07-12-2008, 11:34 PM

Hi guys,

Just bought a 1tb My Book Premium Edition 2 external hard drive. It was pre-formatted to NFHS, but I switched it to Raid 0 HFS+. However, the other option is Raid 1 HFS+. Should I have used that option? I am running off a MacBook Pro with Leopard. The other two options listed to choose from were Fat32, which i dont want. Any advice? If I should have chosen Raid 1, or stick with Raid 0?

07-12-2008, 11:47 PM

RAID 1 would be too much if you're using the external for backup. RAID 1 would use HD as capacity and the other HD to make a mirror copy of the second. So setting up RAID 1 as backup means the first HD would be backup of the laptop HD and the second HD would be a backup to the backup.

07-13-2008, 01:02 PM

i would not have picked any raid option. normally a portable drive is left un connected, not powered up. this should be enough to extend its life time indefinite.

fat32
this file system has a numbering scheme that can not even come close to describing a 1T dirve. fat32 was retired when drives got >100gig, yours is 1,000 gig. dont use fat32.

raid0
this is the striping process shared between 2 drives. it haves the life time of the pair and improves the access speed. if speed is critical you can get it by doing this

raid1
writes data redundant on two drives as a pair. improves reliability somewhat because if one fails you have a backup. even if one has a sector fail it can be rebuilt off the good drive. very easy for both to fail unlike a raid5 setup