to run ona
regular basis. It's also nice for "set points", just backup and you can go
back if you change your mind.

For long-term storage I use FLAC to compress the original (unprocessed)
audio (FLAC = free lossless audio compression, supports huge files and high
resolution) and store on multiple (data) CDRs of different brands. I updated
CD Wave with FLAC reading support for that purpose today, to quickly fetch
fragments of old recordings without the need to decompress them to disk
first.

Since I typically only use 2-track audio (LP/tape/... transfers) my storage
needs are not that big, but this method works well on bigger setups too.

For Laptop - Desktop data transfer, I'd use a gigabit ethernet connection
with a crossover cable. Cheap and faster than any alternative.

Mike.

[Logan Shaw]

tferrell wrote:
> I know, you only wanted to talk about the raid. But you might consider
> this. All drives fail eventually.

True. That is why, with a properly-done RAID arrangment, you
have not only a drive that stores some redundant data (allowing
you to reconstruct all the data if any one of the drives fails),
but you also have a "hot spare", which is a drive that is
hooked up but not in use for anything (not part of a RAID volume,
not used for swap, not anything).

Then, when a drive does fail, the RAID management software
automatically adds the spare drive as part of the RAID volume.
That way, even if it happens when you're not around, you
not only have your data still, but you also continue to
have redundancy in case *another* drive fails. Then, in order
to lose data due to drive failure, you have to have two drives
fail before you have a chance to replace one.

By the way, if you are going to use a machine only to create
as big RAID volume and archive stuff, there is really no need
to get a server machine. Any old machine will do, as long
as it has the capacity to let you hook up several drives.

(This is not to say you shouldn't still back it up to tape
or something.)

Of course, these days there are many different solutions.
It's best to have some offline storage so that even if you
do something stooopid on the computer (format something,
upgrade the OS and forget to tell it to preserve your data,
etc.), you still won't lose your data because it's sitting
in a filing cabinet, desk, or whatever. The DVD solution
certainly has an appeal for that reason.

- Logan