RAID options etc...

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I too have been thinking recently about trying to get to grips with my
storage requirements...

Currently I have my main media server with 1TB (decimal) of storage - 4 x
250GB IDE drives, in a simple striped array (i.e. no redundancy...). This
contains all my MP3's (about 250GB's worth) and all my ripped DVD's
(currently about 350GB's worth). The MP3 library isn't really growing much
any more - quite the contrary in fact, as I have been going through it
trying to weed out duplicate tracks and deleting stuff that I never (and
never will) listen to...

The DVD collection however is growing at a significant rate! - I'm
currently adding about 3 DVD's per week on average (I'm only at home at the
weekends just now) - so about 15GB is being consumed each week, or 60GB per
month... - so only about 6 months worth of capacity left before I'll be
full up...

Because there is no redundancy on this storage, I protect it by backing up
to various other bits of storage... - I have another server which has a
480GB array (4 x 120GB), and onto this I copy the MP3 data... I also have 2
x Maxtor USB2/Firewire external drives onto which I backup the DVD's -
which means that I effectively have 100% redundancy, because I have 2
copies of all the data...

This has long struck me as being rather wasteful... and I would be better
served with a single big RAID 5 array, - but before I will consider
trusting my data to a single array, I jolly well want to be pretty sure
that the RAID function works properly, and that I really can recover from a
single drive failure with no interruption and no loss....

So, I'm looking for recommendations for a reliable IDE based RAID 5
controller (if that's not a contradiction!)...

At this stage I'll consider pretty much anything... -  NAS (been thinking
of the Buffalo Terrastation, in a 1.6TB configuration), or either PATA or
SATA PC-based storage... I have both XP Pro, and Windows 2003 Enterprise
servers available to host the storage, and I already have a significant
number of PATA IDE drives, so it would be "nice" to reuse those,
so I have a leaning towards PC based RAID with PATA drives...

Within that in mind I've been trying to shortlist some suitable hardware..
- I'm looking at a number of PCI cards, (Highpoint rocketRAID etc..), but
it struck me that quite a number of motherboards now have RAID 5
capabilities, so I was wondering if anyone knows of any specific boards
that support RAID 5 with PATA IDE drives, and more importantly if anyone
has any personal recommendations... - I'm also open to recommendations for
PCI cards as well... Ian Lowe, - I know you have had some pretty choice
words to say about some of them in the past!

Hotswap isn't particularly important to me, - if I have to replace a drive
(and I'm not expecting that to be a regular occurrance!), I don't see it as
a problem to open the server up to do it...

TIA for any info...

Paul G.



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