Re: Motherboard for Dual Core E6850

Bitstring <47922640$0$13939$fa0fcedb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, from the wonderful person GB <NOTsomeone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said

"GSV Three Minds in a Can" <GSV@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Tfxkl5BjQgkHFA0J@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For some people, RAID is an essential, not a
luxury.

And what people would that be, given that it was barely available 5 years
ago?

I do quite valuable (read expensive) work which is often time-critical. For
me, it's a necessary precaution to have RAID1. It *significantly* reduces
the risk of my losing data due to a drive crash since my last (nightly)
backup, and it *significantly* increases my chances of being able to work
straight through to the dealine, then worry about the PC. If I do miss the
deadline, I am able to explain that I have taken all reasonable precautions.

If I lost a whole day's work since my latest backup, that would be a
significant loss to me.

So arrange for real time shadow copy to a remote machine, or even an Internet filestore. If you get a lightning strike, or theft, or fire, you WILL lose both disks. If your PC breaks, you will be without both copies until you can get it fixed, unless you have another PC the disk(s) will run it. The only thing you are protected against is sudden total failure of one drives. Gradual lurking failures, there is every chance your controller will copy the bad version over the top of the good one, rather than the other way round.

(or is this the weak definition of 'essential'). Personally I'd avoid
PC-home-user grade RAID like the plague - a PITA to set up, and a bigger
PITA when it goes wrong, with almost no performance advantage, and limited
data security improvements.

If you =have= to have RAID, then buy a proper separate RAID controller
card (actually, buy two, that way you'll be able to recover the array if
the controller dies). And three or more identical disks.


I fail to see what that would do for me? If the controller stops working in
my PC, I would take my disks over to another PC and start working there.

If your controller stops working because it fried itself it will not work in another PC either. With RAID1 you may survive. With any other variant you may well be stuffed, since the array setup is usually controller dependent (and can be the case with RAID1 too). It may even depend on the exact RAID BIOS version.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
10,414 Km walked. 2,032 Km PROWs surveyed. 36.9% complete.
.

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