Most businesses that depend on a dedicated server for data storage and backup and web hosting are familiar with the advantages of an offsite backup. Offsite backups ensure that all business-critical data is backed up in a remote location, protecting it from hardware failures and local disasters.
However, many businesses have yet to use another secondary hard drive within their server to provide additional redundancy and protection. This post will explain how using a Secondary Hard Drive on a Dedicated Server can protect your data without sacrificing performance or risking downtime.
Sometimes, a single drive may not be the best choice for your business or website, prompting you to buy another drive.
For example, if you have a dedicated server with two hard drives, there might come a time when your first hard drive starts to become whole, and you’d like to utilize your Secondary Hard Drive on a Dedicated Server.
So, knowing the advantages of the second hard drive in dedicated hosting can help you make the correct purchase choice. Another hard drive is optimum for your business or website.
Increase Storage Space
A server with two hard drives stores high volumes of data and archives or performs backups.
A double-disk server gives you various storage capacity options and writing speeds to cover all uses. So, you don’t need to panic about moving important files, removing your current drive, or moving your server’s Operating System.
One of the best reasons for installing a secondary hard drive in your dedicated server hosting is the need for storage space for a large amount of data.
This is especially true if your business or website regularly deals with many files, such as those involved in video editing work, application preferences, and graphic design.
Use Of Separate Hard Drives
You can create an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account with access to your secondary hard drive to start transferring files there for storage, or you can go all out and rearrange your cPanel account to use the second hard drive for all of their files.
Two hard drives allow you to use two different operating system programs on one device. For example, you can install Linux on one hard drive and Windows OS on the second.
Furthermore, if your server has a Windows operating system, you can install Linux on another hard drive and boot from Windows to Linux when necessary.
Keeping your business or website program on a separate drive from the OS can make it easier to install software upgrades, such as updating the Windows installation on the system drive while leaving a business or website database information intact.
Available Dedicated Server Hard Drive Options
When reviewing the available hard drives for our dedicated server plans and bare metal server plans, you will find the following hard drive options:
- 2×960 GB NVMe (Hardware Raid – Additional)
- 2×1 TB SSD NVMe (Software Raid – Included)
- 3×2 TB SSD NVMe (Software Raid – Included)
- 2×3.84 TB SSD (Hardware Raid – Additional)
- 2×4 TB SSD NVMe (Software Raid – Included)
- 2×6.4 TB NVMe SSD (Hardware Raid – Additional)
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Improve System Performance
A secondary hard drive on a dedicated server can improve its performance because it can read and write faster than the first one. In addition, the second, faster drive will take less time to load a program and save a file.
The second hard drive can decrease the load time but will not increase your server’s performance in a way that will let you run programs you couldn’t run before. In addition, attaching a second hard drive will not improve processor speed and graphical capability.
Adding another hard drive also makes your system more reliable by providing redundancy in case one fails.
Suppose something goes wrong with one hard drive (say, someone accidentally deletes all their important files). In that case, backups will always be available on either side so that users aren’t affected by these issues more than necessary.
Secondary storage resides on non-volatile memory (NVM) devices such as SSDs, HDDs, and tape drives. An SSD as secondary drive is a flash storage device that doesn’t carry any moving parts; therefore, it is called a ‘solid state.’ Using non-volatile storage technology indicates no ‘automatic’ movement every time data needs to be accessed.
HDD drives are also flash storage devices that have moving parts for reading and writing data. Therefore, it takes time to move the data. HDDs have capacities as high as 16 TB. Most businesses and websites use HDDs for large backup storage servers, security devices, etc.
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Easy To Backup
Putting two hard drives in one server can also give you data security. With two drives in one system, you can back up the data quickly and easily from one drive to another. Additionally, creating multiple copies of important files can be helpful in case of a drive failure or user error.
However, it is essential that before investing in two hard drives for backup and redundancy, you use the correct software and the best disk tool to manage your server.
Simply having two mirrored hard drives on your server won’t give you any redundancy, for example, if your system is infected with malware. Users with more advanced knowledge can also use Redundant Array Of Independent Disks (RAID) to secure the data further.
AccuWeb Hosting provides a complimentary backup to dedicated server customers in its UK, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Germany, France, and Poland data centers. For more information, click here!
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Create Crash Insurance
You can create a RAID 1, which writes the same data on both drives. It doesn’t speed up your server, and you lose the extra storage. But if one of the hard drives crashes, the other keeps going. Again, this requires motherboard support and drives of matching volume. Through RAID 1, you can get secure installation without worrying about losing the data and secure website and business-sensitive data.
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Handling Separate Tasks Simultaneously
Using the best secondary hard drive on a dedicated server is a great way to improve server performance, leverage speed and storage, and simplify backup activities.
Adding an external hard drive can improve your server’s ability to perform reading and writing tasks simultaneously, adding to its versatility.
Tasks like reading and writing or processing a massive volume of data can max out a single hard drive’s bandwidth, but the work division in both drives can improve the loading time for both tasks.
Servers hardly ever run just one program on time, and the different programs can slow down individuals as the hard drive tries to fit in the reading and writing requests from multiple sources.
When you divide multitask programs between both drives, they don’t have to compete for the same hard drive bandwidth.
Conclusion
There are many advantages to using a secondary hard drive on a dedicated server. Your best option will depend on your work and how much data you need to store.
Sometimes, it may be as basic as adding an extra hard drive to handle higher workloads or improving backup and recovery. However, you may also consider more complex options for high-performance applications.
At Accuweb Hosting, we can help provide the proper infrastructure for your business goals at an affordable price.
