So my 10-yr old Dell converted to fileserver (4 eide drives, totalling approx 800GB space) needs an upgrade.
First, the data on the fileserver is very important - family photos and videos, financial data, tons of documents, etc.
A Fry's rep points me out to a possilbe solution, that is Buffalo's LinkStation Quad 4TB. The config he suggests is RAID 1. The way he explains, RAID 1 is where system looks like two drives to the world, like drives C and D where in reality data for C is mirrored to C1 and C2, D is mirrored to D1 and D2, all of which are 1 TB's.
OK, here are important questions for me purchasing this or not (more on lines of confirmations on what the rep told me based on his own experience with the LS Quad he has at home). Please keep responses in layman's terms, esp with RAID stuff as I am green as can be on this.
1) If one drive goes out, the corresponding LED will 'tell you' something's wrong. At that time, all I do is unplug that drive, buy a 1TB SATA drive that is capable of RAID (I guess some are not?), plug the new drive back in and the system automatically sets itself up meaning it formats, puts in correct RAID configuration/setting, and copies all the data from it's mirrored drive (like if I were replacing C1, system automatically copies data from C2 to C1). This process takes about a full day.
Is it this simple? or is there alot of manual intervention (from me) required?
I have read a few posts about rebuiding RAIDs and such, but this is 'all Greek' to me.
2) If I wanted to upgrade the system's capacity, all I have to do is buy two comparable sized drives (like buy two 1.5 TB's that are RAID compatible) and that is it. How easy is this upgrade? Maybe some detailed steps would help me understand.
3) When I upgrade any of the LS's drives, do I need to match up all the four drives' performance specs (spin speed, access speed) ? Or at least match each "pair" (like match C1 with C2 AND D1 with D2) ?
Thanks in advance.