Why can't RAID be trusted with critical data

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I understand how RAID 0 and RAID 1 are definitely not critical data store worthy, but my question is why would RAID 5 or RAID 6 be lumped up with them. A brief discussion with someone I consider much more knowledgeable than I am in administration issues (I'm more a developer/software engineer) had state that one should "never ever trust critical data to RAID, any RAID".

My question is why? it doesn't make much sense to me because RAID was developed specifically for this. Short of a massive and unrecoverable disk failure, RAID should be fine.

Critical data in my context is a private folder on the fileserver for each user in the domain where they store their day to day needed data.

Posted 14-Jan-10 23:32pm

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

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4 solutions

Solution 2

Possibly because when people create a RAID array they get all the drives at the same time, from the same manufacturer and from the same batch so any problems with the batch and the MTBF will be the same for all drives in the array.
Personally the odds of more than 1 drive failing in a RAID 5 array with 4 drives is so small I don't worry about it.

Posted 15-Jan-10 2:02am

Rod Kemp

Solution 3

I'm guessing the sentiment is that people may assume "Well I've got a RAID, so my data is totally safe, and nothing bad could ever happen", when of course plenty of bad things can happen, even if you're using RAID

Posted 15-Jan-10 2:04am

benjymous

Solution 4

That's pretty much my thinking. Obviously, you cannot rely on RAID as a complete solution. I can only consider "backups" secure if they are redundant, signed and some are physically located in a completely different location. For something like what I'm looking at, it should be more than sufficient, and these days, the potential for several drives failing at the same time is ridiculously low.

Posted 15-Jan-10 2:37am

Mustafa Ismail Mustafa

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Christian Graus · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-14T23:45:00

Solution 1

Well, I guess it depends what they mean. Never trust RAID over having an off site store for critical data ? I would agree. Never trust RAID over a single hard drive ? That seems insane.

Posted 14-Jan-10 23:45pm

Christian Graus