The Guardian MAXimus series has hardware RAID-1 drive solutions, $399.99 for dual 2 TB. Quad interface.

[eshop.macsales.com]

The Mercury Elite-AL triple interface runs $519.99.

[eshop.macsales.com]

What does the latter offer me that justifies the extra pricetag except a different color? Otherwise, I'll go to the MAX.

RAID-1 is primarily for uptime. otherwise cloning the content from one drive to another is a more reliable backup.

...neither one is likely worth the money.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 06:48PM by mattkime.

Helps you recover premium paid for black Macbook? Looks like $120 savings for most conceivable purposes...

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Sometimes it is what it is...
and then there's times when it's really better.



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Quote
mattkime
RAID-1 is primarily for uptime. otherwise cloning the content from one drive to another is a more reliable backup.

...neither one is likely worth the money.

I'm looking for a 'plug and play' solution for an application where a process manually keeping a duplicate using two separate drives simply will not happen.

If there is a way to manually roll your own, let me know.

Quote
sekker
I'm looking for a 'plug and play' solution for an application where a process manually keeping a duplicate using two separate drives simply will not happen.

If there is a way to manually roll your own, let me know.

Remember, RAID is not a backup. If you need to backup the files on your RAID, you should get a second RAID to backup your first RAID.

Either way, RAID or non RAID, you are backing up to separate "drives".



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 07:57PM by silvarios.

>>I'm looking for a 'plug and play' solution for an application where a process manually keeping a duplicate using two separate drives simply will not happen.

>>If there is a way to manually roll your own, let me know.

Definitely can, just need more details on the process.

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Different chipset. One has a 936DS and the other has a 934DSB. The Guardian MAXimus chipset adds an eSATA port. No idea about performance of either chipset.

Quote
sekker
I'm looking for a 'plug and play' solution for an application where a process manually keeping a duplicate using two separate drives simply will not happen.

huh?

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I think he's trying to say he's too damn lazy to make backups manually and thinks RAID1 will be a good solution. It's not.

The latter is a softraid raid 1. Kind of legacy, but we have customers that want softraid and that software is very expensive and let's you raid other drives beyond just what we deliver preconfigured with it. Softraid, for those who wish to use it, goes far beyond OS x raid and has a lot of cOol capabilities.

I personally stick to GMax and qx2 hardware plug and play myself

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OWC Larry
Other World Computing
[www.macsales.com]

Quote
rz
I think he's trying to say he's too damn lazy to make backups manually and thinks RAID1 will be a good solution. It's not.

This is not truly a backup situation, but more of a data processing workflow. We want to make sure we keep excellent copies of the data while we are accumulating the collection; my thought was to build the redundancy into the system from the beginning. Sorry for not communicating this well.

The main cost will be the scientist's time manually annotating the data. They may have sessions that only run 5 or 10 minutes at a time. I'm not going to ask them to do a manual backup each time they are done - their time is 100x more expensive than just getting a RAID drive.

Looks like the MAX box will serve me fine. Thanks for the comments.

Edit: Thanks, too, to Larry - that explains the price difference!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 09:08PM by sekker.

Quote
sekker
We want to make sure we keep excellent copies of the data while we are accumulating the collection; my thought was to build the redundancy into the system from the beginning.

I'm not going to ask them to do a manual backup each time they are done - their time is 100x more expensive than just getting a RAID drive.

I get it. There will be an automated backup in place, but it isn't running constantly and you don't want the user to have to initiate an automatic backup after every single access of the system. Thus, you want something a little more robust than the average single drive solution.

If I understand things correctly, then yes, RAID 1 should prove more robust than a single drive. How often does the automatic backup kick in? I would suggest at least every hour if this is serious work.

Eduficate me

Sounds kinda kinky.

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New forum user map 8/2015: [www.zeemaps.com]

Could be loaded with kinks. You won't know until you try it.