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109 intermitant RAID

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:43 am
by combat_wombat
I have a 500gb 109 QNAP
+ I have a seperate 500gb eSATA drive which I want to use as a backup to my QNAP
I have 3 questions:

1)
RAID seems like a good idea
But I don't want to keep it perminantly attached. I want to the aSATA drive tucked away + only mirror the QNAP once a month
Am I able to do this?

2)
It seems to demand 'EXT 3' file format
Will this mean I will be unable to use the eSATA drive as a USB drive in its own right?

3)
I started the eSATA QRaid + left it overnight - eight hours later its still only at 35%!
How slow. Im i doing somthing wrong?

Re: 109 intermitant RAID

Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:59 pm
by ckamps
1) Sure. Several people I know and I have been using 2 drive eSATA backup strategy in which a swap is performed between two eSATA drives on a monthy basis to maintain an offsite backup. Your approach would be slightly different, but should still work. Make sure you use the eject feature before unplugging the eSATA drive. If you can spare the extra $$ for a second eSATA drive, then you might want to consider the monthly or whenever swapping technique. The two eSATA Q-RAID 1 drives don't seem to confuse the 109 at all. Using this approach, you'd have near continuous local protection. See more info here:

http://blogs.kampmeier.com/?p=13

2) Can you use it for other purposes? Not without messing up its role as a Q-RAID 1 mirror. Can you access the data? Yes. On this second question, I was able to attach the external eSATA drive via USB and manually mount the USB drive on the 109 without a problem (my eSATA enclosures have both eSATA and USB ports). When I tried attaching to my Ubuntu system, I encountered what appeared to be ext3 incompatibilities. I suspect with enough research I can get the ext3 filesystem mounted to a Linux system. You can get ext3 filesystem support on Windows, but I haven't tried that route. See more info here:

http://blogs.kampmeier.com/?p=11

3) Read the forums. Initial Q-RAID 1 sync can take a long time. After that, resync and ongoing sync are better, but the sync rates seem to be in the range of 8-10 GB per hour. When I perform my monthly eSATA swapping, the rsync required to catch up has been pretty reasonable given that I know Q-RAID 1 is not true RAID 1. Also note that when your 109 experiences and internal hard drive failure, rather than installing a new SATA drive in the 109, simply move the drive from the eSATA enclosure to the 109. The 109 should boot up and use that drive as it main drive. Then buy a new SATA drive for your eSATA enclosure and perform the initial sync.