RE: RAID options etc...

["christopher purves" <CHRIS_PURVES@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have the terrastation and it works very well ineed. Its up and running in
minutes works for all platforms ( I have unix/mac/wintel) and is nice and
quiet. It has a cute samba style interface too.In summary - turn in on and
forget - lovely.

Reasons for not going for one:

you need more raid 5 storage space than it supports ( >1.2TB )
you need incredibly high performance (Buffalo is gigabit though)
you can't afford one

HTH

Chris

who is thinking about a 10TB raid array for DVDs- current cost estimate 10k


>From: "Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: "UKHA_D Group" <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: [ukha_d] RAID options etc...
>Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:02:50 +0100
>
>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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