Re: OT Raid Setup for MP3 Server

["graham_howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@y..., "gjggroupid" <register@r...> wrote:
> Yes, the setup util for the raid card will let you pick which 
drives 
> you want in or out of the array.  Just select drives 2,3,4 for
the 
> array.  You may get the benefit of any raid controller cache this
way 
> too.
> 
> The only cards i've seen are promise and adaptac for IDE.
> Adaptec 1200 doesn't do raid 5 so the Raid ATA 2400 model is the 
one.
> 
> GarryG
> 
This is an interesting thread, though it does now look like I will 
need to do a full server rebuild to take advantage of larger disks.

I did make an error in my previous post, with 2 x 80 and 1 x 60 it is 
120Gb logical disk I have and not 140Gb. This means that if I swapped 
the 60Gb for another 80Gb then I would gain (following a rebuild) 
40Gb on the logical disk which is tempting.

For those who are interested, I have the following card:

http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&quicklinx=14Q6

which has 6 connectors, can support disks larger than 137Gb, is 
ATA100 and comes with 6 cables and 3 hot swap caddies for 310 quid 
plus VAT.

As I will now have to plan an upgrade of the server anyway, and I 
will have serveral disks lying about when I do it, is there a real 
benefit in separating the OS from the data. The reason I went with 
raid 5 in the first place was for resilliance of the OS (in this case 
SBS2K so it includes Exchange, IIS, SQL) following a 'disaster' where 
a hard disk failed and wiped out my server. I now have everything on 
one raid 5 'disk' but I could set up the future system to have 2 x 
80Gb mirrored for the SBS2K components and then 3 (or 4) x 160Gb 
disks on raid 5 array for data (mainly MP3 and in future divx).

Does this give significant benefit (there is no additional cost as I 
have the smaller disks already) or would I be better off just putting 
everything on raid 5 as I do at the moment.

Finally (sorry if this has been answered and I missed it), can disks 
be added to an existing raid 5 array after it has been set up and 
data is on it? I suspect now that the answer is no, but it is worth 
asking. Quite simply, I can afford to buy 3 disks sooner than 4!

Regards

Graham

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