Hey All,

I have a pc that I have been playing with as a Linux server. I was using a SATA Raid card to run 4 x 200GB disks in Raid 5 - but after reading a RAID5 article, I am wary of facing a rebuild and running into an unreadable error - or possibility of 2 failed drives. The SATA raid card has also had one or two strange rebuilds - where one of the drives was "missing" for a session and then needed to be rebuilt. I think this could be because the PSU cannot handle 4 drives - checking that one out.

Would love to hear info on other peoples backup strategy. I have approx 150GB of video files (tv shows etc) & 120GB of Photos. I would also like to start running a backup program to create weekly backups of critical files from 2-3 windows PC's (all XP)

I was thinking of a few things;
1. Buy two massive drives (1TB?) and run in Raid 1 (with card)
2. Create a Raid 5 array for Data i.e. boot drive as normal but then 3 drives in Raid 5 for the "data"
3. Buy a Raid 6 card and be done with it
4. Get an external drive to use as "backup"
5. Add a single internal 1TB drive to use as "backup"

On the OS front - I tried RHEL, Clarke Connect etc, but have found Debian easiest to use for what I want.

Would appreciate anyone's input.

I think the cheapest and most fail-safe way is a 1TB drive in another computer (with rsync)

- you don't need to avoid downtime while restoring from backup (i.e. there is little reason for raid)
- the contents are not modified often. A daily backup should suffice.
- raid offers no protection against accidental file deletion (main argument, in my opinion)
- having the disk in another computer protects you against hacking/random program going crazy/user mistakes/flooding (happened to me)/etc
- raid has a certain risk of failure (eg. firmware, etc)
- raid is more expensive