Best Home file server configuration??

[zac_haryy]

I am trying to figure out the best idea for a home server and need some help. I have a computer right now that runs a version of windows and the only thing that I use it for is to store files. I rarely run applications on it and it just sits in a room by itself with no monitor and some hard drives in it. I store a lot of files on there and am working on making a movie server right now (just have all of my DVD images on the server so that I can watch any of them as I please). I was originally planning on re-doing the server and have 3 750gb hard drives in there setup with a RAID-5 configuration but I don’t know if this is the best idea. I just want there to be some redundancy without having to be worried but I don’t want to loose a bunch of space. I want everything to work together as if it is one drive to the computer. So I just don’t know what to do for sure and how I should set it up before I get to far into it. Right now I have these hard drives:

250gb
250gb
200gb
200gb
160gb
160gb
750gb
750gb
750gb
400gb

Total:
3.82tb

I am not using the3x750gb hard drives yet (still in the boxes). I wouldn’t mind trying to use some of these to work together but I don’t know what the best way is. If I setup some RAID configuration I want to be able to add to it whenever I want so that when it gets full I can just get another hard drive and add to it. I spose that if I have to I will just use 750gb hard drives if that’s the only way that I can do it and just use all the others for something else or sell them.

So here I am and not exactly sure what to do. I don’t know which OS would work best and I don’t know the best way to setup the hard drives is. I have read a little about Windows Home Server but with that if you want to have a copy of a certain folder (ie: my DVD folder) it will copy all the contents of that folder to other hard drives then what it is on (but this would waste a lot of space). Another thing is that Windows Home Server use's all the hard drives and makes it look like one "folder" (like mounted in Linux) so if you add any hard drives at all it just increase's the capacity and if you every take a hard drive out and put it into another computer it will read the hard drive as a NTSC hard drive.

Please through ideas at me. I am just not sure what the best idea is for this. I am not going to use this for a web server or anything other then accessing files. Please let me know! Thanks!


-haryy

[Hollow4]

why not sell some of your smaller drives and put that cash towards some more 750's. Seems like a bit of waste of space and energy to have 10 drives sitting in one case, when you could sell 7 and add a 750 and build a pretty nice array. Granted that would only give 2.25 tbs of advertised space and you would have to buy a controller, but it would save you from having lots of little hard drives Keep one of the 160's for a boot drive and your set.

As i see it now, with out the 750's in your case, you have a little over 1.5 tbs, so adding a 750 in lieu of all other drives and raid 5 4x750's would give you more space then you have currently with some back up protection.

You can always use windows XP to server files, albeit basic, it still works and its not a headache.

Cheers
Hollow

[zac_haryy]

I actually dont have all of these in the same case right now, they are spread out a little bit but this is just what I have total and I am willing to move everything around as I want the best setup that I can get.

So would RAID 5 be the best idea here for this setup? I hate reading aritcles like this:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162
and not know what is going to happen. Most the time when I read about sites talking about RAID 5 it is in a actual web server or some server that a lot of people access all the time (which isnt like my case). Is it easy to add drives to the RAID 5 configuration whenever I want and is it easy to just pop a new drive in when one fails?

[Sparkyy]

You are going to want a true hardware RAID card then and make sure it can do Online Expansion Capability (OCE), basically it means you can have the array grow while it is still in use.
RAID 5 does work though and unless something major happens your server physically or you have the worst luck in the world, your array should not fail so long as you keep it on a battery back up for those annoying power flickers and just keep it clean of any viruses and the like.

[zac_haryy]

I was planning on just doing the RAID 5 software based. I didnt want to buy a RAID controller due to cost of one. Does RAID 5 software based (ie windows 2003 server) do Online Expansion Capability?

[DeathFromBelow]

Keep in mind that the usable size of a raid 5 array will be limited by the smallest drive. The formula is (# of drives - 1) * Size of the smallest drive

Assuming you use all 10 drives for your array: (10-1) * 160GB = 1,440 GB, not good. You would get a lot more space and use less energy with 4 or 5 750 GB drives

You don't really need a hardware raid 5 controller since you're going to be accessing this machine over the network.

Windows Home Server is good if you want to do automated backups, but it doesn't sound like you're interested in that. Check out Freenas (http://www.freenas.org/). Its free, fairly easy to install and set up a software raid 5 array, and it shows up as a shared folder to Windows machines.