What is the best Thunderbolt RAID?

There are several Raid brands to choose from – Pegasus, WD, G-Raid, LaCie and Drobo. When editing with a new iMac what is the best Thunderbolt RAID brand to use and why?

Which Raid provides the best data back-up safety in the event one of the hard drives dies?

Thanks.

All the most well known brands are very close. I don't know anywhere that has compiled statistics on reliability. RAID is not in any way, shape, or form a "backup". There is redundancy in Level 1 and above, but that is not a replacement for a backup system. It only allows 1 to 2 drives (depending on the RAID level) to die, giving you a buffer to replace the bad drive. But it is not a real backup solution.

Shop around, read reviews, opinions are going to vary a bit.

The Pegasus is the only one which as a single unit give you speed + backup using RAID5, behind that is the

DROBO 5D which is half the speed and has it's own RAID 5ish setup, you can take out and add drives one at a time to increase storage without losing anything.

Drobo5D is the best deal if you are happy with 250MB/sec read/write.

All the others don't offer RAID5 only RAID0 or RAID1 or JBOD as far as I know.

Lacie now offers a Thunderbolt 5 bay raid in 10 and 20 Tb capacities:

www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?id=10607

But why the Lacie 5Big doesn't support RAID5 ?

The Lacie supports all the RAID modes.

I think Wildgiles was thinking of Lacie's earlier offerings (2-Disk RAIDs), which either just supported RAID0 or RAID1.

None of the Lacie thunderbolt drives support RAID5, only RAID0 RAID1 and JBOD. The 5Big doesn't support RAID5 because it would cost more money to implement. It would be a big win if it did at the current price for the 10TB and 20TB versions.

I stand corrected. Thanks, I just sort of assumed a 5-Disk array would support RAID5

5 drives is the borderline where you'd consider going to RAID 5. No real reason for RAID 5 on a smaller system.

My LaCie 4Big Quadra supports RAID5, RAID3 and RAID10. Wonder why they ditched this in the new drive? Money, I guess. I wouldn't want to have that much data striped across that many drives without some sort of redundancy - unless I was looking for pure speed and could ensure that the array contained no critical, unarchived files.

I have a Promise Pegasus R6 18TB array and it is awesome. I get ~670 MB/s write and ~500 MB/s read. Their software management tool is impressive. Now, as far as reliability, only time will tell. I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed!

As long as you have RAID 1 at least, you have redundancy. Higher RAID numbers introduce more overhead. Normally for video we only use 0 or 1 for small RAIDS, 5 or 6 for much larger RAIDs. Yeah, RAID number has nothing to do with the number of drives. RAID 1, you're fine.

And NEVER EVER consider RAID redundancy a BACK-UP system! Huge mistake! Remember, the controller card in a RAID can die at any moment, just like the disks. 2 disks can die at any moment as easily as 1. Things go wrong in the strangest, most unexpected ways and times, and RAIDs can 100% die with no way to retrieve the data. I've seen it many, many times before. Be sure you have a backup system for your RAID!

BenB wrote: As long as you have RAID 1 at least, you have redundancy. Higher RAID numbers introduce more overhead. Normally for video we only use 0 or 1 for small RAIDS, 5 or 6 for much larger RAIDs. Yeah, RAID number has nothing to do with the number of drives. RAID 1, you're fine.

True, but there's a balance between redundancy and loss of storage capacity and introduction of overhead. The overhead of a RAID5 array can be offset by good, fast hardware and software. But for me, RAID1 and it's loss of half the real storage capacity is a steep tradeoff - unless you are super fanatical about data loss on the array.

BenB wrote: And NEVER EVER consider RAID redundancy a BACK-UP system! Huge mistake! Remember, the controller card in a RAID can die at any moment, just like the disks. 2 disks can die at any moment as easily as 1. Things go wrong in the strangest, most unexpected ways and times, and RAIDs can 100% die with no way to retrieve the data. I've seen it many, many times before. Be sure you have a backup system for your RAID!

I agree - never put anything on a RAID that you absolutely cannot lose. I never ever have something sitting on a single point of failure that isn't recoverable in some way (with redundancy). That being said, a fast RAID5 array is more secure than a single drive. Which is more secure than a RAID0.

If the controller dies, then you can replace it with another. If a single mechanism dies, you can swap it. However, speaking as someone who has had two mechanisms go at one time on a RAID5 array (pooching 2TB of data back when 2TB was really 2TB) I know that when it comes to data storage anything is possible!

Not all controllers can be simply swapped out. Verify that with the manufacturer first. And not all RAID 1 enclosures will rebuild a drive. Smaller ones usually don't, so it "can" do RAID 1, verify it will "rebuild" a new drive when replaced. Just an FYI.

Larger array systems usually don't have these issues. And RAID 5 required a minimum of 3 drives.

I tell folks they need to invest in proper hardware. One nice RAID 5 system with tons of storage will pay for itself faster and easier than collecting dozens of single/dual external drives over years. Price it out. Its just good business sense.

I have been using a Promise Pegasus R4 for over a year and a half now with no major issues. I keep all of my working files on it and back it up to a second drive on a regular basis using Carbon Copy Cloner. I get read/write speeds in excess of 400 MB/sec. When I say "no major issues" the only thing that has happened is the drive disconnected twice and I cannot replicate that or say for sure that it was even an issue with the Pegasus.

I like the idea of the Drobo but I have read several horror stories about them.

In my testing I have found that RAID 0 is not faster than the Promise RAID 5 and RAID 1 is even slower. Both have their place but from my experience RAID 5 is the way to go.

Recently I came across this which I found interesting:

barefeats.com/hard161.html

anickt wrote: I have been using a Promise Pegasus R4 for over a year and a half now with no major issues. I keep all of my working files on it and back it up to a second drive on a regular basis using Carbon Copy Cloner.
barefeats.com/hard161.html

Hi Anickt,

What drive do you back-up your Pegasus to?

Thanks!

BenB wrote: And NEVER EVER consider RAID redundancy a BACK-UP system! Huge mistake! Remember, the controller card in a RAID can die at any moment, just like the disks. 2 disks can die at any moment as easily as 1. Things go wrong in the strangest, most unexpected ways and times, and RAIDs can 100% die with no way to retrieve the data. I've seen it many, many times before. Be sure you have a backup system for your RAID!

Hi Ben,

What do you suggest as a Back-up system when using a Raid?

Thanks.

hcraig wrote: What do you suggest as a Back-up system when using a Raid?

That would be at least one (preferably more) totally independent standalone copy of your data, not on the same machine, not on the same HDDs. Totally independent & standalone.

Anything that has equal capacity, that's all.

Will an individual external hard drive suffice?

Does this have to be Thunderbolt or can it be USB 3 or FW?

hcraig wrote: Will an individual external hard drive suffice?

For 'backups' - yes. For long term archiving, no.

hcraig wrote: Does this have to be Thunderbolt or can it be USB 3 or FW?

*Any* media can be used as "backup", and any hard disk you can connect to your system works as well as any other. The differences in the connection types are down to speed only, as in how fast you can read or write them.

You don't need thunderbolt for a backup, a USB2 HDD will do just fine, it just takes longer to copy the data.

The connection type (thunderbolt, USB, Firewire) has nothing to do with how secure the data is.