RAID JBOD vs Drive Enclosure JBOD vs JBOD external drives

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

For post work I've been using separate external drives. It is messy with 3 or 4 drives and all the wires. I was looking into RAID using it as JBOD and also drive enclosures for JBOD. They all seem to have iffy reviews. Some great and some say the data was corrupted and gone. Are RAID enclosures more reliable than non-RAID drive enclosures if you are going for JBOD? 

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Selection from film handling collection.

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DDTJRAC

Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

[David Lawson]

This is a tricky question, because of the dependency on OS, drive selection, and other dependencies.

NORMALLY, a JBOD means every disk is independent, with it's own File System (FS). Some like Synology can be configured as a single drive, and used successfully, HOWEVER, there are risks in formatting such a drive; if you lose a drive, you lose all of the data. Better, if you have three or more of the same drive (Model number and sectors), you might consider creating RAID arrays to hold the data. RAID 5 will protect your data in the event of a drive failure.

The other dependency is the choice of OS. I use OpenSuSE, even on my laptop. Sounds like overkill, but I have yet to lose data from a drive failure. OpenSuSE uses the BTRFS (Balanced Tree File System, a form of directory management), because it creates its own backups, and can recover data if there's a glitch writing data, which is more common than you hear about. Basically, I create a FS for important stuff like Videos, Photographs, and Documents. Now, each of those filesystems is protected from disaster to some extent, although there's still a risk if a drive controller (the management chip in the drive) burns out.

If your collection is more than a few hundred gigabytes (GiB), think about investing in a small RAID system, Amazon has one for $150*, no drives, and then back up your data, put the drives in, and create the RAID volume.

The sleep you save will be worth it.

Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Bay-RAID-JBOD-Enclosure-Storage/dp/B01LYEM3VO/ref=sr_1_46?sr=8-46&xpid=26Zii3FS5mi_S

Edited August 10, 2025 by David Lawson
added link

[Robin Phillips]

if you are not using RAID, then there is no reason to pay for a hardware raid controller or a software license. 

that being said, running several drives in a raid 5 config at least gives you some failure protection. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Thanks for the replies! I'm not much of computer person. The different operating system sounds like a lot for me. I use lots of different software and don't know how or if it would work other than with Windows. My biggest file that I routinely backup is just under 1TB. It is my working archive that contains lower res material. The higher res stuff is put on M-Disc Blu-ray and archival Blu-ray discs, if I ever need to access it. Some of it is put on a storage HDD, but most of it is just on Blu-ray. 

The working archive is constantly being updated, so I back it up every few weeks or once a month. I will back up work in progress separately, but if I ever would need to find out what the lost work was, I'd be in trouble, as it is put on a number of drives. The working archive is also backed up once a year to M-Disc. It is all kinda haphazard of a backup plan. One thing I do is when I back up files, I usually date the file. So if there is a problem, I look for the latest date file.

My computer was running out of room. In early August I was deleting a bunch of files on my desktop to free up room and deleted a 14GB folder by accident along with the other files. That taught me a few lessons.

1) Make a delete folder and put all the material to be deleted in that folder for final review. When I looked to my back up drives for the lost file, I could only find a file dated 7.1.25. So, the work for the rest of July was gone.

2) Have bigger backup drives. My 4 backup drives (1TB SSD, 4TB SSD, 4TB SSD - 4TB HDD) were nearly full, and I was having trouble backing up files from the main computer. Before backing up from the main computer I would have to delete files from the backup drives. 

3) I had slacked off backing up the lost folder from all this storage space issues. I need to be more vigilante. Or look into getting some auto backup software. 

The RAID idea came about as having massive storage capacity, so I don't have to worry about storage space so much. I had some experience with using internal SSD enclosures. I tried 2 Samsung 4TB internal SSD's. The first enclosures corrupted my data. I thought both drives were the problem. When I switched enclosures both drives worked fine. The internal SSD drives are much faster than a portable external SSD. Anyway, lots to study about here.

I had not heard of RAID 5. Here is what AI says about it...

AI Overview

 

RAID 5 is a storage configuration that combines disk striping with distributed parity to provide data redundancy and improve performance. It requires at least three disks to function, and one disk's worth of space is used for parity information, which allows the array to rebuild data in case of a drive failure. This configuration offers a good balance of storage capacity, performance, and redundancy. 

 

This video explains how RAID 5 works, including the use of parity bits to reconstruct data:

 

 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

How it works:

• Striping:

  Data is broken into blocks and written across multiple disks in a "striped" manner, which improves read and write speeds. 

   
• Distributed Parity:

  Instead of mirroring all data, RAID 5 calculates parity information and distributes it across all the disks in the array. 

   
• Rebuilding:

  If one disk fails, the parity information is used to reconstruct the missing data on a replacement drive. 

   

Advantages:

• Improved Performance:

  Data can be read from multiple disks simultaneously, leading to faster read speeds compared to single drives or mirroring. 

   
• Increased Storage Capacity:

  RAID 5 provides more usable storage than RAID 1 (mirroring) for the same number of disks. 

   
• Data Redundancy:

  The parity information allows the array to recover from a single drive failure without data loss. 

   

Disadvantages:

• Performance Impact during Rebuild:

  Rebuilding a failed drive in RAID 5 can be time-consuming and impact performance during the process. 

   
• Susceptible to Double Failures:

  If two drives fail simultaneously or during a rebuild, data loss is likely. 

   
• Write Performance:

  While read performance is improved, write performance can be slower than RAID 0 or RAID 10, especially with hardware RAID controllers. 

   

When to use RAID 5:

• RAID 5 is a good option for scenarios where you need a balance of performance, storage capacity, and data redundancy, such as:
  • Archiving large amounts of data .
  • General-purpose servers and workstations .
  • NAS devices .
• It's important to consider the potential performance impact of a drive failure and rebuild process, especially with larger capacity drives.
• For greater redundancy, consider using RAID 6 or RAID 10, which can tolerate more drive failures.