External enclosure that supports RAID1?

[M A V I C]

I'm trying to find an external FW (eSATA is also an option) enclosure that supports two drives and does RAID1. However, the only ones I can seem to find only do RAID0.

Anyone know where I can find a RAID1 enclosure?

[mattkime]

What kind of mac are you connecting this to?

Be careful with the low end raid enclosures. Give their recovery options a solid trial before trusting it with you data.

[M A V I C]

It will connect to a MacBook Pro most of the time. Maybe a G5 on occasion too, but if I has to be MBP only, that's fine.

Thanks for the note on the lower end ones. I found these http://www.cooldrives.com/noname.html

There's this one for $299 and I like that it's compact:
http://www.cooldrives.com/dudralmira01.html
but it's only software - PLEASE NOTE: THIS ITEM USES INITIO 2430L CHIP, THIS IS NOT A HARDWARE RAID SYSTEM. - would you consider this one a "lower end" one?

This one is a hardware RAID1:
http://www.cooldrives.com/dusahddfiusb.html

[mattkime]

>>would you consider this one a "lower end" one?

Yeah, pretty much anything less than an Xserve RAID is low end.

Go ahead and try whatever suits you best but test how it responds when you remove a drive (simulating a failure) or add a drive.

Perhaps you know this but -

RAID 1 is for uptime. There a number of ways that your data can be corrupted where a RAID 1 won't protect you. Simply using a dual drive enclosure and doing two separate backups would be safer from a backup standpoint.

[jdc]

i gave up on find a decent RAID 1 enclosure for less than $400

so i bought a nice 2 bay FW 800 enclosure and do drive to drive backups 2 times a day -- one manually when i leave for lunch and one scheduled at midnight

even backing up several gigs of new data only takes a minute or two -- i just pop open silverkeeper and hit "syncronize" -- if i really felt like it i could do a quick manual backup every hour

[Filliam H. Muffman]

I just found this place yesterday while reading through the BareFeats storage archives. It is a little expensive though.
http://www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp

[M A V I C]

[quote mattkime]RAID 1 is for uptime. There a number of ways that your data can be corrupted where a RAID 1 won't protect you. Simply using a dual drive enclosure and doing two separate backups would be safer from a backup standpoint.
It is for backup, but I wont have a lot of time to spend on copying files to two locations... I was hoping for something more automated.

Maybe I can find a way via freeware or Automater that I can just copy the files to a folder on one drive, and that will automatically copy it over to the other drive.

[M A V I C]

[quote Filliam H. Muffman]I just found this place yesterday while reading through the BareFeats storage archives. It is a little expensive though.
http://www.caldigit.com/S2VRDuo.asp
Actually, it's not too bad at all:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822339007

If that's the price with two 320GB drives (maybe it's just two 160's?) that's pretty good.

[mattkime]

>>Maybe I can find a way via freeware or Automater that I can just copy the files to a folder on one drive, and that will automatically copy it over to the other drive.

Use SuperDuper. Smart Updates are quick. Also, the copy from Disk 1 -> Disk 2 would be slower than MacBook-> Disk 2 since both drives are on the same bus. $30 for SuperDuper is much cheaper than a $300 enclosure.

[M A V I C]

[quote mattkime]>>Maybe I can find a way via freeware or Automater that I can just copy the files to a folder on one drive, and that will automatically copy it over to the other drive.

Use SuperDuper. Smart Updates are quick. Also, the copy from Disk 1 -> Disk 2 would be slower than MacBook-> Disk 2 since both drives are on the same bus. $30 for SuperDuper is much cheaper than a $300 enclosure.
I need to keep the process as simple as possible. I'll be using it for storage of photos on location. If I keep them on the MBP's HD, it'll fill up. Plus when I go to build galleries from them it's a bit slow. So I want to get the files on an external HD for speed, but put it on two for redundancy.

I'm going to be getting media cards from a half dozen photographers, organizing them... I don't have much time and manually copying them to different locations is going to eat up time I don't have. The puzzle is complicated enough, so I'm trying to keep things really simple.

It looks like SuperDuper doesn't have any sort of automated system where, if files are copied to one location, it automatically copies them to another location. I either have to schedule it or push a button. Is that the case or am I just not seeing where it can make automated, non-schedule backups?