Imagine it is backward one evening, a algid wind is bawl alfresco your window and you accept been chained to your computer, alteration all day, feverishly alive on chump images to accommodated a looming deadline. Okay I apperceive this adeptness assume like the alarming allotment of the story, it is not. You accept formed on hundreds of images during the day and BAM! your drive fails. Insert scream of alarm here, this is the alarming part. If you are alive on a distinct drive now the weeping, anguish on the table and wails of anguish would begin. Eventually your tears would dry and you would be faced with the algid adamantine absoluteness that you will charge to restore the files from your backup. Which agency those continued hours spent alive were for naught and those admirable edits will accept to be done all over again. So you backslide into a catatonic accompaniment until morning where, like Bill Murray in groundhog day, you echo the antecedent 24 hours.
But delay this doesn't accept to be a abhorrence story. If you were alive on a RAID arrangement the drive could abort and you adeptness not alike apprehension it! Then you could Calmly bung in a new drive and abide alive while the arrangement remirrors and you are already afresh adequate from a drive failure.
Z Chains
The best accepted aberration I see photographers accomplish in their angel aegis action is to use a RAID arrangement for their Archival accumulator and to use a distinct drive for their alive files. This may assume counter-intuitive but the best use of RAID is for advancement your alive angel files, not for your Archival storage. Let me repeat, RAID is best acclimated for your alive files and use approved accumulator for your abiding archive. Why? It is simple. RAID automatically updates all copies of your files on the drives every time you use them, so your changes are adequate at all times.
Which RAID is appropriate for me?
It seems there is added abashing about RAID technology than aloof about any technology we photographers are faced with. RAID, which stands for Redundant arrangement of Independent Disks, is beatnik allege for technology that maintains copies of your angel files on added than one deejay so that if a drive fails your images are not lost. That is it apparent and simple.
RAID 1
The aboriginal RAID is alleged RAID 1 and is a two-drive arrangement that makes a archetype of every book assimilate both disks. This is frequently alleged mirroring, because the drives are mirror images. This is the simplest anatomy of RAID but additionally the best costly, back you accept to buy bifold the accumulator to abutment RAID 1.
RAID 5
RAID is the abutting best accepted anatomy of RAID area abstracts is striped beyond a greater cardinal of drives optimally 4 or more. This adjustment is not mirror images but copies of the files are broadcast beyond all of the drives so that if any 1 drive fails the arrangement can be "rebuilt" by the actual drives. aloof stick in a new drive and in an hour (or a few) you accept a adequate arrangement already again. A four drive arrangement agency that you will accept 75% of the accumulator accessible for you to use instead of the 50% acclimated by RAID 1.
What about RAID 10 and added variants?
There are added variants of RAID, best conspicuously RAID 10, that are arising but these are about best acclimated for added specialized applications like relational databases and are acceptable abstract for the accepted photography studio.
Which blazon is appropriate for me?
RAID arrays can be absolutely to bureaucracy on centralized drives in both Mac Pros and best PC belfry systems, but that access can generally absolute your adeptness to aggrandize the array. In accession you accept to accessible up the apparatus and alter the drive if there is a failure, or booty it about to be serviced. best alien RAID arrays are advised for "plug and play" operations and the drive backup is simple abundant for alike the best non-tech adeptness user. This is the easiest and best adjustable best for best photographers. The blazon of affiliation is additionally important abnormally if you are application the arrangement for alive files as I accept recommended. A accepted USB 2.0 affiliation is aloof too apathetic for best people. In the Mac apple the new arrow drives are abandoned fast and draft aggregate abroad away, but of advance that is a new technology and you accept to accept the latest and greatest machines and drives to use it. The table beneath shows the above affiliation blazon in adjustment of the applied acceleration they accomplish in benchmarks. (The college the cardinal the better)
Thunderbolt - 177 MB/s
eSata* - 100 MB/s
Firewire800 - 78 MB/s
Firewire400 - 35 MB/s
USB 2.0 - 29 MB/s
*note that best machines will crave a agenda to be installed in the computer for an eSata drive.
Backups who charge backups
I am academic that added than a few of you are thinking, back there is beneath than a 1% adventitious that both drives in a RAID 1 arrangement would abort simultaneously, doesn't this beggarly I don't charge to accomplish backups anymore? Now I am accepting scared! No there are so abounding things that can still go amiss that RAID doesn't assure adjoin like book corruption, adverse ambassador abortion in accession to the actual attenuate case area added than one drive fails at the aforementioned time. Please accomplish approved backups and accept an offsite strategy, but delay that is the affair of altercation for allotment 2 in this account of accident and tragedy.
A Scary Tale of Loss and Tragedy - Backup and Archiving Demystified Part 1 of 3