Two Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure with RAID
Storage Depot is pleased to introduce the all new HD-3206-SRD, a two bay external hard drive enclosure. The HD-3206-SRD houses two SATA hard drives, and connects to a computer via the USB2.0 port, or an eSATA port. The two hard drives which are housed internally can be set up in a number of ways, to optimize the usage of the disks.
Multiple RAID Options
The first option is to duplicate the data one disk, onto the other. This is known as RAID 1. The benefit of this option is that you have 100% data protection. If one disk fails, simply replace it and the data on the remaining hard drive is automatically copied onto the new replacement disk. The obvious downside of this solution is that you only use half the total disk capacity.
The second option is designed for maximum performance in mind. We'd suggest that you use this via the SATA connection, as the performance via USB2.0 will not really be able to take advantage of the setup. 'Striping' is a system whereby data from the computer is written to both hard drives at the same time. Because hard drives are normally the bottleneck for data transfer, splitting up the data and writing it to two disks at once means that your get blisteringly fast data throughput. Striping is 'RAID 0', and it is great for digital video editing, especially HD Video. Beware though that striped disks have no backup. If one disk fails, then you lose all your data. The full capacity of both disks can be used (unlike RAID 1).
JBOD is another option. This stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks, and means that you can access both disks as two individual hard drives. So you can store your pictures onto one hard drive, and your music and video on another. With the HD-3206, this provides a useful way of accessing two hard drives with only one power supply.
More RAID
Because of the limitations of RAID 0 and RAID 1, the manufactures have come out with some variations for dual bay hard drives. These variations are called SAFE 33 and SAFE 55, whereby part of the disks are used to mirror data, but the remainder is used as a big volume. SAFE 33 duplicates 33% of the disk space, and SAFE 55 duplicates 50% of the disk space. The best way to explain this is by way of an example:
An Example
Lets say that you have two hard drives, Drives A and B, and thy are 300 GB each. When the SAFE33 Storage Policy is selected, the disks will be split to include a SAFE volume of 100 GB (1/3 of 300 GB) and a BIG volume of 400 GB (the remaining capacity after allocating 100 GB from each of the hard drives).
This a a neat combination of the two types of RAID available with two hard drives. Data protection for your important data, and speed for your temporary data. A great application is again video editing. Save the original video on the SAFE volume, then edit the original on the BIG volume.
Let us quote you
Once you have selected the RAID setup, you can use the external dual bay hard drive enclosure for just about any type of data storage option. The 3206 is small, very easy to setup and use. It accepts both SATA I and SATA II hard drives. We can supply the unit with hard drives and install/setup the unit for you. Just email or call with the disk capacity required.
Installation of the hard drives, if you do it yourself, is straigtforward and should take around 10 minutes.