Thinkpads Forum

I have a T60 and want to get a external USB hard drive. I was wondering if there's any way to have a RAID-1 setup between the normal hard drive and the USB hard drive?

I also would like to keep the optical drive, so that rules out any RAID-1 solution involving any UltraBay hard drive.

No. And one of the reasons is because USB devices are detachable as USB has always been meant to be so.

(The one and only RAID possibility in your case is a software RAID setup under Linux involving an ultrabay HD.)

What do you need this for?


EDIT: Actually yes, there seems to be one or two, depending on your OS. In any case that would be software RAID. For instance, if you want to run Windows, you will need some VM software to run Windows OS as a guest OS installed on the RAID setup. The host OS will be managing the software RAID. If you decide to go for Windows host, then you will have to change the disks to dynamic ones using command line tools (overriding Windows defaults). Having dynamic disks, one can then set up the RAID. Note that the host Windows cannot be installed on the RAID as you first need it to be installed in order to set up the software RAID. If you decide to go for Linux host, then you probably have more options since pretty much everything is possible under Linux... In any case, this would be crazy, and the performance penalty from the VM won´t be worth it (IMHO).

Thanks for the info. I just wanted to have a mirror in case the main hard drive crashes, so I don't lose data. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth, so I'll have to remember to just do manual backups to the USB drive every once in a while.

thinkpac wrote:Thanks for the info. I just wanted to have a mirror in case the main hard drive crashes, so I don't lose data. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth, so I'll have to remember to just do manual backups to the USB drive every once in a while.

It is a much simpler solution to do it that way. You could also use a service like Backblaze to provide remote backup services.

Yeah, there's a bunch of options, including NAS boxes, flash storage (such as in pcmcia slot), online storage, and for each of these, maybe use some automatic software to do the backups for you, rather than having to remember to do it yourself. There's tons of free and paid backup software out there, and software that comes with usb external drives or NAS boxes. Some of the software is better than others, of course.

I'm not into raid, because it doesn't solve lots of problems, like data corruption, lightning strikes, theft. Backups, especially which move to another place, and are auto, can be much better.

Tho backups and raid can be better than just backups, of course.