Quote:

When I was using RAID5 it was the total repository of all of my media. There was no other backup. At the time I considered RAID5 to be sufficient unto itself. This was a mistake. How are you planning on monitoring the status of your drives? I used the Promise Superswap 1000 drive bays that gave constant condition status via LED’s. Even with this I lost my data once. You think it’s a hassle copying 700GB? How about re-ripping a TB? I guess I have been burned too many times. What I purpose is probably extreme.

There's a lot being said here; some is linux specific but most, I think, is generic.

Clearly if you are experienced in one OS and move to another then there's a learning curve - that said:

Setting up:
Linux RAID is simple and generally just works.
BIOS or windows RAID is probably a touch simpler and generally just works.
Not much in it.

Monitoring:
Linux RAID is simple and generally just works via email. [My machines talk to me if a disk fails.]
BIOS or windows RAID may use email, LEDs, beep or just notify you on reboot (not good for a server) .
Not much in it.

Disaster:
For an average user it is feasible to recover a Linux RAID systems when things go badly wrong (and I'm talking about massive hardware failure here!) but it needs to be dug into very deeply and can become very complex indeed. [However a few hours of hair pulling may be a lot easier than a 1Tb restore!]

For an average user if you have an unexpected hardware failure with windows or BIOS RAID then you are screwed. You would need to spend real cash (many hundreds of $) with a forensic data recovery firm to stand a chance of getting your data back - or just start restoring.

Huge difference.


Another problem area is how people thing about risk, backups and resilience.

In other words : do I bother with RAID or do I just have backups.

It's complex; but in general RAID reduces the likelihood of needing to restore from backups - Neutrino you are 100% spot on when you say it is not sufficient to replace backups. However it does almost eliminate the need to restore from backups for disk failures.

That's worth restating:
* I'll (almost) never need to restore from backup due to disk failure.

Here, I think the problem you will face Neutrino is that you are almost *certain* to lose all your data and have to restore from backup. (I assume you have 1Tb of data on 3x320Gb disks = no resilience). Your system is 3 times more fragile than a single disk system. Assuming drives are 95% likely to die in 6 years (even spread) then your system is 95% likely to die within 2 years - I hope you have an OCD tendency to backup!



FWIW I have multiple data stores.
One is for music and films that I have recorded or ripped. The backup is the original media. When (not if) a drive fails, I just replace it. I doubt I will ever have to re-rip. If I didn't have a resilient setup then I'd have to re-rip (or restore) every time a drive failed.

Another store is a simple striped array.
I hold important data on there and it backs up incrementally onto a separate striped array using snapshots.
Having the backup online all the time means I can monitor the health and replace drives.


I hope this comes across in the spirit it's intended

A few years ago I had a disk failure on the disk with all my photos on it.
I bought a replacement hard disk and did a disk copy from my backup to my new disk.
Sadly I swapped the device names and overwrote my backup with a blank disk. I felt a horrible cold chill and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I realised that I'd lost years worth of photos.
Luckily I was a sysadmin at the time and by 'habit', as soon as the disk failed I made a copy of the backup to some free space. It took me 10 seconds to remember that I had the copy - they were not pleasant seconds.
I did however just do a quick 'copy' and the timestamps on all those files show the date and time of the near-disaster.

So the reason I bother with this RAID stuff is because I really worry about the 'normal' people who are going to lose their digital memories and I try to help out
I would like to see Linux RAID get a nicer frontend (for home use) and better disaster recovery etc - it will happen.