Setting up your Areca RAID

Posted by Phil Baker on Oct 29, 2020

What is a RAID?

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

To put it simply, a RAID is a different way of backing up information and preparing yourself for the worst-case scenario when dealing with a huge project or production. Depending on the overall size of the project and, in any case, funding, there are many ways to go about using this as an efficient way to keep your information safe from loss.

RAID’s allow speed, efficiency (striping), or mirroring (redundancy).
Depending on the number of drives, preferred speed, and desired security, you can configure your system into one of the following RAID formats.

RAID 0:

This is the most common array setup in the market, where data is stored across two disks. Instead of using the disks independently, the computer only sees it as one and stripes the data across both.

RAID 1:

This array mirrors both drives to each other. Again, the Mac only sees one drive, but it’s actually backing data up to both. This means that, should one of the drives die, you don’t lose all your data and can keep going until your replacement hard drive arrives.

RAID 5:

This allows you to have the best of all worlds – it allows combining great data performance and safety with an affordable price. This technique uses parity information or bonus data to calculate any lost information.

Parity is distributed among all drives in the RAID and requires roughly one free drive worth of space to store the parity

RAID 6:

This extends RAID 5 by adding another parity block; thus, it uses block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks.

RAID 6 can continue to execute read and write requests to all of a RAID array's virtual disks in the presence of any two concurrent disk failures.

RAID 10:

This Array requires a minimum of four disks and stripes across all disks for higher performance, and mirrors for redundancy. In a four-drive array, the system stripes data to two of the disks. The remaining two disks mirror the striped disks, each one storing half of the data.

This RAID level serves environments that require both high data security and high performance, such as high transactional databases that store sensitive information.

How do you set up a RAID?

Depending on whether you are using a software based RAID or Hardware Based RAID, there are different methods involved in initializing your RAID.

These are the instructions on setting up an Areca RAID using their MRAID software:

For Mac OS X

(MacOSX 10.12+ Drivers already preinstalled, follow Step 2 for reinstallation)

Step 1. Physically Install the Hardware

Install HDDs.
Connect power cord.
Connect Thunderbolt cable.

Step 2. Install your RAID Software Drivers

Locate your specific Driver installer from Areca's support page here.

2a. Under 'Component Type', select 'Thunderbolt Solutions'.

2b. Under 'Model name', select your Areca RAID array product.

2c. Under 'Item Type', select Driver/Utility'.

Select the 'MacOS' tab below, and download your 'MRAID Software'.
Double-click on the install_mraid icon on the Finder.
Follow the installer on-screen steps to complete the installation.

Step 3. Launch Manager and Login

Double-click on the “MRAID” icon on the desktop to locate the ArchHTTP Utility and CLI program folder.
Double-click on 'ArcHTTP64' to launch manager.
Locate “ARC-8050 Web Management” and launch the MRAID storage manager.
Input the default login User Name “admin” and the Password “0000”.

Step 4. Quick Create RAID

Click on the 'Quick Create' in the main menu.
Your volume is auto configured based on the number of disks, but you can customize your RAID Level and other options here.

Tick 'Confirm the Operation', then click ' Submit' to begin initialization.

For Windows

Step 1. Physically Install the Hardware

Install HDDs.
Connect power cord.
Connect Thunderbolt cable.