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Raid 5 guestions??

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meismr:
I have setup three different file servers (two Raid 1 and one Raid 5) and in all of them I had a different drive for the OS.  Keeping the OS and Data separate makes it a lot simpler for maintenance and data migration.  You could keep an image on the raid array of the OS (or just on a DVD) and move that down.  :)

squirrellydw:
thanks, I like the separate OS idea

patrickl:

--- Quote from: meismr on February 01, 2008, 06:11:52 pm ---I have setup three different file servers (two Raid 1 and one Raid 5) and in all of them I had a different drive for the OS.  Keeping the OS and Data separate makes it a lot simpler for maintenance and data migration.  You could keep an image on the raid array of the OS (or just on a DVD) and move that down.  :)

--- End quote ---
You don't need a separate drive to separate OS and data.

boykster:

--- Quote from: patrickl on February 01, 2008, 05:57:36 pm ---A big problem I still have is with backups. How do you backup 1.3TB?

--- End quote ---

try backing up 5Tb  :dunno

The redundancy of the RAID array is some insurance, but nothing can stave off catastrophic failure.

As for the OS on the array or on another drive, its really a matter of personal preference.  If you're looking for high availability and low-downtime, you'd keep your OS on a seperate drive.  If the system crashes, you can easily move the entire array to another machine.  If the OS drive crashes, you can swap in a new drive and be back up an running (assuming you have a clean mirror copy of the OS sitting around like me  ;) ).

nothin wrong with putting the OS on the array, just not how I would do it.

Samstag:
I went with RAID 5 so I can stop worrying about backups.  It seems silly to use single external drives to backup fault-tolerant arrays.  If you don't feel comfortable with RAID 5, spend a little more for RAID 6.  If you're really worried about more than two drives failing at once, you can add as many redundant drives as you like to the array and not have to worry about filling up slow USB drives.

If you're worried about the RAID card dying, buy a spare.  Using RAID for safety is all about spending the money to put together a system with a level of risk you can be comfortable with.

I've been running the same 8-drive array for over two years now and the only problem I've had was a failed OS drive.  After building a new one (the soft array was fine and synced up with no data loss) I cloned it so that won't be a problem again.  The only high quality part I'm using is the power supply.  The array drives are all refurbs, the motherboard, ram, case, etc were all cheap stuff, and the OS drives have all been xbox orphans.  I'm sure I'll replace the whole array with bigger drives long before I ever lose one.

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