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Raid 5 guestions??
squirrellydw:
I am going to be building a raid 5 server soon, my first one and I have a few questions.
I plan on starting with 3 drives then adding 2 more for a total of 5. I will probably also back everything up occasionally to an external drive for back up also. I am going to use SATA2 drives for the raid also. I plan on using an enlight server chassis http://us.enlightcorp.com/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?ID=189 and
http://us.enlightcorp.com/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?ID=201
I will also being using a raid card maybe 3ware someone recommend on here. Is there anything else you can recommend?
Can I/should I use raid 6 and what would be involved with that?
boykster:
Couple of things to think about before you start:
If you're not going to fully populate the array when you first build it (ie only put 3 drives out of a possible 8) and plan to expand, make sure you buy a RAID card that supports "online expansion". I believe the 3ware 9000 series of cards supports this, but not sure about the 8000 series (older SATA). I know the 7000 series (PATA) doesn't support this (what I use).
I like that you're thinking of using hot-swap drive caddies - VERY good way to go. Your chassis choice is fine as long as you're not looking to go crazy with the number of drives. Make sure that you have good air cooling for the drive blocks. THIS is a popular case for building non-rack mount storage arrays.
With only 3-5 drives, power shouldn't be too much of a problem, just make sure you buy a good quality PSU.
I'm not all that familiar with RAID6, but the main thing it offers over RAID5 is an additional layer of fault tolerance. This is more useful in arrays with larger numbers of drives, as it will take the equivalent of a full drive's storage (in addition to the 1 used by RAID5) to achive this. So for a 3 drive array, 2 of the drives would be parity data - not that useful. Unless you're planning to eclipse 12 drives or so, RAID5 will be fine.
I'm a fan of 3ware, but Areca makes nice cards that have been getting really good reviews by DIY data center builders.
squirrellydw:
thanks, if I would go raid 6 and have 5 500gig drives I would really only have 1.5tb of space correct? What Windows OS do you suggest?
I was also looking at this card since it does raid 6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103010
boykster:
correct on the 5 drives -> 1.5Tb thing. For RAID5 its (N-1)*(drive capacity) and for RAID6 its (N-2)*(drive capacity).
I don't know too much about the recent adaptec cards, but that one looks good; 8 port SATA, online expansion, etc. Not a bad price either at less than $500.
Your OS choice is entirely going to up to what you plan for the machine to do beyond file-serving. I run linux on my 2 file server raid boxes, but win2k/2k3 server would be fine, or heck the new windows home server might be interesting to check out. :dunno
squirrellydw:
I plan on using mainly for music, video and photos. I want everything backed up in case a drive dies and I want to be able to access it from 2 to 3 computers.
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