It’s an unfortunate fact that hard disk drives are rather slow at storing and retrieving data. Due to their mechanical nature they can only retrieve and send data to the controller at a certain speed. Many users now opt for an external hard drive as a supplement – big mistake if you are storing a lot of critical data, such as client files etc.
Hard disks are mechanical devices with moving parts, and as such will break down eventually, compromising any data stored on them that is not backed up. External drives are likely to break down much quicker. One technology that was developed to deal specifically with this issue and deal with this is a RAID data recovery drive (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks).
The common factor that all RAID levels share, is the use of a RAID controller that intercepts data intended for storage on the logical hard drive. This data is then either duplicated by the controller for storage on multiple drives in the array at once (’mirroring’), or broken down into smaller chunks which are then divided between the available drives in the RAID array (’striping’).
Setting up RAID on your PC could not be easier. RAID is managed through Windows XP’s disk management window, found by right clicking on ‘my computer,’ then selecting ‘manage’ followed by ‘disk management.’ Windows XP Professional is only capable of creating RAID 0 striped arrays, while the various Windows Server operating systems can also create software RAID 1 mirror arrays. Alternatively, RAID can be purchased as an external unit, such as in NAS (Network Attached Storage). RAID 0 data recovery is possible despite the fact that it does not contain mirrored drives.
RAID is a much safer option for your data, as opposed to external hard drives, which have a very high failure rate. The access speeds are much greater with RAID, yet the price is equivalent. We would advise that external hard drives are only really useful for transporting data, or as backup devices.
