A. T.

Hello my HH family,

I would like your suggestions, please. I currently have a glyph RAID 1 external storage system. I also have a cloud backup with BackBlaze; however, I would like a RAID 5 or 6 external backup system and I am looking at one from OWC. OWC was recommended by Glyph. Would anyone have any knowledge of the OWC manufacturer? I am interested in OWC because they are based here in the U.S. and they were recommended by Glyph which is the system that I'm currently using. Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I have had an OWC USB external dual drive dock (purchased from B&H) for about 5 years now.
The thing is built like a tank and still runs great (Win 7).
It accepts two 3.5" or 2.5" drives, has individual drive power switches.
I'm very pleased with it!

A. T.

Thanks brother, that's what I want to hear....in fact, B&H is where I'll be purchasing it from.

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

I have used Open World Computing (OWC) since the 1980s. They are #1 in my book.

wiz302pa Loc: Henderson, NV

I have used OWC equipment off and on for over 15 years. As already mentioned, OWC drives are "built like a tank". However, they typically ship with huge separate power supplies (do not know why) and (in my view) are not price competitive. The only drives I have ever had fail were OWCs; one under warranty which was replaced after I paid to ship it back and another after the warranty expired. After using these drives for about 10 years, I have since switched to lower priced USB buss-power drives - use them for a few years and then replace them before they fail. OWCs are good drives but I don't think they are any better than the usual suspects.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

OWC is among the most solid companies you'll find in the peripherals market. I've bought many items from them since 1988. They have always been fantastic to deal with, and I've never had a problem with their gear. It has just worked.

OWC is known around recording studios, video editing suites, musicians' road crews, and pro photography studios as among the best providers of drives, docks, cables, Mac memory, and other accessories.

A. T.

Outstanding to hear that they make great equipment and are equally great at dealing with. I think I have made my decision as to which company to do business with. Again, thank you so very much for your opinion and for sharing your positive experiences with this company.

MDI Mainer

Just bear in mind the limitations of any RAID system as part of a backup plan. You seem sufficiently savvy but there are common misconceptions about the utility of RAID systems.

https://shuttermuse.com/that-is-not-a-photo-backup/

https://shuttermuse.com/what-is-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

RAID is not a backup strategy/ It has built in redundancy to minimize down time. In a good enclosure, like pretty much any of the Synology boxes, you'll also get redundant power supplies, RJ45 ports etc. RAID 5 is worthless. It only has one drive that is redundant. Error checking is recovery from soft errors is slow. During a volume rebuild due to soft error or drive failure, the system is vulnerable. RAID 6 is a little better with double redundant drives, but RAID 1+0 (striped and mirrored pairs), offers the best solution for conventional RAID. Synology has their own RAID array scheme that better utilizes mixed-sized drives. I use enterprise or data center level drives (they all have 5 year warranties), like WD RED, Hitachi (now owned by WD) Ultrastar drives. Oh, and the Synology boxes are modular so that you can add additional drives, and you can add it to your network and use its IP address so that you can access it over the internet like your own private cloud server with end-to-end encryption. I am sure other mfgrs offer similar features and benefits, but I've had such good luck with Synology I feel I can't do better. Your mileage can differ.

geneg12 Loc: Virginia

When I built my photography PC I set up the internal drives in a raid/mirror configuration with 2 4TB drives. It works great and if one drive goes down I have 2 spare 4TB drives to use to swap out the bad drive.

It would be nice to have an external raid system but I think I am going to do a cloud back up this summer.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I have also had many successful transactions with OWC and am very happy with them. I also use only Synology NAS systems with the better quality drives (Seagate and WD) in Raid 1 or Raid 1+0 (Raid 10) configurations. So far so good!

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

I use a pair of 42 TB ThunderBay 8 configured as RAID 5. These are from OWC and perform flawlessly. They use SOFTRaid to run the RAID and I believe it is from an OWC subsidiary. I have connected mine with Fiber optic cable from B&H, currently using Thunderbolt connectors. Thunderbolt 3 or 4.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Their is absolutely no reason to use RAID for a backup system. RAID is all about access, either speed or redundancy or mostly a combination of the two. The speed is mostly useful in a network environment where multiple users are hitting the data server, the redundancy to eliminate downtime if one drive in the array fails. That’s not to say you’re not better off buying a good external drive case or NAS and putting higher end drives in it than just buying a consumer level drive. There’s just no reason to set up a RAID.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I like RAID 1+0 also (long the favorite of data base administrators) and in some cases, it will tolerate a double drive failure also (depending on where the two drives fail). The downside is that you only get 50% usable storage of the total capacity you pay for. As an alternative, if you don’t need the extra speed or capacity that RAID 1+0 provides (a single drive is large and fast enough for your needs), you can simply use RAID 1 or simple mirroring.

Regarding RAID 5, there is no redundancy drive - the parity is rotating across all drives such that the parity is always on a different drive from the block of data and as mentioned, you can add another drive to support dual drive failure without data loss so called RAID 6) The advantages of RAID 5 are higher utilization (a 3 drive RAID 5 provides 66%, a 4 drive, 75%, and so on) and the ability to serve different files to multiple users simultaneously, hence the reasons most corporate/enterprise servers are RAID 5. Like any RAID system, you are vulnerable to a second drive failure during a rebuild, which can take a very long time with large drives.

Actually, the best choice for performance with large files and the highest utilization is a RAID 3 (byte striped with a separate parity drive) or RAID 4 (blocked striped with separate parity). RAID 3 is hard to find, but there is at least one consumer grade system that offers RAID 4 and of course, if it fits your budget, there is NetApp, THE enterprise grade NAS company. If you can find a used one at a reasonable price, THAT is a great solution. I bought one used and ran it for 10 years in an un heated, uncooled basement (in addition to its original service) without so much as a drive failure.

A. T.

Okay, thanks for the information, I have quite a bit to read and consider.