Question about RAID?

eroseros
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hello,



I am looking into the possibility of a raid 5 backup system for business and personal use. I am not very familiar with this area. I am wanting to backup two computers connected to our Ethernet network. Can I just plug the raid system into the switch?



Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    kmac1036kmac1036 Posts: 281member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eros View Post


    Hello,



    I am looking into the possibility of a raid 5 backup system for business and personal use. I am not very familiar with this area. I am wanting to backup two computers connected to our Ethernet network. Can I just plug the raid system into the switch?



    Thanks in advance.



    Well, how much you got to spend and what kind of files will you be moving around? MOST of the network or NAS drives, support AFP, which makes life easy for us Mac heads. SMB works OK, but follows a strict naming profile, similar to Windoze. RAID 5 stinks for WRITE performance, but great for read performance with large databases. If you are moving large media files around, RAID 10 is a good balance of backup/performance (RAID 0 + 1). This is 2 drives STRIPED together for performance (0) with an identical pair to match, then the two sets are set to MIRROR each other for backup.



    Is your switch Gigabit? How much space do you need? Mac or PC? Got an older Mac to spare?
  • Reply 2 of 4
    eroseros Posts: 23member
    I am not so fussed with write speeds as it will only need to be accessed if our hard drives in the computers fail. I have a gigabit ethernet connection. I am not transsporting large media files, just legal, accounting and sensitive business work. I thought raid 5 or 6 was the most suitable due to its account for drive failure?



    Do i have the right idea in that I can connect it to the switch to service 2 computers?
  • Reply 3 of 4
    eroseros Posts: 23member
    Oh, for the backup system would be under $1000. There maybe a problem in that one computer is a PC the other is mac. These two are the ones I would like to backup.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    kmac1036kmac1036 Posts: 281member
    The mac will connect to just about anything really.. the PC is limited to SMB/CIFS connections. Just about all the options I've seen support this with most supporting AFP, which is the native apple file-transfer protocol that replaced apple talk.



    Check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...4&N=2010240124 Anything from stuff ready to go to empty add your own drives.
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