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Is this a good RAID case to buy?


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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZY6DK8N/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A307CH216CTGMP&psc=1

I want a case that holds 4 or 5 external hard drives. I've never used a RAID, is it the same as saving to a hard drive? You just pick the drive to save to in the RAID case? I want to save material to one drive in the RAID then save it to another drive in the RAID box as back-up. If it does not operate like that, do you need special software to do the RAID?

Thanks

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Hdds in raid boxes can be configured in numerous ways. One of the common configurations is raid0 which is pretty common in 2 drive boxes (shows as single drive, capacity of all the drives combined, almost double the speed compared to a single drive, if one drive breaks you will lose all data) and the basic common configuration for multi drive boxes is raid5 (capacity of the combined capacity of all the drives minus one drives capacity, high read write speeds, you can lose one hdd and still restore all the data). 

There is also possibility to for example do multiple raid arrays from the same box's drives if the control software allows (for example 2 hdds in raid 0 and four hdds in raid5 showing to the operating system as two separate drives) or you can also just use the drives unraided so that each physical hdd shows as a separate drive and the raid box is basically just acting as a very expensive hdd dock. 

The short answer... Yes they can show to the operating system as separate drives and they can also show as one single logical drive or multiple logical drives. It just depends on how you configure it and how much redundancy and speed and capacity you need. 

I recommend having a raid 5 array as a basis for starters. Using the raid box just to host multiple single drives for backup purposes is not very useful I think, you would like to have instead one of the copies on the raid array for speed (working version) and another copy on completely separate drive elsewhere which is just for backup. 

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My personal opinion is that raid arrays are most useful when you need both large capacity and high read write speeds. Ideally when doing editing or online or grading. Or offloading camera cards. And similar stuff. 

By my opinion, it is a bad idea to store all your backups in the same raid enclosure, whether being separate physical and logical drives or not. One of the reasons is that they are in same place and the other that they are both spinning unnecessarily most of the time. There is no reason for the backup to be spinning all the time for nothing and it does not any good for you there other than warming the room with its waste heat. Better to do a separate backup and dump it to some other physical place so that fire etc cant catch both of the copies at the same time

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It also depends how/where you want to use the drive. If you are backing up on location or backing up in the studio/editing suite and or archiving. I use Synology NAS in my studio to back-up footage and archive the work. I find a 1-2 TB SSD for back-up in the field and then use it on the desk-top to move the footage into the system -- this has proven to be a stable field back-up and also faster way to edit. Once in the studio ...we back-up the entire unedited project to the NAS as well as all the working project files we we cut on the SSD. I use a RAID 1 configuration for the NAS creating 2 back-ups, then back-up to Amazon Web Services from there to have a third off-site back-up. For super critical work I will also retain a backup to a single external hard drive and store it off-site.

 

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Thanks for the help. I was going to use the RAID hard drives like desktop hard drives. I'd have some duplicate back up drives and exchange them in and out of the RAID enclosure. I'd keep some backup hard drives off site.

I had read internal hard drives are more dependable than the desktop external hard drives. So I was looking for a way to use internal hard drives externally. I'm not looking for auto back up. I want to do everything manually.

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2 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Thanks for the help. I was going to use the RAID hard drives like desktop hard drives. I'd have some duplicate back up drives and exchange them in and out of the RAID enclosure. I'd keep some backup hard drives off site.

I had read internal hard drives are more dependable than the desktop external hard drives. So I was looking for a way to use internal hard drives externally. I'm not looking for auto back up. I want to do everything manually.

The actual hdds are the same whether used inside the computer or mounted in a box with power supply +sata controller+ usb or thunderbolt interface which makes it an external drive. 

If you open an external drive there is just the small controlling circuit board with completely similar hard drive than in a desktop computer (3.5" drive) or in case of a smaller usb drive a similar drive than in traditional laptops (2.5" hdd). 

The difference between internal and external hdd is the amount of cooling it gets and the orientation how its mounted. The external cheaper boxes may have slow controllers and interfaces which limit transfer speeds.

Using a raid box as a hdd docking station is usually not a problem as long as it does not accidentally start to raid them and thus wipe the data... It has better cooling than a hdd dock has which is beneficial on regular and long usage periods (for example 8tb ironwolf drives dont like being on docking station for hours and hours without cooling but it a raid box they are fine for long sessions)

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I can gladly make a recommendation based on these questions. 

- What kind of media will you be editing; Codec, resolution, etc? 
- What kind of interface does your computer have? 
- Does your computer have PCI slots available for an additional I/O board?
- How much storage will you need?
- Do you care about redundancy? 
- What software will you be editing on and will you be using proxy files for editing vs full res media? 

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