Looking for a Good External HD

Scannerman said:

Yes, RAID1 is mirroring. I'm not sure you can set it up from Disk Management in Windows 11. My guess is probably not. Depending on whether you want to use hardware RAID or soft RAID you can use software to configure your drives for RAID. Both Intel and AMD provide apps for this. There are also plenty of instructional videos on YouTube that can walk you through the process. With mechanical drives it's fairly easy. NVMe uses bifibumalaetectrocution for RAID 0. Probably not something for the novice. Mirroring is simple, but you still have to configure your UEFI for RAID before you begin and if you didn't install your OS after configuring your "BIOS" for RAID there's a good chance you'll lose your boot strap. My advice is to do some research first, watch some videos, and then decide if you really need it. Most folks don't. It's really a matter of user preference.

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So, since I already have my OS installed, I probably couldn't set up RAID1?

JAM83 said:

So, since I already have my OS installed, I probably couldn't set up RAID1?

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Probably not. I had a computer that I added a second drive to but wasn't aware the BIOS had a setting for AHCI/RAID, no problems. Later I decided to change the second/data drive to a larger one and the computer would boot, found that the BIOS needed changed and reinstall Windows without the second drive. Adding the second drive later worked. Changing to/adding RAID probably would also require reinstall.

Generally speaking, RAID 1 is great for servers, and mostly for the running operating system. With servers, it's great to have a second copy running alongside the first, so if a drive dies, the server experiences no downtime. The business keeps running. Data is typically stored on a RAID5/6/10/50 volume.

For home use, I'm not sure how great RAID 1 is. Reason being, most problems are not drives that die, but rather bad things that get installed, or misconfigurations that you are trying to recover from, viruses, malware, etc. With RAID 1, since it writes data to both drives simultaneously, if you get hit with malware/randomware, it's on both of your drives. If you modify the registry and the box doesn't boot, it's on both of your drives. If you accidentally permanently delete something, ooops it's gone on both disks.

And with RAID 1, you lose 50% disk capacity. So, if you buy a pair of 8TB drives and put them in, you have 16TB of raw space, but only 8TB usuable. And there are added complexities for backing it up and restoring your RAID configuration drives.

I agree that RAID 1 is generally for servers, but it is not exclusively for servers. Many external drives come with software for mirroring backups today and that is indeed RAID if not RAID 1. With work stations, it's a great benefit to have a second copy of mirrored data handy in the event something goes wrong with the working copy. Domestic end users can also benefit by having their home videos, family photos, manuscripts, docs. etc. on a duplicate drive. If one drive fails there is a duplicate copy available. Hard drives do fail even in domestic environments.

Because all RAID always requires extra capacity to work with it can be expensive; however the lowered costs of mechanical hard drives due to the popularity of solid state drives has made RAID more affordable, but the matter of requiring that extra capacity still remains. Plus not all hard drives are RAID friendly. Once again, I cannot stress the importance of using of CMR drives more. Even if one does not use RAID it is good for one to keep one's options open. Conventional magnetic recording isn't always a bad thing and yes, the same can be said for SMR. That said it isn't advisable to use SMR for RAID.

What some users frequently fail to realize is that they do not have to run their operating systems on a RAID array in order to keep their storage running in RAID. I can have my OS in AHCI while the rest of my drives are configured in RAID, whether it be 0, 1, 5, 6, or 10. A good VS should be employed on any system whether it is running RAID (or otherwise) and a good virus scanner will also scan all storage drives in addition to the operating system. Whether you have malware on one drive or on an entire array you will still have malware. If one accidentally permanently deletes something on their OS, or on their storage the issue is the same. This sort of user error cannot be blamed on RAID any more than it can be blamed on AHCI. The risk is the same. As for the question of registry errors it is inadvisable to run an operating system on a RAID 1 array as it simply isn't practical. RAID 1 is predominantly used for storage.

Technically, one does not lose 50% capacity by choosing to employ RAID 1. For example, if one uses two drives that are 8TB each in capacity for a RAID 1 array all 16TB of storage are still usable and can be used. The catch is that the second drive can only be used to make duplicate copies of the data on the first drive. That's it, that's all. So in essence all that capacity is being used @ 50% X 2. Nothing is really being lost here — it's just being used differently as 50% of the space is reserved for duplication.

Ironically, I just asked my wife how she liked her RAID 1 storage. She looked directly at me and smiled and said, "It's great!'

Again. This is a matter for user preference, one of those small luxuries in life but not entirely essential. Of course, there's always One Drive.

Scannerman said:

I agree that RAID 1 is generally for servers, but it is not exclusively for servers. Many external drives come with software for mirroring backups today and that is indeed RAID if not RAID 1. With work stations, it's a great benefit to have a second copy of mirrored data handy in the event something goes wrong with the working copy. Domestic end users can also benefit by having their home videos, family photos, manuscripts, docs. etc. on a duplicate drive. If one drive fails there is a duplicate copy available. Hard drives do fail even in domestic environments.

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yeah, i didn't say RAID 1 is only for servers. I just think it's best utilized there, when you cannot afford to have a box down because the OS drive won't boot. But yes, RAID 1 will protect you from a hard drive failure.....but that's all.

Scannerman said:

Technically, one does not lose 50% capacity by choosing to employ RAID 1. For example, if one uses two drives that are 8TB each in capacity for a RAID 1 array all 16TB of storage are still usable and can be used. The catch is that the second drive can only be used to make duplicate copies of the data on the first drive. That's it, that's all. So in essence all that capacity is being used @ 50% X 2. Nothing is really being lost here — it's just being used differently as 50% of the space is reserved for duplication.

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LOL. Every writeup you will find about RAID 1 says a downside is that you only get 1/2 of the capacity. If you run RAID 0 you get 100% of your capacity, thus 2 x 4TB drives gives you 8TB to store say videos. If you have a collection of videos and they are 7TB, they will git on your RAID 0. If you go RAID 1, you only get 50% of the capacity that you bought. So, 2 x 4TB is just 4TB. If you have 7TB of videos, they won't fit on your RAID 1 array. It's all semantics. You haven't exactly "lost it", but you cannot use it in a fashion that everybody would expect.

My biggest concern with a home environment and RAID 1 is extra complexity in the setup, making imaging and restoring images harder. The only real advantage is to protect you if 1 hard drive were to fail. It does nothing to save you from yourself, viruses, malware, ransomware, data corruption, overwriting an important file, etc. All of those things can be mitigated by making backups, and backups can also save your bacon if your hard drive fails.

RAID is not a backup. It should never be considered as such. It's only protection against a drive failure.

pparks1 said:

yeah, i didn't say RAID 1 is only for servers. I just think it's best utilized there, when you cannot afford to have a box down because the OS drive won't boot. But yes, RAID 1 will protect you from a hard drive failure.....but that's all.

LOL. Every writeup you will find about RAID 1 says a downside is that you only get 1/2 of the capacity. If you run RAID 0 you get 100% of your capacity, thus 2 x 4TB drives gives you 8TB to store say videos. If you have a collection of videos and they are 7TB, they will git on your RAID 0. If you go RAID 1, you only get 50% of the capacity that you bought. So, 2 x 4TB is just 4TB. If you have 7TB of videos, they won't fit on your RAID 1 array. It's all semantics. You haven't exactly "lost it", but you cannot use it in a fashion that everybody would expect.

My biggest concern with a home environment and RAID 1 is extra complexity in the setup, making imaging and restoring images harder. The only real advantage is to protect you if 1 hard drive were to fail. It does nothing to save you from yourself, viruses, malware, ransomware, data corruption, overwriting an important file, etc. All of those things can be mitigated by making backups, and backups can also save your bacon if your hard drive fails.

RAID is not a backup. It should never be considered as such. It's only protection against a drive failure.

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Yeah, and I didn't say you said that either. I also stressed that this is a matter of user preference and even went so far as to refer to it as a luxury. A little extra protection can't hurt but there are times when it can certainly come in handy.

Not every writeup about RAID 1 says that the downside is that the user only gets 1/2 of the capacity but I've certainly read the articles that suggest it and I think they are misleading. The user still has the same capacity but it is accessed differently. Two physical 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 still allow access to 16TB of capacity, but access to the second drive is indirect. Two equal sized glasses of water filled to 1/2 their capacity still = 1 full glass of water. The system reads 8TB X 2 as only 8TB because it was instructed to read it as a single drive and treat it as such. Physically, the user in this example still has 16TB capacity at their disposal and can easily reset the drives to make the system recognize this. Of course doing so will result in the loss the RAID array and I think that should be expected.

My 12 year old has had RAID 1 on her PC since she was 10. She has a shortcut to the array on her desktop called "Archives". She drags and drops folders to the array just as one would access any regular drive. She puts her drawings, music, videos, etc. on this drive. One day her Western Digital backup drive failed. It was nasty. Her PC kept on blue screening so I had to repair her Windows 8.1 by some other means. I did eventually discover what caused the BSOD. It certainly wasn't her Archives, but I recall her words to me as she smiled and said, "It's a good thing I kept all my important stuff in my archive folder". She lost nothing of consequence as she had kept all her "personal stuff" on a separate raided drive in duplicate. That grin on her face after she accessed the fresh shortcut she made on her desktop was priceless.

Not using RAID 1 will not protect you from viruses, malware, ransomware, bloatware, shareware, scareware, I don't care either, so the point is moot. There is software for those sorts of things. People over write files on non-raid just as easily as they do on RAID. Data can go corrupt regardless. This brings me to my final point: Backups fail. Backups fail often. In fact, a corrupt backup can completely destroy your data. Is RAID a replacement for backup? A: Not at all.

Having duplicate copies of personal data on a RAID 1 array is extra insurance against a failed backup. You can image your operating system, make restore points, and run your PC just as easily as you can without RAID if you simply use RAID strictly for storage. You don't need to put your OS on a RAID array as some folks do. On my work station I run five different RAID arrays. My operating system isn't on any of them.* As for failed backups I could tell you some stories but then I'd have to write a book.

Moral of the story: Never trust in backups alone. Never put all your eggs in one basket.

*correction* My secondary operating system is in RAID 0. It has been this way for years. My main OS isn't on a RAID array. Funny thing is, I'm typing this on a very old, never failed, Windows 7 Ultimate OS in RAID 0. (Supposedly one of the most volatile arrays going.) Perhaps I should boot back to my Win 11. I forgot I was still on Windows 7. It runs soo smooth!

The absolute best external hard drive...

Scannerman said:

Not every writeup about RAID 1 says that the downside is that the user only gets 1/2 of the capacity but I've certainly read the articles that suggest it and I think they are misleading. The user still has the same capacity but it is accessed differently.

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It's half of the capacity, no iffs, and or butys. You buy 2 x 4TB drives, that's 8TB possible of data. If you duplicate your data, you are giving up 1/2 your storage. If you buy 4 x 4TB of disks and you copy drive to drives 2,3.,4, at the end of the day you only have 4TB worth of pictures, you have just stored them 4x. I don't think that is misleading.

Let's be honest a person buys a 1TB hard drive an sees just 931GB when connected to a windows machine and they think that the manufacturer was misleading them. If they bought 2 x 1Tb drive and found just 931GB total, I think they would complain about missing 1/2 of their capacity.

Scannerman said:

Two physical 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 still allow access to 16TB of capacity, but access to the second drive is indirect. Two equal sized glasses of water filled to 1/2 their capacity still = 1 full glass of water.

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That's correct. But if people had 2 glasses that each held 16 oz water, i think if they want to a bar and asked for 2 glasses of water and they each asked for 1 glass of water, they would be bummed if they each got 8oz of water and the bartender said, but if you combine both glasses, you end up with the 16 oz glasses of water you expect. You would say you got 1/2 as much water as you expected.

pparks1 said:

Let's be honest a person buys a 1TB hard drive an sees just 931GB when connected to a windows machine and they think that the manufacturer was misleading them. If they bought 2 x 1Tb drive and found just 931GB total, I think they would complain about missing 1/2 of their capacity.

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That's a poor example. Anybody that has investigated this knows that manufactures and Windows define GB and TB differently. That was litigated in court before. The courts have never stopped the drive manufacturers from using the terminology they use. Microsoft defines things based on 1K = 1024 bytes while drive manufacture define 1K = 1000 bytes. So whose right?

Somebody came up with a new terminology where GiB and TiB is used instead of GB and TB. If this is used for the drive you mentioned:
1 Terabyte = 931.323 Gibibyte. What do you know! Nothing is lost after all.

MisterEd said:

That's a poor example. Anybody that has investigated this knows that manufactures and Windows define GB and TB differently. That was litigated in court before. The courts have never stopped the drive manufacturers from using the terminology they use. Microsoft defines things based on 1K = 1024 bytes while drive manufacture define 1K = 1000 bytes. So whose right?

Somebody came up with a new terminology where GiB and TiB is used instead of GB and TB. If this is used for the drive you mentioned:
1 Terabyte = 931.323 Gibibyte. What do you know! Nothing is lost after all.

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I know, my point is that some will complain when their 1TB drive is smaller than 1TB. I think if these folks bought a pair of 4TB drives and installed them in their computer, if they found out they had a 4TB C drive and nothing else, they would feel like they only got 1/2 of the drive space they expected.

Clearly those of us who understand RAID know that you lose 50% when do RAID 1, but you still only get 50% capacity with RAID 1, with RAID 0, you get 100% of the disk space.

Both of my HDDs just left the Little Rock, Arkansas USPS Distribution Center. So Hopefully, I will get them tomorrow. If not, it'll be Thursday.

pparks1 said:

I know, my point is that some will complain when their 1TB drive is smaller than 1TB. I think if these folks bought a pair of 4TB drives and installed them in their computer, if they found out they had a 4TB C drive and nothing else, they would feel like they only got 1/2 of the drive space they expected.

Clearly those of us who understand RAID know that you lose 50% when do RAID 1, but you still only get 50% capacity with RAID 1, with RAID 0, you get 100% of the disk space.

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Clearly those of us who fully comprehend how RAID works know for a fact that when we are in possession of 12TB of functional storage that it makes no difference if that storage is 6TB X2 or 2TBX6 that we are still in possession of 12TB of functional storage. Perceived "loss" is not actual loss. All of the space on the drives is in fact being utilized in a RAID 1 configuration, but because half of the total information is limited to duplication the system application will present it as a single drive. For example, in Windows Disk Management a RAID 1 drive will be recognized as a single drive. Two 6TB drives will be read as one 6TB drive but the information will be written to two 6TB drives; therefore all of the 12TB capacity is in fact being utilized. There is no physical loss. The capacity is merely being utilized differently. You still have 100% of the disk space. You're just putting the data into two baskets instead of only one. 100% of the disk space is in fact being utilized while 50% of it is allocated for duplication. This is not the same thing as losing storage capacity. A 6TB array in RAID 1 holds up to 12TB of data because all the data is mirrored.

JAM83 said:

Both of my HDDs just left the Little Rock, Arkansas USPS Distribution Center. So Hopefully, I will get them tomorrow. If not, it'll be Thursday.

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That's great news! Whether you run with RAID or simply use both drives as backup drives is your own prerogative. Running RAID does require you to have a little money to play with. Either way you will still need to back up your operating system. If you clone your current operating system as I suggested and keep it in cold storage as I suggested you technically still have a back up. The drawback to cold storage is keeping the rest of your data current. Again, this is where an "Archives" can be a life saver as standard backups, especially Windows backups, are notorious for failing. There are applications for backups that will be more reliable than what your Windows operating system offers. Research this and find the one that suits you best. Different people prefer different apps for backing up their data. Whether you choose to use one of these or not I still recommend cloning your operating system in the event that your system crashes and/or your backup fails.

In the event that you do need to plug your cloned drive back into your PC to get back your operating system, make sure that you bring it back up to date. You can drag and drop your personal files from your Archive folder back onto your desktop if you wish. There are also ways of extracting your personal information from the failed operating system as well. YouTube provides a plethora of instructional videos on how to do this, or you can ask someone here. RAID 1 is not a replacement for backup but it can provide you with a little extra insurance for in the event that your backup fails. It is a worthy consideration.

Scannerman said:

That's great news! Whether you run with RAID or simply use both drives as backup drives is your own prerogative. Running RAID does require you to have a little money to play with. Either way you will still need to back up your operating system. If you clone your current operating system as I suggested and keep it in cold storage as I suggested you technically still have a back up. The drawback to cold storage is keeping the rest of your data current. Again, this is where an "Archives" can be a life saver as standard backups, especially Windows backups, are notorious for failing. There are applications for backups that will be more reliable than what your Windows operating system offers. Research this and find the one that suits you best. Different people prefer different apps for backing up their data. Whether you choose to use one of these or not I still recommend cloning your operating system in the event that your system crashes and/or your backup fails.

In the event that you do need to plug your cloned drive back into your PC to get back your operating system, make sure that you bring it back up to date. You can drag and drop your personal files from your Archive folder back onto your desktop if you wish. There are also ways of extracting your personal information from the failed operating system as well. YouTube provides a plethora of instructional videos on how to do this, or you can ask someone here. RAID 1 is not a replacement for backup but it can provide you with a little extra insurance for in the event that your backup fails. It is a worthy consideration.

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I never backup my OS, to be truthful. It's just so much easier for me to do a clean install OR do a system restore if something happens. Matter a fact, I need to create a System Restore Point.

JAM83 said:

I never backup my OS, to be truthful. It's just so much easier for me to do a clean install OR do a system restore if something happens. Matter a fact, I need to create a System Restore Point.

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I'm not entirely unfamiliar with this approach either and I really can't knock it when it's done right: personal files on a separate drive for easy access and a drive image to flip to. If you do it this way you'll always have a functional OS to swap out and you just overwrite the botched drive after you scrape off whatever data you need from it. Thing is, if you have a lot of apps and stuff to reinstall (after all the updates that follow the swap) it can be time consuming. I've learned to be flexible over the years: If the backup fails I opt for the cloned drive. That way half the work is already done.

Scannerman said:

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with this approach either and I really can't knock it when it's done right: personal files on a separate drive for easy access and a drive image to flip to. If you do it this way you'll always have a functional OS to swap out and you just overwrite the botched drive after you scrape off whatever data you need from it. Thing is, if you have a lot of apps to reinstall (after all the updates that follow the swap) it can be time consuming. I've learned to be flexible over the years: If the backup fails I opt for the cloned drive. That way half the work is already done.

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Yeah I do have a lot of software to install, but it gives me something to do for a few days. . lol And yes, all of my personal files are on the other partition. . . I have a 500GB M.2 Drive, and I split it into 2 separate 250GB Partitions. . My OS is on one partition, and my files and stuff are on the other.

My C:\ drives have about 30GB on each. Takes me 90 seconds to make a backup.
My games are all installed on my F:\ drive.

Ghot said:

View attachment 72337



My C:\ drives have about 30GB on each. Takes me 90 seconds to make a backup.
My games are all installed on my F:\ drive.



View attachment 72341

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Hey Ghot. If you have an OS failure or whatever, since you're games and stuff are on another drive, would you have to reinstall the games in order to get them to work? I'd LOVE to be able to install software on another drive, then if I have to do a clean install, the software would still work. . LOL Idk if that's possible or not.

JAM83 said:

Hey Ghot. If you have an OS failure or whatever, since you're games and stuff are on another drive, would you have to reinstall the games in order to get them to work? I'd LOVE to be able to install software on another drive, then if I have to do a clean install, the software would still work. . LOL Idk if that's possible or not.

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Negatory good buddy.
If my OS drive fails, I just replace it and restore from my backup. About 10 minutes, including swapping the SSD.

The backup's registry, knows where my games are installed.
This is the value of full backups.

You are correct about a clean install. You would have to reinstall your games, because a clean install is a NEW registry.

But replacing a drive and slapping a backup on to it... it contains... everything.
The backup contains everything. The file paths to my games, my USER files, my settings, the registry... everything.


My 8TB drive is a one to one copy of my 4TB drive. So if one of those fails... I replace and copy from the one that didn't fail to the new one.

And because I have Win 10 and Win 11 on different SSDs... if one of them fails, I still have the other.
They both have the same software installed.

So let's say the Win 11 SSD dies. I just physically switch the cables to the Win 10 SSD and I'm up and running in under a minute.
I then order another 500GB SSD, and when it arrives... I hook it up, and restore from my Win 11 backup.


I keep Win 10 and Win 11 backups, so I'm covered when either SSD fails.





I used to have backups, all the way back to July... but since I did the revocations and reinstalled Bitdefender... those earlier backups became useless.