Best set up for a large storage system?

Y

yggdrasil

New member
Ok I done some scrounging threw the HDD forum and few pages in I cant find a thread on what I looking for so started my own.

Here is the case. I got a P7P55D deluxe and it has 9 Sata Headers and now I have none left, I currently have 10Tb setup not including system drives and now I am looking to move these HDD's to some sort of network storage be it a NAS box or a server PC so I can down size my case to a more LAN friendly size and also have a bit faster start up times.

I have been doing my online window shopping and research and just made things harder to decide what to do.

I Currently have no redundancy in my PC and would like that, reading in another thread suggested a UPS was a must for a storage box to help prevent HDD fails when the power goes out or drops so I will get that.

I thinking about 2 setups of Raid 5 with 6 2Tb HDD's in each So i can get my 20Tb goal.

I not sure if I should get a NAS box, It seems the easy option but also seems it would cost more than a low end server with a single large Raid card as i don't know of any 12 HDD NAS that aren't Enterprise grade rack mount boxes so I would have to get 2x 6 HDD NAS boxes for a 20Tb Raid 5 setup.

My Questions

What would be the best long term setup?

Is Raid 5 Really the best option for this setup?

NAS boxes are expensive, should I even consider them?

Thanks in advanced.

Yggdrasil
 
RAID 5 & 6 are about up time. They are not a backup solution.

Have you looked at Windows Home Server (WHS) v1? This has a nice feature called Drive Extender (DE), which means you can add disks as you go - no raid. However you can set folders to duplicate, which will keep a seperate physical copy on another disk (equivalent to raid 0 mirror) - this is all transparent to you.

It also has a backup feature to enable you to do automatic client backups.

WHS 2011 the new version has had DE removed...
 
If you have that much storage space dude Id be looking at a raid card if I was you. I cant live without mine now.
 
Still think that if you set up a large storage server with a RAID card you will need some kind of backup solution...
 
i need a RAID (badly). my server has an odd number of drives and so cannot use RAID0 or 1, and will only config in RAID5 (or 10), with the onboard controller. (AFAIK)

i cannot get to grips with marvel (yuk)

i now have three arrays (2TB each) and a lone HDD

it was a PITA yesterday trying to get my one rig RAID'd... i gave up - lol

bring on the PCIE RAID controller card (ASAP)

does anyone recommend any?
 
I know that Tom has an Adaptec 51245 in his server, and the server he built for Hayley had an Adaptec 5805.

Yep I had that written down - I am sad...
 
dugdiamond said:
the Adaptec 5805 comes with 2 cables

the other doesn't

(as far as my googling tells me!)
Click to expand...

Then you have to buy all the matching disks upfront as well, and if you run raid 6 you'll loose 2 of those disks for parity. This raid stuff is not cheap at all.
 
i have 7x WD sataIII 1TB caviar blacks ready for it
wink.gif
 
LSI makes decent cards too. Again not cheap though. The last one I bought for a 1U server was a 4 port. The card itself was around $350. Then I had to buy the cables and the battery backup module for the card, roughly $150 IIRC. If you double the ports to 8 the cost just about doubles as well.
 
sheroo said:
The only problem with that is that the array will probably be slow, and if a disk does fail it'll take an age to rebuild it...
Click to expand...

Actually you'd be surprised. They perform decently well on a home PC. Also, you don't have to worry about rebuild time on a stripe.
wink.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

neSSa SS Mods
Green Beast - GlaSSial rebuild - LC PC system
Replies
5
Views
299
neSSa SS Mods
neSSa SS Mods
AlienALX
For Robbie.
Replies
6
Views
521
robbiec
R
Excalabur50
Need to pick peoples brains please
Replies
5
Views
918
Excalabur50
Excalabur50
F
NAS Refresh
Replies
12
Views
4K
FTLN
F
Zoot
100TB New(ish) Home Server Build
Replies
6
Views
3K
hmmblah
hmmblah
Back
Top