cheapest external mirrored disk method??

Discussion in 'Storage Devices' started by mixedup, Jun 16, 2009.

  1. mixedup

    mixedup Geek Trainee

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    Hi,

    What is the most cost effective way to have a mirrored disk arrangement for an external HDD solution for my MacBook? (albeit USB, Firewire or NAS)? So that I would have 2 drives mirroring so that if one failed things would sitill be OK, & then I'd just replace the faulty drive.

    Thanks
     
  2. Impotence

    Impotence May the source be with u!

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    Mirroring drives only protects against hardware failures, if your operating system or application corrupts the drive / partition then the corrupted data will also be mirrored onto the second disk (destroying the 'backup').

    Mirroring the drive would also copy a lot of unnecessary data (i.e. you don't normally need to backup your OS or applications as they are on the install media / can be downloaded again).

    The best solution for what I think you want is to only backup the contents of you my documents folder / home directory (or whatever it’s called on a Mac!), perhaps using something like Time Machine which allows you to have multiple backups or snapshots without needing to copy the entire disk every time you do so (just the files that have changed)
     
  3. mixedup

    mixedup Geek Trainee

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    thanks - but I understand all that - I'm after hardware HDD protection here...

    Anyone else have any advice/recommendations re "What is the most cost effective way to have a mirrored disk arrangement for an external HDD solution for my MacBook? (albeit USB, Firewire or NAS)?"
     
  4. Impotence

    Impotence May the source be with u!

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    Just to clarify, are you trying to mirror your laptops hard drive to an external or mirror two external drives?
     
  5. mixedup

    mixedup Geek Trainee

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    mirror 2 external drives, be they direct attached (USB, firewire) or NAS based

    thanks
     
  6. Impotence

    Impotence May the source be with u!

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    Your probably going to want to use firewire, but you should buy enclosures that have usb and two firewire ports on them (so you can daisy chain them if using firewire).

    E-sata would normally be the best method for doing this, even if you had to use a 2port esata express card expansion but as far as i know only the mac book pro's have the expansion slot and for some reason its hooked up to the usb bus instead of the pci bus (so it's no better than usb, which you already have).
     

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