Bootable Hardware Raid?

[I_Need_A_Better_Name]

Excuse me I might have chosen the wrong subforum.

I don't know anything about raids (software/hardware) but I got a bit curious when I read about them.
Currently my setup consists of: 1TB HDD (boot, OSX) and 1TB HDD for media files. I'm kind of a data redundancy/security freak, my bootdrive is backuped via TimeMachine to an external drive and cloned once per week to another drive. The media HDD is cloned to an external drive as well. I got 2TB in effective use and >3TB backup for the 2TB.

Backing up takes some time so I thought about a raid system, e.g. raid 6/10. What about creating one big raid 6/10 containing my OS as well as the media files? The primary points are the costs because in this case I'd need a bootable raid and no fake-hardware raid card? From what I've seen they are way too expensive so is there an alternative solution? Any links or recommendations?

Even with a raid system - in theory I should still maintain an external backup of the files. Is it possible to do this without building the same raid twice?

edit// One of the benefits I'm aiming for is the possibility to fuse my bootdrive with my media drive what would take a bit of hassle for me.

 

[Going Bald]

Excuse me I might have chosen the wrong subforum.

I don't know anything about raids (software/hardware) but I got a bit curious when I read about them.
Currently my setup consists of: 1TB HDD (boot, OSX) and 1TB HDD for media files. I'm kind of a data redundancy/security freak, my bootdrive is backuped via TimeMachine to an external drive and cloned once per week to another drive. The media HDD is cloned to an external drive as well. I got 2TB in effective use and >3TB backup for the 2TB.

Backing up takes some time so I thought about a raid system, e.g. raid 6/10. What about creating one big raid 6/10 containing my OS as well as the media files? The primary points are the costs because in this case I'd need a bootable raid and no fake-hardware raid card? From what I've seen they are way too expensive so is there an alternative solution? Any links or recommendations?

Even with a raid system - in theory I should still maintain an external backup of the files. Is it possible to do this without building the same raid twice?

edit// One of the benefits I'm aiming for is the possibility to fuse my bootdrive with my media drive what would take a bit of hassle for me.

Creating a RAID boot drive is a bad idea IMHO. A mirrored RAID1 setup would be OK for security of storage with 2 drives, or even better a RAID 10 setup with 4+ drives.
Put your OS on a small SSD if you want to speed things up, but I really don't recommend a RAID boot drive. Especially not a RAID0 - that's asking for trouble.
For a How-To see https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5834

 

[Middleman]

I totally agree with Going Bald on this one.....a raided system for a boot drive is generally a no no. It's fine with data but certainly not for boot.

However saying that I have recently implemented and are now using at least two Fusion Drives which are in theory 'raided drives' with SSD as a sort of read-and-write ahead cache. We've found it has certainly helped speed things up - and this jump in speed is certainly worthwhile, especially if you are fully backed up regularly.

We ourselves have been using RAID systems for years, and some have been more reliable than others. Whilst we use a RAID we always keep a copy in the background - at the moment using a Drobo Pro to do so on a daily basis. The most reliable system we've found has been the Areca systems. Using RAID 5, they are absolutely sturdy and dependable as well as speedy (over 700-1000MB/s on a good setup). And the great thing about them is....their cards can be used in a Hackintosh, especially now with the new Mountain Lion release, their drivers are native to the OS. You still have to install their browser software - but as least the card is recognised natively in OSX.

I'd thought a lot before about using Time Machine, but I find it's a bit of a waste, since it doesn't completely back everything up in one go. It's great for those small files you may have deleted and want to find every now and then - but it's not perfect. I'd much prefer a straight backup copy of the drive in question - one that can be made bootable. People always think about backing drive images up to NASes but it's a waste of time in my opinion - because the backup and recovery of the image is going to take forever on the network. It's much cheaper and faster to just have a drive sitting next to you in case things go awry. And especially now with Thunderbolt being available so cheaply and securely (compared to NAS box and a cloud server for instance), if you're using a Seagate GoFlex TB adapter you can go a long way with your setup. Backup takes literally minutes and hours instead of hours and days. Case in point - we were working with 12TB of data one day when transferring from one Areca box to another. It took us 3 hours complete the job on an Areca Thunderbolt system. On a conventional system like Firewire 800 say, it'll take one approximately 12 days to complete the same task. That was what happened to one our friends who was using a different brand RAID drive when he noticed it starting to fail. So he had no choice but to back them up quickly via Firewire drives (what was available on his Mac anyway). It took him 12 days in total....

 

[I_Need_A_Better_Name]

Sorry for not responding that long.
You're right, a bootable raid is not that suitable, thanks a lot.
Now I'm looking more into some kind of multi bay NAS (or something similar) to source the backup HDDs out.

 

[Dschijn]

You can get an external RAID for eSATA.
I have one from OWX with 4x2TB Seagate 24/7 HDDs attached via eSATA and configured as a RAID 5.
So I get max SATA II = 250mb/s speed read/write an it's recognized as an internal drive.

 

[nbhms]

Reviving a bit of an old thread here, but I'm curious as to why everyone says a RAID boot drive is a bad idea on Mac OS X / Hackintosh? My day job is in enterprise IT, and from that perspective I have to say we would never roll out a system that didn't have hardware raid for the boot / OS partitions.

I agree completely that RAID does not take the place of a good backup, but I fail to see how a good hardware raid setup for your home machine would be a "bad idea", other than cost.

Especially with the unique issues we have with building hackintoshes, I think a mirrored hardware raid setup would be the perfect solution. Before applying any attempted patches/updates/upgrades, you could unplug one half of the mirror, do the install, if it works, rebuild the mirror with your newly upgraded drive, if it breaks, remove the drive with the failed upgrade, re-connect the "good" drive, and boot. Re-mirror, make another attempt.