{"id":490,"date":"2006-10-03t18:50:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-03t23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-10-01t09:17:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01t13:17:34","slug":"raid-kills-hard-drive-failures-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2006\/10\/03\/raid-kills-hard-drive-failures-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"raid kills hard drive failures dead!"},"content":{"rendered":"
the no-brainer safety cushion for every accountant. <\/i><\/p>\n
by rick telberg<\/b>
\nfor hewlett packard<\/i><\/p>\n
having a hard disk crash is bad, even when you have a back-up copy of your data and possibly, your applications. having this happen on a pc that’s running a mission-critical application, whether it’s tax return preparation, write-up, payroll, or your own practice management, can be devastating. <\/p>\n
even with backup, restoring your data and applications onto a new hard drive, or possibly a new pc, can involve hours of work. <\/p>\n
but the good news is that most pcs sold today are capable of running hard disk drives in raid configuration.
\nif all this seems like techno-babble, don’t worry. read on to get the basics and your favorite technology expert can do the heavy lifting. the bottom line is: if you don’t know about raid, you should. <\/p>\n
raid stands for redundant array of individual (or inexpensive) drives. while some older pc motherboards provide raid support for ata\/133 hard disks (the ones that need the wide ribbon cable), most raid arrays are configured using the newer serial ata, or sata, drives. <\/p>\n
if the motherboard hard disk controller does provide raid support, it usually has to be enabled in the computer’s bios. this, in turn, lets you access a raid configuration utility during the computer’s boot process. <\/p>\n
there are a number of different ways to configure a raid array, depending on what you need to accomplish. all require at least two hard disk drives, though depending upon the raid configuration, you may use as many drives as the motherboard hard disk controller can support. some support as many as eight. <\/p>\n
the most common raid configurations are raid 0, raid 1, raid 5, and raid 0+1. raid 0 and raid 5 are usually used when hard disk performance is an issue. this might be germane if your mission-critical pc is performing some form of transaction processing. in raid 0, also called striping, data is written to first one hard drive, then the second. because the hard disk controller can write to two different drives pretty much simultaneously, the operating system sees the raid 0 configuration as a single hard disk with the combined capacity of both drives. the vulnerability with raid 0 is that if one drive crashes, the entire array is ruined. but raid 5 attempts to address this by also writing parity information that might help recover at least some of the data on a striped drive. <\/p>\n
raid 1, or disk mirroring, writes the same data simultaneously on two drives, called the primary and secondary drive. if one drive fails, the other is an exact copy, and the operating system and applications continue using the unaffected drive. when you power down the system, you can replace the failed drive, and the raid controller will automatically copy everything from the remaining drive to the new one. raid 0+1 stripes two drives, then mirrors the striped drives on two more hard disks. this approach requires four hard drives, but gives you both performance and redundancy. <\/p>\n
raid 1 requires a second hard disk that’s at least as large as the one that you’re mirroring. the operating system sees a raid 1 array as a single drive of a capacity matching the smallest hard disk in the array, so you don’t see any additional disk capacity from adding the second drive. <\/p>\n
you will, however, have a terrific safety cushion for your mission-critical applications and data should a hard disk go to disk heaven. with today’s inexpensive hard drive prices, raid 1 is almost a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
[first published oct. 4, 2006, at www.hp.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" the no-brainer safety cushion for every accountant. by rick telberg for hewlett packard having a hard disk crash is bad, even when you have a back-up copy of your data and possibly, your applications. having this happen on a pc … continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsg-finance-professional"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n