Mirror Raid 2 ext HDs for both a PC and Mac?

[DavidLengling]

I did a search, but found nothing quite like my situation.After a hard drive of mine failed and I spent lots of $$ and time recovering my data, I am now going to play it a little safer.

I have two identical Western Digital 1TB external/portable HDs. I have reformatted both to FAT32. Would it be possible for me to set these up together as a Raid1 (mirrored raid), but be able to plug into both my Mac and PC (using them with both computers) and make changes from either? If so, how would I go about doing this? Some sort of enclosure? I need to be able to access my raid(ed) HDs from both my machines because I am not wanting to store data on either of the computers internal HDs and I use both computers equally (one for work, and one for personal use).

If anyone could provide me some insight to any of these questions, that would be greatly appreciated. I am pretty tech-savy, but not a genius, so if possible try to not speak in too complicated of terms lol. Thank you!

 

[FredWagner]

What you need is a NAS box (Network Attached Storage) - a mini-server - external storage with a LAN interface. I use a Buffalo LANstation at home for this with one wired Vista PC and two wireless laptops. Check out NAS products - there are lots under $1000, mine was under $200. Basically they're an external Hard drive - some have multiple drives in RAID, with a network interface and management software you run in your browser. You connect them to your local router just like your PC and your MAC. There might even be WiFi models now....

Fred Wagner

 

[rclarke250]

Fred is right, I love my NAS. Some even do the backup for you, but some want to charge a monthly service fee for the software, stay away from those, and just buy Norton or Acronis and save the fees. Also for doing large data transfers not sure if wireless even N is the way to go.

 

[BadBigBen]

what my two predecessors mean is something along the line of this:

Buffalo Technology LinkStation Duo 2 TB (2 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage LS-WX2.0TL/R1

http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Techn...MF5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305871757&sr=8-1

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah - you can't do what you want with two separate external hard drive enclosures. They can't be raided that way.

You COULD pull the drives out of their enclosures and put them in an external RAID case which is sold WITHOUT hard drives to save some money and not have two external hard drives that you don't use.

I'm thinking something like this (an empty box) and not necessarily this brand/model - just an example

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7&cm_re=raid_enclosure-_-16-111-037-_-Product