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I'm tired of playing catch up when a drive fails (because backups are for squids) and I'm thinking I'd like to set up a RAID. I have 4 of these
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20T...gy/FWU2MS/ with 4 300gb drives and I'd like to know what software I would need to set up a raid. I'm also still using OS 9 for this particular situation (G4 Sawtooth music server). Keep in mind I am a raid dope and it's Sat night and I've started drinking (vodka tonics with lime) after a hard day in the salt mines. So...suggestions please.
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Were you on OS X, I'd simply say SoftRaid
http://www.softraid.com/
It works how you want it to work. I would stake my data (and my business) on it. And I have. And it's saved my ass.
Now, on the OS 9 side, I dunno.
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Well, I'm also running 10.4 but I still prefer 9
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A raid isn't backup plan. A raid should keep you going in the event of a drive crash but you always always need to have important info in more than one place.
SoftRaid 3.2 is available for OS 9.
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Nope... but it's sure nice when a &$#@ drive fails.
Won't help if you delete something yourself though, and won't help if the data somehow gets corrupted.
OS X can also make a RAID all by itself.. but I don't know if or how it works with external drives, and I have no idea how it stacks up against SoftRAID.
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If you're using OS X Tiger 10.4.6, Drive Setup can make a RAID 0 volume out of 4 external HDrives, but it won't be redundant, that is fail-safe backup. RAID 0 is what is known as "striped" drives. You make a RAID 0 volume for ultimate speed. It's the fastest drive setup there is, barring an optical/fibre channel setup. If you want redundancy, where if one HDrive fails, another HDrive can be inserted in its place and rebuilt with the same data that you "lost", you'll need to set up a RAID 1, or 5 system.
That being written, you don't have the equipment to set up a RAID, with 4 miniStacks. You want to have a 4-HDrive enclosure, not 4 separate enclosures. How are you planning to hook up all those HDrives? Answer, you can't unless they are daisy-chained together, in which case you cannot make a RAID out of such a setup.
You need to have 4 HDrives on the same bus, either external or internal. It can't be done with the equipment you have.
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With four matching drives I would suggest two ways.
First set up, makes 2 RAID 0 arrays, two striped arruys for maximum speed, and then either mirror the two arrays (RAID1) or set up a daily back up plan.
Or RAID 5. RAID 5 will require a controller, but will give you 900GB of space from 4 300GB drives, while the plan above will give you only 600GB.
Also, I would suggest getting a cheap controller card and moving those drives inside your G4, they will work much faster inside.
Jon
