There's a slick new product called Drobo just introduced that makes a data-redundant RAID setup really idiotproof. It's a little black box with slots for 4 naked hard drives of any capacity. The heart of the Drobo box is software that automatically sets up a RAID configuration from the drives you shove into it. Once it does its magic you can pull out a drive at any time and Drobo will automatically make sure that the data on that drive is still available. So your worries about a failed drive ruining your big video project are mitigated.
I don't know enough about RAID to know how doing a manual setup compares with just buying a Drobo box, but I suspect this thing will sell like hotcakes, since it completely automates all the confusing parts of a functioning RAID. The downside is that the box itself retails for $500. The other downside is that the throughput from Drobo is somewhat less than that of a single hard drive. It does look cool, though, with all sorts of flashing lights.
I also wonder if the hard drive vendors ever anticipated people handling their naked drives and the exposed printed-circuit cards on the bottom without any shield or protection at all.
I don't know enough about RAID to know how doing a manual setup compares with just buying a Drobo box, but I suspect this thing will sell like hotcakes, since it completely automates all the confusing parts of a functioning RAID. The downside is that the box itself retails for $500. The other downside is that the throughput from Drobo is somewhat less than that of a single hard drive. It does look cool, though, with all sorts of flashing lights.
I also wonder if the hard drive vendors ever anticipated people handling their naked drives and the exposed printed-circuit cards on the bottom without any shield or protection at all.