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[benn600]

I bought a few more WD 500GB My Book's (USB only) assuming I would be able to use the Windows XP built-in RAID 5 setup.  This doesn't seem to work because it doesn't like that they are USB.  Does anyone know of a way to get around this?  I could use different software, perhaps provide a modified driver to pretend they are firewire (I followed a tutorial to enable firewire capability), use a registry hack to allow usb drives, etc..??

I really need a way to get my drives into 1 single TB drive instead of having two 500GB drives if I can and RAID 5 provides onsite redundancy and I'll keep other copies offsite.

[johnnyboy]

You're taking the whole backup deal REALLY seriously.

If you're going to be taking it that seriously though and spending that much on it, you REALLY dont want to be using usb raid 5 hard drives with some hacked firmware.
Defeats the whole purpose.

I personally would also say dont use USB external hard drives if you're looking for the kind of assurance you seem to be after. You're going to all this hassle to have these as your security backup and from personal experience I find USB hard drives really unreliable.
I can no longer read the data on mine. XP Just hangs after a while.

Raid 5 itself is a bit excessive as you dont need backup for constantly changing data, you just want a one off backup of a big load of information that wont really be changing ever so only needs to be saved somewhere once then left.

Have you looked into tape backup drives.
U could probably find a slightly older second hand one and just use that to make some backup tapes of all your data.
They're high capacity and it's not something you're going to be needing to do that often.


http://cgi.ebay.com/EXABYTE-Tape-Backup-Drive-Multi-GB-Gigabyte-Terabyte-TB_W0QQitemZ330017536230QQihZ014QQcategoryZ51090QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Would be your ultimate solution but is a bit pricey.
You seem to be forking out cash though quite a bit - take back those USB drives

http://cgi.ebay.com/NICE-DELL-PV-110T-LTO-EXT-DRIVE-200GB-TAPE-WARRANTY_W0QQitemZ110019499524QQihZ001QQcategoryZ39978QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem



http://cgi.ebay.com/Hp-Ultrium-230-LTO-Tape-Drive-100-200GB-A6322-69001-14_W0QQitemZ130016818579QQihZ003QQcategoryZ51090QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

BUY THIS ONE NOW - soooo cheap (haven't done any research on it and dont know anything about that specific model so do your own research, just saying its a great price and high capacity).


That's a much better solution for both onsite and offsite storage.
Also alot less likely to ever get damaged than a hard drive.

[Two Wire]

You might want to consider this :  http://lime-technology.com/ and http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=573986&highlight=unraid

Sorry, I do not know how to turn these into a hyperlink.

[benn600]

It may seem like I'm crazy but it isn't that complicated.  I am not going to mess with the raid thing.  I just wanted raid so I could get one large drive and not have to worry about having too much space on my music/pictures/etc drive and not enough on my dedicated video drive.

I'm going to use 2 drives running separately with 1 video backup drive kept offsite and 2 drives for the other data--one onsite and one offsite.

That seems reasonable and it's working at the moment.  I've had no trouble with USB external drives after a few years of use so I'll keep at it.  As long as my 3 main drives don't fail at the exact same time, I'll be fine.  The video is more so I don't have to re-rip all my DVDs...wouldn't really matter if I lost it but I'm gonna use that 1 backup drive anyway.

[Two Wire]

One great thing about the Unraid solution is the power management capability.  The drives will spin down and sleep after a period of inactivity.

[benn600]

I do agree a lot with that.  My main drive will be running 24/7 cause it hosts some web sites and podcasts are downloaded at night--plus it has other data that is accessed on a regular basis but the video drive will only be used when watching a video or adding videos--a lot less often than when I listen to music, etc.

Do you guys know how much power a typical 7200 RPM drive takes?  I was thinking I heard quite a bit but that might be inaccurate.  I mean honestly, power is a big issue, too, so the non raid setup does save power--using only 2 drives instead of 3 and keeping the others off + it doesn't require both to be on all the time if any data is accessed.