Setting up a file server, need equipment/raid help

[daphatgrant]

Let me start by describing what my current "file server" is, I have a 1.4ghz T-bird, w/ 512mb ram, a 320gb hdd, and a 100/1000 net card that's connected to my router that I pull and store files on.

I have been meaning to replace this for quite some time and with the cheap price of 1tb hdds I figured why not do/start it now.


Here is what I currently have:
Antec 900 case
*Abit IC7-G w/ 10/100/1000 built in lan
PV 2.8C
1GB PC3200
500GB hdd (OS)
DVD-ROM

What I am going to start ordering:
(8) 1TB HDD's 4 for storage, 4 for backups
Corsair 1000HX PSU
1 or 2 raid cards



So... here are my questions:

1. do you recommend that I raid them in pairs? so it's drive A w/ backup, B w/ backup, etc

2. Or do you recommend that I raid and stripe them? so it's drives A-D striped using drives E-H as mirrors.

3. Do you recommend any specific RAID cards?

4. Is using 8 drives going to make this too complicated?, I am going to need at least 6 drives (need a min of 3TB's storage)





*The board that I am going to use has 2 different sets of SATA (150) ports that can be raided (2 different RAID controllers for a total of 4 drives between the 2 controllers). Since it is SATA I (150) I'd rather go with the newer SATA II (300).

I won't be accessing this frequently but on a 1-2 times a week basis. There is a good chance that I will install a wireless card so that I don't have to run cat5 to it.


I apologize if this is scattered but I have never looked into doing this before and at 8 drives I am not starting out easy.

[Danny Bui]

1) RAID1 is NOT backup. It guarantees uptime and guards against hardware failure for sure but it is not backup since whatever data is deleted, infected, or corrupted is copied to the second drive automatically

Have you thought about going with Windows Home Server? I mean, Windows Home Server sounds like it's almost the perfect solution for you. Your old mobo doesn't support PCI-E anyway and there aren't any good PCI true hardware raid cards out there. So WHS is a good solution for you.

[nitrobass24]

Yea I would reccomend WHS for you as well

1) it provides a true Backup
2) it provides uptime/redundancy for the data you chose(more powerful than any raid IMO)
3)RAID cards are a PITA and expensive, and need PCI-e (which you dont have)
4) its awesome and can do a lot of cool stuff :D

BTW there is no need for 1000w PSU way overkill you should go with like a 600w
There is no need for SATA 300 because no single drive can go above 150 ATM.

[daphatgrant]

Given the price of the pre-built units wouldn't I be better of buying a cheaper custom system like a:

ASUS P5Q
Intel Xeon E3110 @ 3.0ghz
8GB's Corsair DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W

I can get all that for $450?

[nitrobass24]

WHS is an Operating System that you can install just like Server2003

Yes you can buy the prebuilt units but you already have a system.
What I was suggesting was that instead of spending hundreds on RAID Cards that wont provide a true backup, you could spend $100 on this OS.

[daphatgrant]

WHS is an Operating System that you can install just like Server2003

Yes you can buy the prebuilt units but you already have a system.
What I was suggesting was that instead of spending hundreds on RAID Cards that wont provide a true backup, you could spend $100 on this OS.

Sorry, I guess I don't know enough about the OS :o

I'll look into it, I assume that it's software based archiving/backing up.

[daphatgrant]

Again I apologize for all the questions but I am rather new to all this. Can I set the system up to have 9 drives in it, 1 OS drive (WHS) and 8 storage drives and have it automatically backup the info on drive A to drive E, and drive B to drive F, drive C to drive G and so on so that there are 2 physical drives with the data on them.

I guess the biggest thing I want to have is a backup for each drive in case one of the drives dies.

Thanks for the help so far :).

[Danny Bui]

Again I apologize for all the questions but I am rather new to all this. Can I set the system up to have 9 drives in it, 1 OS drive (WHS) and 8 storage drives and have it automatically backup the info on drive A to drive E, and drive B to drive F, drive C to drive G and so on so that there are 2 physical drives with the data on them.


Well just turn on Duplication on all the files and folders you have, in WHS, and any of the files or folders with duplication turned on will have a copy stored on another drive. To the OS, there's only one file but in reality that file is split among two drives. So that's pretty close to what you want to do. If a drive dies, and as long as all the files on that drive had duplication turned on, your data will be relatively safe.

[daphatgrant]

Well just turn on Duplication on all the files and folders you have, in WHS, and any of the files or folders with duplication turned on will have a copy stored on another drive. To the OS, there's only one file but in reality that file is split among two drives. So that's pretty close to what you want to do. If a drive dies, and as long as all the files on that drive had duplication turned on, your data will be relatively safe.

Yeah that's pretty much what I am looking to do. Can you set the drive that duplicated files are stored on? From what I am starting to gather it sounds a lot like a DROBO (http://www.drobo.com/) where if you have (4) 1TB drives the unit sees 4 TB's but the data is stored in a way that if a drive where to fail the data is scattered amongst the other drives to prevent you from losing data.

[Danny Bui]

Yeah that's pretty much what I am looking to do. Can you set the drive that duplicated files are stored on?

AFAIK, no. The OS chooses where to store the duplicated file IIRC.

[daphatgrant]

AFAIK, no. The OS chooses where to store the duplicated file IIRC.

Alright, I'm almost sold :p. If I install (1) 500GB OS drive & (8) 1TB drives will the OS see it as (1) 500GB OS drive and (1) 8TB drive or does it see them individually? and in either case after I hit 4 TB or more I'll need to upgrade to more HDD's right?

[Danny Bui]

Alright, I'm almost sold :p. If I install (1) 500GB OS drive & (8) 1TB drives will the OS see it as (1) 500GB OS drive and (1) 8TB drive or does it see them individually? and in either case after I hit 4 TB or more I'll need to upgrade to more HDD's right?

Actually WHS will combine all of the hard drive space into a single hard drive space. So basically you'll have single 8.5GB drive. And if you turn on duplication for ALL your files, then yes once you reach around 4TB of storage, you'll need more drives. However, you can monitor each drive individually.

[daphatgrant]

Actually WHS will combine all of the hard drive space into a single hard drive space. So basically you'll have single 8.5GB drive. And if you turn on duplication for ALL your files, then yes once you reach around 4TB of storage, you'll need more drives. However, you can monitor each drive individually.

Well you sold me :p. I'll grab WHS and a new PSU, probably another Corsair HX620 or the 750TX and start buying the drives.

I was thinking about getting the WD greens, is it worth it to get the blacks?

[spazoid]

You'll be on a Gbit connection at best anyway, so buying a black over the greens isn't really worth it.

[epimetheus]

I don't want this to sound confrontational, but what does network speed have to do with deciding between WD Black or Green? Type of media stored on the drive is much more important. My 1TB Green drives sustain ~70MB/s which is more than enough to stream HDDVD and BluRay (~25Mbit envelopes). I agree, the Green drives should be fine for a WHS box. I've got 3 1TB Green and a 500GB Green in my WHS box right now.

[jcolby]

Used in the manner described, WHS is nothing more than a VERY SLOW software Raid 1. A good dedicated raid controller card is several times faster at implementing raid, can use RAID 5 or RAID 6 which means that out of 8 drives you lose 1 or 2 drives rather than 4.

WHS does have built-in backup of ATTACHED WORKSTATIONS, but there are other backup implementations (third party software).

WHS has some very cool stuff, amd I am NOT saying do not use it, but I would question it's efficiency for very large storage requirements where you desire a "raid" solution.

If you want the functionality of WHS for the workstation backup, but you need raid file storage, my suggestion is to implement WHS on an existing RAID array. That is the "best of both worlds". You can use the backup stuff that WHS does very well, but you get RAID at the hardware level which means speeds anywhere from 2 to 10 times faster than the "software raid" that WHS provides. Pure file storage can be accomplished with simple shares.

And as is repeated over and over and over, RAID is not backup, so you STILL need to have a backup off to another location of files that may be corrupted by processes, and in particular files that cannot be pulled off of program CDs / DVDs, such as family photos, email, tax filings, work documents / spreadsheets and so forth. WHS does provide exactly this kind of backup for your workstations, and in an easy efficient manner, however you need to backup that WHS backup to a hard drive that can be dropped in a fire safe (for example).

Given a true raid (hardware Raid 5/6), backing up ripped DVDs / music is probably not efficient. If one of those files are lost you can get them back by re-ripping them, and they are so large (at least the video is) that backing them up "near line" is way more expensive than it is worth.

Just my 2c worth.

[daphatgrant]

You'll be on a Gbit connection at best anyway, so buying a black over the greens isn't really worth it.

Ok, I'll save the $10 then and get the greens.

Another question, does WHS play well with add on SATA cards? The board I have doesn't have enough SATA ports so I'll need to get something like this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102062). Most likely 2 to keep them all @ 300.

If anyone has another suggestion as to how to add the drives to the system let me know, even if it includes getting a new system with more onboard SATA ports.

[daphatgrant]

What I have is about 600 DVD's that I want backed-up and put on hard disk so I don't have a massive pile of plastic sitting in my living room. I guess the event where I would lose all the data on the drives wouldn't be life altering so an off-site backup or a 100% secure backup is not necessary. I do plan on having other things on this server but DVD backups will be the primary form of data on the drives, I am guessing right around 2.5 TB's.

[epimetheus]

WHS generally works with add-in controller cards. I would make sure that whatever card you get has drivers for Windows Server 2003 as that is what WHS is based on. As far as running WHS and RAID, I believe others have said that WHS does not like having RAID volumes in it's drive pool. I'm kinda speaking out of my but here as I have not tried it myself. In all honesty though, there's really no reason to. If you turn on folder duplication on the folders you want to backup, then you protected from a single hard drive failure. Additionally, you wouldn't have to deal with the RAID rebuild time and the chance of another large drive failing during rebuild. The primary use of my WHS is for media serving to an HTPC in my office and a Popcorn Hour A-110 (media streamer) in my living room.

[KevinG]

I'd be really interested in hearing the results of this build... I also have an IC7-G Max 3 that I plan on building into a file server as well. It has more SATA ports, (4 + 2) and I'd like to do it without getting a PCI SATA II card (Is there any real benefit?)

I'm most interested in what kind of throughput you can get over the onboard gig port. (Although you said you might go wireless).

Thanks!

[nitrobass24]

What I have is about 600 DVD's that I want backed-up and put on hard disk so I don't have a massive pile of plastic sitting in my living room. I guess the event where I would lose all the data on the drives wouldn't be life altering so an off-site backup or a 100% secure backup is not necessary. I do plan on having other things on this server but DVD backups will be the primary form of data on the drives, I am guessing right around 2.5 TB's.

Yea I would say closer to 3.5tb depending on how you rip them.
If you rip just the main movie you can save some space.
I would rip the entire disc to to video_ts folder and use MyMovies that way you dont spend time encoding, its lossless, and way cool.

[jcolby]

As far as running WHS and RAID, I believe others have said that WHS does not like having RAID volumes in it's drive pool.

I have done it and it works just fine. The WHS team despises hardware RAID, but then they have an "agenda", which is the "beautiful simplicity" of their system.

In all honesty though, there's really no reason to. If you turn on folder duplication on the folders you want to backup, then you protected from a single hard drive failure.

True. However...

1) It is DOG SLOW.
2) The "landing zone" can fill up causing even slower operation as WHS scrambles to move stuff out so there is room for new stuff.
3) It is "raid 1" (though it really isn't). This means that it has a 100% overhead for its raid implementation. For every gigabyte of storage there is a gigabyte of overhead.

Additionally, you wouldn't have to deal with the RAID rebuild time and the chance of another large drive failing during rebuild. The primary use of my WHS is for media serving to an HTPC in my office and a Popcorn Hour A-110 (media streamer) in my living room.

First of all, if two drives fail in WHS you can lose everything as well, and you WILL lose everything if those are your only disks. WHS gives you no control over where the duplication happens.

Second, using REAL Raid 6, you can have two drive failure and not skip a beat.

Third, using a true raid implementation, raid rebuild time happens in the background. There is nothing to "deal with".

Question, what happens when the system disk goes down in a WHS? Enjoy your Christmas holidays as you struggle to get the media center back up as the rest of the family has a Christmas feast!!

I have a Media Server feeding my TV in the living room. It is talking to a HTPC server up in my office. The server is hardware RAID. All my ripped DVDs and CDs sit on shared volumes sitting on a RAID platform. If a disk were to die, I replace that disk and the system takes over and rebuilds the array. I don't have to "do anything" other than replace the disk and tell the RAID to rebuild. I can still watch my TV while the rebuild happens.

In fact, running Raid 5 with a hot backup will automatically handle a single drive failure (you don't have to do ANYTHING), and the RAID system will email you that a drive failed to boot.

Look, I am not saying that WHS doesn't have it's uses but I am saying that its "Raid" is aimed at "grandma". If you have the smarts to do real RAID, a simple RAID 5 with 7 data disks plus hot backup will cost a LOT LESS and give you a LOT MORE, including speed.

[nitrobass24]

I have done it and it works just fine. The WHS team despises hardware RAID, but then they have an "agenda", which is the "beautiful simplicity" of their system.

True, RAID can be used but it is not needed, makes things more complicated and expensive, and is not supported by Microsoft



1) It is DOG SLOW.
2) The "landing zone" can fill up causing even slower operation as WHS scrambles to move stuff out so there is room for new stuff.
3) It is "raid 1" (though it really isn't). This means that it has a 100% overhead for its raid implementation. For every gigabyte of storage there is a gigabyte of overhead.

1) slow to duplicate..yes, but it does not affect performance
2) Landing Zone is not an issue anymore since PP1, and KB 957825 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957825)


First of all, if two drives fail in WHS you can lose everything as well, and you WILL lose everything if those are your only disks. WHS gives you no control over where the duplication happens.

Second, using REAL Raid 6, you can have two drive failure and not skip a beat.

Third, using a true raid implementation, raid rebuild time happens in the background. There is nothing to "deal with".

If you only have two drives you cant do anything other then RAID1 so thats a moot issue.
He has 8 disk
RAID6 is slow and expensive and gives you no control over where your data is either, or what data is redundant..it automatically makes everything redundant.
With WHS you get to decided what is important. For me I have my Photos, and family videos duplicated but my DVD rips are not because they are already backed up by the original disc.
With RAID6 if you drop two disc. theoretically you should be fine but the reality is that there will be problems. First you have to get more disk, and the rebuild has to finish before another disk dies. Chances of rebuild failure on these 1tb and 1.5tb drives are extremely high. (http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162)
Not to mention Insane Rebuild times like days...better not lose power.


Question, what happens when the system disk goes down in a WHS? Enjoy your Christmas holidays as you struggle to get the media center back up as the rest of the family has a Christmas feast!!


I had my system disk die and it was easy
I installed a new HDD I had laying around, inserted my Install CD, chose the Reinstall option. Hour later I was fully operational with ZERO data loss.


I have a Media Server feeding my TV in the living room. It is talking to a HTPC server up in my office. The server is hardware RAID. All my ripped DVDs and CDs sit on shared volumes sitting on a RAID platform. If a disk were to die, I replace that disk and the system takes over and rebuilds the array. I don't have to "do anything" other than replace the disk and tell the RAID to rebuild. I can still watch my TV while the rebuild happens.

In fact, running Raid 5 with a hot backup will automatically handle a single drive failure (you don't have to do ANYTHING), and the RAID system will email you that a drive failed to boot.

Look, I am not saying that WHS doesn't have it's uses but I am saying that its "Raid" is aimed at "grandma". If you have the smarts to do real RAID, a simple RAID 5 with 7 data disks plus hot backup will cost a LOT LESS and give you a LOT MORE, including speed.

Yes RAID5 you get speed
But for streaming HD content around your house you dont need more then single drive speed.
And no matter how fast your raid is, you are limited by the speed of your network connection.
RAID is great I use it on my WS, and at work, but it just is not needed for a HomeServer type application.
1) its expensive
2) if you dont know your shit you can really screw yourself up

With everything there are Pros, and Cons but for people who want to stream DVD's to there htpc's the Pros for WHS outweigh the Cons

I switched from using RAID5
Ockie...Yes the StorageKing switched. He is running around 50tb on WHS

Plus WHS offers a lot more then media Serving
Remote Access
WebServer
Backups(networked computers and Server)

I Use mine for VM's
Internet Video Streaming when I'm out of town

If you can do it on Server 2003 you can pretty much do it on WHS because after all WHS is simply a set of programs installed on Server2003.

[epimetheus]

Look, I am not saying that WHS doesn't have it's uses but I am saying that its "Raid" is aimed at "grandma". If you have the smarts to do real RAID, a simple RAID 5 with 7 data disks plus hot backup will cost a LOT LESS and give you a LOT MORE, including speed.

I've got nothing against RAID, but when speed is not an issue, as is the case in most home file servers, there is no way WHS is more expensive then RAID 5, especially 8 disk RAID 5. An 8 port RAID 5 card alone is what, 3 or 4 times the cost of WHS? And that's not even true hardware RAID. Most of this is a broken record - the WHS vs. RAID issue has been beaten to death.

It's simple - to each his own. For me WHS is exactly what I need in a home file server.

[Danny Bui]

Another question, does WHS play well with add on SATA cards? The board I have doesn't have enough SATA ports so I'll need to get something like this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102062). Most likely 2 to keep them all @ 300.

If anyone has another suggestion as to how to add the drives to the system let me know, even if it includes getting a new system with more onboard SATA ports.

I would not recommend getting that controller since for just $40 more, you can get this 8Port controller:
SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz (PCI Compatible) SATA Controller Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) - $98

Yes it'll work in PCI and yes it can be used with WHS. In fact, if you check out Ockie's latest Galaxy builds, those are the cards he uses with WHS:
http://networkisdown.com/showthread.php?t=276&page=9
http://networkisdown.com/showthread.php?t=276&page=10

[Ockie]

Look, I am not saying that WHS doesn't have it's uses but I am saying that its "Raid" is aimed at "grandma". If you have the smarts to do real RAID, a simple RAID 5 with 7 data disks plus hot backup will cost a LOT LESS and give you a LOT MORE, including speed.

lol, that comment right there threw your entire post credibility out the window. Hardware raid freaks are all in panic as this is the future in storage and always has been, but WHS made it home friendly and easier for the end user. I can not wait to see more enterprise grade solutions that will hit the market, particularly a windows storage server offerings with a dynamic self healing storage matrix.

Grandma? Care to compare storage systems apples for apples and then we can see who really is the grandma in this situation? ;)

[jcolby]

lol, that comment right there threw your entire post credibility out the window. Hardware raid freaks are all in panic as this is the future in storage and always has been, but WHS made it home friendly and easier for the end user. I can not wait to see more enterprise grade solutions that will hit the market, particularly a windows storage server offerings with a dynamic self healing storage matrix.

Grandma? Care to compare storage systems apples for apples and then we can see who really is the grandma in this situation? ;)

As with everything it depends on what you need. For a terabyte of storage, hardware raid will never win because of the cost of the controller.

OTOH if you want to store hundreds of videos (as I do) and feed that video to several rooms, and do anything else, then WHS is not the solution. The RAID is not the total cost. There is the cost of the server, the cost of each box getting data, the cost of the network, the cost of POWER, the cost of maintenance etc., the cost of being out of town and all movie storage going down for the whole house.

I currently have 247 videos in my collection. Within a year or two I will have close to a thousand. Each video is averaging 5.75 gigs.

Given an 8 drive RAID 5 array that is an overhead of 1/8 = 12%. Total storage 7 tb
Given raid 1 (WHS) that is an overhead of 4/8 = 50%. Total storage 4 tbyte.

I am not a "hardware raid freak", nor am I in a panic. I am in fact a programmer / analyst that understands computers. I get my hardware raid "for free" by purchasing the card with the money saved on drives. You pay the same or more for a software raid system (assuming a large system) because of all the disks you dump into redundancy, plus you pay more / megabyte of actual storage for the electricity to feed them. This is the HardForum and my assumption was that if you were here reading this, setting up a RAID is not so tough (it really isn't). Even setting up WHS directly on a RAID platform (what I did originally) is dead simple.

I currently have a server, very similar to a WHS server except that it is not WHS (though it is Server 2003). It sits up in my home office. It runs the MyMovies database and stores all of my videos. I do have a RAID controller running the disks.

The raid controller is wicked fast, I don't understand where the idea that any (hardware) raid is slow comes from. Streaming reads are about 400 mbytes / second, streaming writes about 70 mbytes / sec. Streaming reads are always faster than single disk reads because the data is coming off of multiple physical disks. Writes are about the speed of the single disk write. I can assure you (from experience) that a hardware raid will ALWAYS be anywhere from 2 to 10 times faster than WHS file transfers.

I have WHS running in a VM running on this server. To the network it appears to be another machine. It does nothing but PC boot drive backup for the three laptops and five workstations in my home / home office. My RAID has been running for years, with never a hiccup. Actually, on my two raid systems, over the last 6 years (running 24/7) I have had exactly one disk failure, and it was brain dead simple to replace the disk. The controller took over and rebuilt the array. Nothing died, no crisis, no "get out the boot disk and reinstall windows".

Look, there is a place for every solution. If you live in an apartment, with one or two computers and an xbox serving video, and in particular if you just want to store a handful of videos, then WHS is hands down the winner. If you want to serve up a huge library of videos to multiple TVs, plus do critical file storage, all without ever thinking about disk failure, then WHS is not such a great solution.

I bought WHS back in Nov of last year, just BEFORE MS acknowledged an "issue". I originally ran my WHS on a raid platform with a single large volume for WHS storage. No issues with the boot drive failing, no issues with all the crapola that was the problem. Why? Because no files ever "moved" (no redundancy copying) on my system, and the underlying hardware supplied the storage redundancy. I watched in amusement (on the WHS forums) as the posters sweat bullets over whether their system was going to munch files.

SP1 fixing their problems did not convince me to move back to their "file duplication" solution. Why would I do that? Eventually I did move WHS into a virtual machine, simply so that I could move it at will to another (RAID) server. Copy the whole darned virtual machine and bring it up. I moved back to doing raw file storage out in shares, and left WHS doing what it does so well, backup.

I LOVE WHS. For computer backup. I LOVE WHS even more running on a raid platform. I love WHS even more as a VM doing JUST my computer backup! It is awesome for that task, and when it is sitting on a stable raid volume where I can be on a business trip and if the raid "fails" I don't have to worry about it, well... I love it even more.

Nope, no panic here.

[nitrobass24]

As with everything it depends on what you need. For a terabyte of storage, hardware raid will never win because of the cost of the controller.

OTOH if you want to store hundreds of videos (as I do) and feed that video to several rooms, and do anything else, then WHS is not the solution. The RAID is not the total cost. There is the cost of the server, the cost of each box getting data, the cost of the network, the cost of POWER, the cost of maintenance etc., the cost of being out of town and all movie storage going down for the whole house.

Well thats exactly what I do and I currently have 6.4tb of data and it grows by about 1tb a month and feed HD video to several rooms without a hiccup.
Cost of the Server is less without RAID
Cost of the network is erroneous because you have to have it whether you use raid or not
Cost of each box getting data...WTF does that mean?
Cost of power is almost the same regardless of setup....drive consumes ~10w :eek:
Cost of Maintenance????Hello time spend rebuilding arrays is called maintenance
Cost of being out of town when a Drive dies OMG Media Servers are not what I would consider Mission Critical
And regardless of RAID or WHS your still not there to replace the dead drive.


Given an 8 drive RAID 5 array that is an overhead of 1/8 = 12%. Total storage 7 tb
Given raid 1 (WHS) that is an overhead of 4/8 = 50%. Total storage 4 tbyte.

I am not a "hardware raid freak", nor am I in a panic. I am in fact a programmer / analyst that understands computers. I get my hardware raid "for free" by purchasing the card with the money saved on drives. You pay the same or more for a software raid system (assuming a large system) because of all the disks you dump into redundancy, plus you pay more / megabyte of actual storage for the electricity to feed them. This is the HardForum and my assumption was that if you were here reading this, setting up a RAID is not so tough (it really isn't). Even setting up WHS directly on a RAID platform (what I did originally) is dead simple.

Free...d00d you have to get some new jokes
Seriously 8 port hardware RAID card say Areca 1222 ~$500 well if you dont waste your money on RAID controllers then you could have 5 more 1TB Hard drives
For me I have a 20hot swap case so I would need a 24 port card...those are like $1500
With RAID everything is redundant even if it is not needed.
WHS you chose what is important.


I currently have a server, very similar to a WHS server except that it is not WHS (though it is Server 2003). It sits up in my home office. It runs the MyMovies database and stores all of my videos. I do have a RAID controller running the disks.

The raid controller is wicked fast, I don't understand where the idea that any (hardware) raid is slow comes from. Streaming reads are about 400 mbytes / second, streaming writes about 70 mbytes / sec. Streaming reads are always faster than single disk reads because the data is coming off of multiple physical disks. Writes are about the speed of the single disk write. I can assure you (from experience) that a hardware raid will ALWAYS be anywhere from 2 to 10 times faster than WHS file transfers.

Rebuild is slow
and the speed is for what absolutely nothing because you are limited to 125MB/s if you are on wired Gbe
With RAID you are garunteed to have disk contention if you are say playing 4 different movies...where with WHS they quite possibly are located on different spindles.
I can assure you (from experience) that a hardware raid is more expensive, and while it is faster, for this application there is no benefit.

[[LYL]Homer]

The OP asked about RAID and as an alternative WHS was suggested and it looks like the OP is going to give it a try. I think RAID was dismissed at this point.

jcolby -
It looks like to me you've managed to undo everything that makes WHS such a good platform except the part you LOVE, the backups. Folder duplication, one large volume for storage (that is easily expandable), and best of all is the lack of personal mental overhead. I guess this is "granny mode". I LOVE granny mode, I was tired of managing files and drives. And your last post continues with the assumption that everything must be duped 100%. I understand that's how you want things, what about the OP?

Nothing wrong with running WHS with RAID or as a VM, but consider the cost and complexity to the OP too.

[jcolby]

Why do you keep saying rebuild is slow? It is a dedicated controller doing it. It happens in the background, and takes an hour or two. It has absolutely NO effect on operation. Where does that equate to slow?

Now replace a failed drive in WHS that contained duplicated files. Hmm... the main processor has to do that. There is no "background", no dedicated controller.

OK, so you have a 20 hot swap case? How much is that? How much are the 20 drives? If you are going to duplicate everything (and you may not I suppose) then 10 of those drives are "lost" to file duplication. If these are 1 gig drives, that is a THOUSAND dollars for "lost drives". You just "bought" a 24 port controller but got a 10 drive "array". Hmmmm...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816121019

$899 for a 24 port card. This is by the sister company to Areca.

I actually just bought a 16 port ARECA controller "open box" on Newegg for $646. Works a treat!

Have you actually ever done RAID? I was not joking when I said "dead simple" (for you and I), it is!

I sense a bit of hostility, but am not quite sure why. I have stated that WHS is a good solution to certain problems, it is just not a good RAID solution. It is NOT RAID, it is file duplication and workstation backup. IF you do not use WHS file duplication, then it is a dead simple JBOD raid (which isn't really RAID either), and at THAT it excels!

Let's simply agree that WHS and RAID solve different problems. I use WHS, just not as a RAID solution.

[jcolby]

Lyle,

I want redundancy. WHS is a poor redundancy solution. I love the WHS backup, so I use that. WHS absolutely SHINES as a "drive extender" UNTIL you turn on file duplication, then you have just bought a very expensive software RAID 1 array (kinda, sorta, but not really).

[Blue Fox]

I don't see the "very expensive" part of WHS. Whole point behind it is that it's inexpensive and easy to maintain. I personally have an HP EX470 server on the way to play with. It's not replacing my primary file server any time soon however.

[jcolby]

I don't see the "very expensive" part of WHS. Whole point behind it is that it's inexpensive and easy to maintain. I personally have an HP EX470 server on the way to play with. It's not replacing my primary file server any time soon however.

It is inexpensive, until you want it to be "big". The expense grows faster than the value. It is somewhat inexpensive, though if you have parts you can build one for the price of the software, then it is REALLY inexpensive. And as long as you are not using it for terabytes of redundancy it is a wonderful solution.

Of course I just have to ask, if it is so wonderful, why is it not replacing your server any time soon? That is a rhetorical question, we both know why, because they perform very different functions. If you have a server already, you could have just dumped the WHS software in a VM and played to your hearts content, for the cost of a WHS license.

As I said elsewhere, personally I want redundancy. Each terabyte drive holds about 180 videos. It takes a looooong time to rip that many DVDs, believe me I know. WHS redundancy works just fine, but it costs $2 for every dollar of storage. Using the controllers available now it costs about $1.50 for every dollar of storage. It certainly isn't free, but it is cheaper (for big redundant storage).

Someone said "so what, a drive is only 10 watts". Yep. Times 20 EXTRA drives to get a 20 tbyte redundant solution. That is 200 watts / hour MORE than the true raid solution. 200 * 24 = 2.4 kw hours per day. At my location I pay 10c / kw hour = $.24 / day. * 356 = 87 dollars a year. Plus more drive bays, plus more (or at least bigger / more expensive) power supplies etc.

As everyone knows, the more disks, the more failures. 40 disks for 20 gigs instead of 22 disks for 20 gigs is almost twice the failure rate for any given time period.

There is no free lunch. WHS is wonderful for a small system but I PERSONALLY would not consider it for a large one, given my requirements. And yes, I know that there are a couple of people here who do. Good for them! From the rather vitriolic responses to my post, I would say they have a lot tied up in being right about their decision.

:D

[nitrobass24]

Why do you keep saying rebuild is slow? It is a dedicated controller doing it. It happens in the background, and takes an hour or two. It has absolutely NO effect on operation. Where does that equate to slow?

Now replace a failed drive in WHS that contained duplicated files. Hmm... the main processor has to do that. There is no "background", no dedicated controller.

Hour or two? yea if your using 73gb SCSI drives maybe but when you have 8x1TB it takes a while go look at some of Ockies or gjvrieze's build logs where they talk about their rebuilds.
The main processor has to do it. So its faster then any IOP proc on a RAID card and in a plain jane file server the processor isnt really doing anything to begin with.


Have you actually ever done RAID? I was not joking when I said "dead simple" (for you and I), it is!

Yes ive done RAID....I sold one of my RAID cards when i switched to WHS to build a new HTPC.

I sense a bit of hostility, but am not quite sure why. I have stated that WHS is a good solution to certain problems, it is just not a good RAID solution. It is NOT RAID, it is file duplication and workstation backup. IF you do not use WHS file duplication, then it is a dead simple JBOD raid (which isn't really RAID either), and at THAT it excels!

Not sure why you sense hostility either I'm not mad simply discussing the issues at hand and presenting my opinions as you have yours
No body ever said WHS duplication was RAID1


Let's simply agree that WHS and RAID solve different problems. I use WHS, just not as a RAID solution.

You are completely Right
They Do solve different problems
If you look at the OP's problem WHS fits the Bill quite nicely.

I still use RAID on a daily basis
But for a Media Server its OverKill

[MrMike]

I bought WHS back in Nov of last year, just BEFORE MS acknowledged an "issue". I originally ran my WHS on a raid platform with a single large volume for WHS storage. No issues with the boot drive failing, no issues with all the crapola that was the problem. Why? Because no files ever "moved" (no redundancy copying) on my system, and the underlying hardware supplied the storage redundancy. I watched in amusement (on the WHS forums) as the posters sweat bullets over whether their system was going to munch files.

SP1 fixing their problems did not convince me to move back to their "file duplication" solution. Why would I do that? Eventually I did move WHS into a virtual machine, simply so that I could move it at will to another (RAID) server. Copy the whole darned virtual machine and bring it up. I moved back to doing raw file storage out in shares, and left WHS doing what it does so well, backup.

I think other people in the thread missed this part of this post.

It's simple - he got burned by WHS. He just forgot the golden rule of Windows OS deployment. Until Service Pack One, it's not done. Anyone who tested every scenario in which you were going to actually use the system, would've discovered the file corruption bug and put WHS away without even putting any real data on it.

What's that saying - once burned, twice shy? It's an understandable reaction. There's no point in even 'arguing' with him, but on the same note he should've just said that in the first post he made. It would've avoided a lot of headache.


You are completely Right
They Do solve different problems
If you look at the OP's problem WHS fits the Bill quite nicely.

I still use RAID on a daily basis
But for a Media Server its OverKill

Truth. The reason WHS gets a lot of love for strictly a file server box is it's set it and forget it. I want easy expandability - to be able to add two drives every 3-6 months without taking the hit to my bank account of buying that many drives that I may not use up front or having to deal with a chance of failure when expanding a RAID array that often. I want to be able to pull a single drive from the machine at any time and see what's on it. WHS and RAID6 end up being the same up front price for the same amount of data. Only one offers the features I want in a file server.

I also love RAID. My current four drive RAID 5 that I use for data will be switched to RAID 10 and be used for virtual machines. I consider RAID 10 an indispensible partner in servers. I consider RAID 5 and 6 a pain in the ass.

[jcolby]

I also love RAID. My current four drive RAID 5 that I use for data will be switched to RAID 10 and be used for virtual machines. I consider RAID 10 an indispensible partner in servers. I consider RAID 5 and 6 a pain in the ass.

Fascinating, why? I normally use Raid 6 because of something I read somewhere about the failings of RAID 5. I have never found RAID of any sort to be a PITA, so I am curious as to why you find these two modes to be so? It has always "just worked" for me. I am using Raid 5 on one of my servers only until I can get another disk to bring it up to RAID 6 (next month probably). I bought 6 drives, using them raid 5 ATM, and will add two more to make them Raid 6 and a hot spare.

True RAID with hot spare is truly "set and forget" though of course at the expense of additional drives. My controller even sends me an email if there are any problems. That has only ever happened once however. One drive died, the RAID 6 continued on (I did not have a hot spare), and I ordered another drive. Two days later I popped it in, the controller rebuilt the array and I went back to work. Total time to fix about 30 minutes to order the drive and another 30 minutes to remove the dead / insert the new.

I have had my two RAID servers for almost 6 years and spent a total of 1 hour on maintenance of the RAID itself. Works for me.

[Blue Fox]

Of course I just have to ask, if it is so wonderful, why is it not replacing your server any time soon? That is a rhetorical question, we both know why, because they perform very different functions. If you have a server already, you could have just dumped the WHS software in a VM and played to your hearts content, for the cost of a WHS license.
My main server has a 24 port Areca card and 22 hard drives. It is centralized storage for my network. WHS and RAID cards don't play well together. The HP EX470 will be a backup solution for my desktop and laptop.

[[LYL]Homer]

Just a couple of notes:

1. Not all of us can afford $500 or $900 controllers in addition to the now seemingly within reach TB drives. We are hearing about $100 1TB drives and want one or a few . But when you look at the up-front costs of a 16 or 24 port RAID controller plus at least 3 drives to get going on a serious RAID setup it all suddenly starts looking expensive. Keep in mind that some of us are more hobbyists here. We have to start small and slowly grow our systems, or cycle through and upgrade them. Advantage WHS.

2. Many of us have an old AMD or P4 system laying around we can throw WHS on, plug a few SATA drives in and get running. We can get some experience, even download the 120 day trial, and see if WHS is worth it. Difficult to know whether a hardware RAID 5/6 setup will perform to my needs or be overkill, as nice as the bragging rights may be.

3. At $100 WHS is an easy way to get a real server product in our house. Some probably have never dealt with more than a peer to peer type of network to another WinXP or Vista box acting as a "file server". We all don't know the intricacies of setting up a $900 RAID 6 card on Server 2008 - "but HP has a WHS product for consumers so maybe I can handle this new OS". The "H" in the middle of WHS is for Home after all.

4. The Norco RPC-4020 case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219021) at $290 for 20 bays. I'll make this jump sometime in the next few months myself. This is great for all of us. It makes adding more drives an easy thing as prices drop even more.

[Ockie]

Heh, jcolby, you are onbsessed with raid but you forget the most important fact, raid can corrupt.

And since when do you have a multi terrabyte array with 2 hour rebuild time?! I want the cheap stuff you're smokin.

[Ockie]

It is inexpensive, until you want it to be "big". The expense grows faster than the value. It is somewhat inexpensive, though if you have parts you can build one for the price of the software, then it is REALLY inexpensive. And as long as you are not using it for terabytes of redundancy it is a wonderful solution.

Of course I just have to ask, if it is so wonderful, why is it not replacing your server any time soon? That is a rhetorical question, we both know why, because they perform very different functions. If you have a server already, you could have just dumped the WHS software in a VM and played to your hearts content, for the cost of a WHS license.

As I said elsewhere, personally I want redundancy. Each terabyte drive holds about 180 videos. It takes a looooong time to rip that many DVDs, believe me I know. WHS redundancy works just fine, but it costs $2 for every dollar of storage. Using the controllers available now it costs about $1.50 for every dollar of storage. It certainly isn't free, but it is cheaper (for big redundant storage).

Someone said "so what, a drive is only 10 watts". Yep. Times 20 EXTRA drives to get a 20 tbyte redundant solution. That is 200 watts / hour MORE than the true raid solution. 200 * 24 = 2.4 kw hours per day. At my location I pay 10c / kw hour = $.24 / day. * 356 = 87 dollars a year. Plus more drive bays, plus more (or at least bigger / more expensive) power supplies etc.

As everyone knows, the more disks, the more failures. 40 disks for 20 gigs instead of 22 disks for 20 gigs is almost twice the failure rate for any given time period.

There is no free lunch. WHS is wonderful for a small system but I PERSONALLY would not consider it for a large one, given my requirements. And yes, I know that there are a couple of people here who do. Good for them! From the rather vitriolic responses to my post, I would say they have a lot tied up in being right about their decision.

:D

You keep barking at your "impressive" collections of movies and your vast storage and then you go and balk at WHS as puny users.


How about we compare hardware and specs. For the record, I got your movie colleciton beat by nearly 10 fold.


... yes, im waiving my epenis around...hi

[[LYL]Homer]

BTW, I have no idea how to set up or use a VM.

You're itching for an e-fight aren't you Okie! ;)

[jcolby]

Homer;1033399211']BTW, I have no idea how to set up or use a VM.

You're itching for an e-fight aren't you Okie! ;)

rotfl, ya think?:eek:

[jcolby]

Lyle,

1) Yep, advantage WHS.
2) Yep. It is easy to build a WHS machine.
3) Yep, it is indeed easy to get a server into the house this way, especially if you can build your own or throw it on an old machine.
4) YES, and I will be picking one of those up some day soon.

And with SP1 I might even trust it. OTOH I would be keeping a close eye on the WHS forums, where there is never a lack of people telling the other side of the story. ;)

[nitrobass24]

... yes, im waiving my epenis around...hi

HAHA ROFLMAO

[[LYL]Homer]

Lyle

I just realized that I'm supposed to be Lyle, but you can call me Homer. :cool:

The [LYL] stands for "Lose Your Life" - the online gaming guild I used to run.

[Trepidati0n]

jcolby...

I took a bit of time to investigate who you are and what you do. I did some research on the books you wrote in and the reviews that came with them. It has become quite apparent that with all your wonderful experience you have shrunk your view of how things should be done to a very narrow view (I guess that comes with database performance tuning). It is exceedingly dangerous to be that way. We have lots of people (contractors) at our work place that argue/debate like you do. They come in "guns a blazing" and don't really seem to give a shit about integrating it into the current system or even working within the current system. They just seem to know "best" and everyone else is wrong.

But back on topic. I do agree that when you compare very large storage systems of WHS w/ duplication and RAID6 that it can tip in the favor of RAID6. However, you seem to not have talked about backups of data. Remember, RAID should NEVER be considerd a backup...EVER. Too many people in the past months here have fallen in that trap and they got burned.

Once you grow to very large systems WHS shines again. WHS allows you bascially have backup that is pretty close to a true backup with duplication. The only fault is the backups are in the "same box". However, once you graduate to massive amounts of data (like Ockie) WHS shines again. You just build a second cheap server box. You can then afford to turn off duplication on significant portions of your data since it is being backed up to the new WHS server. Therefore in the case of 20 drives versus 12 drives in RAID6, it would be better to run 2 machines having a true and seperate backup of your data.

Honestly RAID5/6 does have a few cases where it can shine above WHS...but in the total "package", WHS has a many more positives than negatives. It is a growth oriented OS which is what home enthusiasts usually need.

[jcolby]

Blue Fox,

WHS and raid cards play swimmingly together. MS does not claim otherwise, they just don't want to support raid for a product aimed at grandma, which is perfectly understandable.

And it IS aimed at grandma, NOT enthusiasts. MS is trying to sell a retail product that ANYONE (thus my "grandma" references) can just plug in and use, and they have succeeded after a rocky start.

Meanwhile plenty of enthusiasts do use it and love it.

Nowhere in all of my posts have I ever said it wasn't a good product. It is a shell over Windows 2003, and Windows 2003 is probably the most stable product MS has ever produced. What I said is that as a "redundancy solution" it is much less wonderful. It does NOW appear to at least work for that without destroying your data, but file duplication is a ton of work for what attempts to handle a "raid 1" solution.

Raid 1 is a mirror. What is written here is also written over there. What do you think "file duplication" is? What is written here, is also written over there. If this is so easy to do, why isn't it a part of Windows already? In fact of course, it already is, Windows has had software raid at the OS level for years, and it works just fine. Not as fine as a hardware solution, but "fine enough"

What it doesn't do is allow yanking and adding disks of disparate sized and shapes. THAT is what "drive extender" is designed to do. In order to sell that concept (which is a WONDERFUL concept) you have to also come up with some way to make the data safe. You can't sell a system to grandma to hold the family pictures, and then destroy all of those photos when a disk dies.

So an entire, rather extensive shell was written to plunk down over Windows 2003 which implements all this stuff.

Being a programmer, I am aware of statistics that say that for every 20-30 lines of code, there is a bug. This is a statistic that has held since computers were invented. I have no idea how many lines of code are required for WHS but it is quite a few. That is the reason for the old "never buy in till SP1" thing. Needless to say, there are plenty of bugs left to be discovered.

And of course, there are "gotchas" with this whole "file duplication" thing, gotchas that just don't go away.

Take WHS and a single disk. No file duplication possible of course.

Take WHS and a single 500 g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of duplication are possible. WTFO? And does "grandma" know that?

Take WHS with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of file duplication are possible (actually a bit less I think). Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have a terabyte of file duplication, but you still have 500 gigs that cannot be duplicated.

So yea, file duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives. However if you add a 500g and a 250g and a 300g and a tbyte, you just cannot possibly know what is going to end up duplicated and what isn't. Well, maybe you can, I don't know because I don't do that. I use real raid to handle redundancy and let WHS do what it does best.

And the old "rebalance shuffle", has that been fixed? I truly do not know because I don't participate in that shuffle but in times past there were endless complaint about the disk drives hammering away endlessly (in some cases LITERALLY working non stop for WEEKS at a time), moving those file duplicates from this disk to that, and then over there... that'll wear your disks out in a hurry.

So there are all of these issues because of a kludge "mirror" system. And "grandma" hasn't a clue that it is entirely possible that some of her precious photos STILL are not duplicated. Or can't figure out why she has 250 gigs of space left but can't use it for duplication.

You do know that you can add "volumes" residing on a raid array to WHS and it will use it's drive extender to make it into a single "drive", but redundancy is handled below the OS. So now you can have a 20 tbyte "single drive" sitting on (10) 2 gig volumes, sitting on a raid array, with WHS handling the drive extender but NOT the file duplication.

"The best of both worlds".

Anyway, enough already. WHS is wonderful and of course will promptly replace every raid system on the planet because of all of its advantages. Well... not my raid systems, but all the other raid systems of course. ;)

In the meantime I use WHS, in a VM (which is not supported) on a RAID array (which is not supported).

And I absolutely love WHS for what I use it for. It is one tool in my toolbox.

[Blue Fox]

Nothing stops you from using RAID with WHS, it just defeats the whole purpose of the drive pooling that it does. If you have one large RAID array, it isn't happy when you want to utilize duplication. Sure, you could use 2 RAID arrays, but you might as well just not use WHS at that point.

I still love the performance I get with my Areca 1280ML though. Not everyone has $1k+ to spend on a RAID card however. I run Windows Server 2003 on my main file server and Windows Server 2008 on my video encoding machine, but they are both overkill for a file server and considerably more expensive (I got my license for both for free however). I can't actually run anything but a server OS on my video encoding machine, so I'm kinda stuck with that.

Just don't forget that RAID still has its problems (doesn't stop me from using it though) and that isn't a substitute for backups. I think that a Windows Server 2003 machine as the primary file server and a WHS machine for the backup will work well. Ockie should be proof alone that WHS scales well and isn't a niche product.

[jcolby]

jcolby...

I took a bit of time to investigate who you are and what you do. ...snip... They come in "guns a blazing" ... snip...



ROTFLMAO. Just call me John Wayne.:D

It seems I have been exposed?:o

I am just a little (well, a fairly large) guy who has been doing this stuff for a long time. I too am simply presenting another side of things.

It has been an interesting debate but I suppose now that I have been "outed" I had best ride off into the sunset eh? Can I stop by the general store on the way out of town to pick up some ammo for the next gunfight?

;)

[croakz]

<deleted> went on a rant, and have since had a beer :)

[jcolby]

<deleted> went on a rant about how hard it is to work with the WHS team internaly at MS, but will leave it alone :)

Too late, I read your post before the edit!:D

[[LYL]Homer]

jcolby - I see no reason for you to leave this thread unless you want to.

I still don't buy the "grandma" argument, although I see where you are going with it. But it's way beyond grandma, I've always considered myself somewhat [H]ardcore to various extremes on the PC side of things (overclocking, bleeding edge, etc at times, but I stay up on things). As experience - at work I have a couple of years of managing a Server 2003 install set up by a pro. (He still comes into our office for bigger maintenance.) I don't have any more experience beyond that on servers or know a thing about programming.

Where I'm headed is that with WHS I finally overcame my need to know where all my data was on each and every hard drive. My wife would add a new show to record and not tell me, great, now I have to find a place for this. It was tedious, and I was always running out of room on a drive - frustrated that my recorded shows had outgrown a hard drive of a certain size. Now I have to split them...sure there is RAID 5 and JBOD, and I just about went out and bought an expensive RAID controller. But at that time WHS went retail and I bought a copy. I had tried the beta but only had one spare hard drive at that time to test it out on so I didn't really get it then.

But as I set up my WHS box and got it going I also realized that another personal hang-up was being challenged - the need to have everything fast. Gigabit is the bottleneck, and I realized it was ok to accept this. The RAID 5 array didn't need to happen, it wasn't going to improve anything. I bucked this feeling by rebuilding my original WHS build (A64/3200+) and replaced it with the current E6600 (which was even overclocked to 3.3ghz initially) thinking it would improve something. It didn't, and I can't tell a bit between the two setups, maybe RDP is slightly faster but I hardly ever use it.

And I hardly ever use RDP or even the WHS console now because WHS just does its own thing. Yes, I know it's not perfect yet and about the pre-PP1 stuff. But it's taken a burden of background chatter out of my mind. It doesn't need anything except I occasionally need to plug another drive into it when it tells me to. This is different than "grandma", she doesn't know about the issues you cited. I do know, but the great part is that I don't need to worry about it.

So - some of us get it, we just don't want to have to think about it in our spare time. The OS can be busy thinking about where my files are. I know I sound like a Mac user here, but WHS has been a freeing experience.

[[LYL]Homer]

My problem with WHS is....
/snip

I read it too! Any idea how many people are on the WHS team? Dozens? Hundreds?

[Adidas4275]

this has been a fast moving thread with lots of good info and good opinions...

too many times these debates get out of hand, you all did a good job not letting that happen...


this is what makes [H]ardforum [H]ard

oh p.s. i love my WHS and want to build on for my parents, inlaws and such

i hate fixing their computers with out any real backups....

[jcolby]

...snip..

oh p.s. i love my WHS and want to build on for my parents, inlaws and such

i hate fixing their computers with out any real backups....

And that is where remote desktop comes in. You can set up VNC or RD on not only the WHS but each of their desktops. Then (assuming that the computer boots) you can remote right in to manage things for them.

I do this every day for my clients. I live in NC but my clients are in PA and CT. I use remote desktop, VNC and GoToMyPC to actually see what is happening on computers in another state. I used to have to actually go to their offices, but with the internet and high speed access at both ends, I now live where I choose and still can do my work in their systems.

You can do the same for your parents and siblings.

One key to making this all painless is Hamachi, which is a VPN (virtual private network). That allows you to establish an encrypted channel between your desktop and almost any other computer. Hamachi is very simple to set up, and "punches through" firewalls without you having to know how to do that stuff.

Over that channel you can use RD if the remote system can host the server, or VNC if it can't.

This too is a little scary the first time but it, like WHS, can empower you to do things right from home that you would never be able to do otherwise.

Cool stuff, highly recommended.

Oh, and BTW, if you are going to handle the relative's maintenance, MAKE them get a router if they don't have one already. That places a hardware firewall between them and the wild west internet. Makes your job much easier.

Oh, and I was kidding about riding off into the sunset. John Wayne would not approve.

[MrMike]

Fascinating, why? I normally use Raid 6 because of something I read somewhere about the failings of RAID 5. I have never found RAID of any sort to be a PITA, so I am curious as to why you find these two modes to be so? It has always "just worked" for me. I am using Raid 5 on one of my servers only until I can get another disk to bring it up to RAID 6 (next month probably). I bought 6 drives, using them raid 5 ATM, and will add two more to make them Raid 6 and a hot spare.

True RAID with hot spare is truly "set and forget" though of course at the expense of additional drives. My controller even sends me an email if there are any problems. That has only ever happened once however. One drive died, the RAID 6 continued on (I did not have a hot spare), and I ordered another drive. Two days later I popped it in, the controller rebuilt the array and I went back to work. Total time to fix about 30 minutes to order the drive and another 30 minutes to remove the dead / insert the new.

I have had my two RAID servers for almost 6 years and spent a total of 1 hour on maintenance of the RAID itself. Works for me.

I prefer RAID 10 over RAID 5 or 6 for VMs and server applications for the performance, the degraded performance, and the fast rebuild time. It's a PITA when your array is degraded, you're running three to five VMs, and your performance is through the floor. Degraded RAID10 still gives me great performance, and doesn't cause any such hit to productivity. I prefer RAID 10 for low end business storage as well, but serious storage gets 50 or 60. Don't get me wrong, I like RAID. I just prefer different levels.

If you're going back to RAID 5/6 vs WHS, then you already know from my first post I don't trust array expansion enough to use it 2-4 times a year regardless of controller. It's just the same as the trust issue you have with WHS' duplication. For personal file storage, it's all personal preference based on the feature set.

[Ockie]

It has been an interesting debate but I suppose now that I have been "outed" I had best ride off into the sunset eh? Can I stop by the general store on the way out of town to pick up some ammo for the next gunfight?

;)

You might want to skip that store, I bought all the ammo on the last fire sale :p


If you're going back to RAID 5/6 vs WHS, then you already know from my first post I don't trust array expansion enough to use it 2-4 times a year regardless of controller. It's just the same as the trust issue you have with WHS' duplication. For personal file storage, it's all personal preference based on the feature set.

You said it. Raid is not the end all solution and never has been. I am a big fan of raid but it's never to be trusted as a secure data solution, raid arrays do fail and will fail more in the future with incompatible drive types due to the nature of the latest controllers and will also fail with the increasing of storage medium capacities. I had a 24tb array freeze up on me during my 6-8th expansion, that was when I threw in the towel and moved over to WHS where I can control my environment better. I didn't give up on the first try, this is one of the dozen times that I've come across a RAID array that corrupts or terminates upon expansions. This is why companies such as mine do full backups before you do any raid modifications or expansions, it's also a reason why we have tape libraries to back up these arrays.

I recommend raid to all my clients and I am a big fan of raid, however, once you have experienced storage matrixes (whs barely touches the tip of the ice berg of this technology), you will know its the wave of the future. Think of it more like cloud computing for drive storage systems, distributed computing is now only starting to play with this concept and the results are amazing.

Blue Fox,

And it IS aimed at grandma, NOT enthusiasts. MS is trying to sell a retail product that ANYONE (thus my "grandma" references) can just plug in and use, and they have succeeded after a rocky start.


I disagree, in fact, I would say CentOS or even some of the latest versions of Linux is even easier to install than WHS or Windows based operating systems.

If you are limiting your experience to WHS appliances, I can agree, but the buck stops when it comes to a customized system with full user based install.

Hell, you might just as well say that windows 2003 is aimed at grandma then while you are at it. If you can install an operating system, you can configure raid... going back to what I said about linux flavors, most of them have the raid drivers integrated, so thats a step you can even skip.


Raid 1 is a mirror. What is written here is also written over there. What do you think "file duplication" is? What is written here, is also written over there. If this is so easy to do, why isn't it a part of Windows already? In fact of course, it already is, Windows has had software raid at the OS level for years, and it works just fine. Not as fine as a hardware solution, but "fine enough"


I think the one thing you are too fixed on is that you keep calling this raid. It is in no way shape or form raid or any function of raid. Yes, it does make two copies, no, i does not make two copies on the same target as always. Your argument could be said that raid 1 is the same as a user copying and pasting a file... thats about the effect WHS is.



Being a programmer, I am aware of statistics that say that for every 20-30 lines of code, there is a bug. This is a statistic that has held since computers were invented. I have no idea how many lines of code are required for WHS but it is quite a few. That is the reason for the old "never buy in till SP1" thing. Needless to say, there are plenty of bugs left to be discovered.


Same can be said for raid controllers and raid drivers, keep that in mind. If you don't believe me, just search for compatibility on these forums. You seem to only focus narrowly minded on one area rather than looking at your own product you are arguing for.


Take WHS and a single disk. No file duplication possible of course.

Take WHS and a single 500 g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of duplication are possible. WTFO? And does "grandma" know that?

Take WHS with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of file duplication are possible (actually a bit less I think). Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have a terabyte of file duplication, but you still have 500 gigs that cannot be duplicated.


Lets use your own ammunition on your own argument.

Take RAID and a single disk. No raid possible.

Take RAID and a single 500g drive. Now add another 250g disk. Only 250 gigs of RAID1 is possible. WTF?

Take RAID with a 500 gig drive and add a terabyte drive. Only 500 gigs of duplication is possible (actually a bit less) RAID1. Now add another terabyte drive. Now you can have still only 500gigs of duplication or if you run RAID 5, you can have 1tb. But you still have 500-1000 gigs that can not be duplicated.


So yea, file duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives.


So yeah, RAID duplication kinda sorta works, and it works swimmingly IF you keep pairs of the same sized drives.


However if you add a 500g and a 250g and a 300g and a tbyte, you just cannot possibly know what is going to end up duplicated and what isn't. Well, maybe you can, I don't know because I don't do that. I use real raid to handle redundancy and let WHS do what it does best.


If you added a 500gb, 250, 300, and a 1tb, under raid you will have either several segmented arrays or you can enjoy 1tb of storage depending which array format you choose. You still will not know what is going to be duplicated other than a segment of each drive for size matching will be used in duplication.


And the old "rebalance shuffle", has that been fixed? I truly do not know because I don't participate in that shuffle but in times past there were endless complaint about the disk drives hammering away endlessly (in some cases LITERALLY working non stop for WEEKS at a time), moving those file duplicates from this disk to that, and then over there... that'll wear your disks out in a hurry.


This is my point, most of the users making these WHS comments aren't even aware of the fixes or the solutions to the problems they briefly experienced or heard about.


So there are all of these issues because of a kludge "mirror" system. And "grandma" hasn't a clue that it is entirely possible that some of her precious photos STILL are not duplicated. Or can't figure out why she has 250 gigs of space left but can't use it for duplication.


Actually, this is a wrong assertion, when you enable file duplication, you would enable it on a share, which would duplicate all the files within that share. It's not a drag and drop and pray it gets there or gets duplicated as you so like to comment that it is.


You do know that you can add "volumes" residing on a raid array to WHS and it will use it's drive extender to make it into a single "drive", but redundancy is handled below the OS. So now you can have a 20 tbyte "single drive" sitting on (10) 2 gig volumes, sitting on a raid array, with WHS handling the drive extender but NOT the file duplication.

"The best of both worlds".


And this is why I don't understand the bashing, a few of use are adding raid arrays to storage pools and have had great results, which is why we enjoy WHS so much, it gives us even more flexibility.


Anyway, enough already. WHS is wonderful and of course will promptly replace every raid system on the planet because of all of its advantages. Well... not my raid systems, but all the other raid systems of course. ;)


WHS isn't a business system replacement, this is where storage server will evolve and enterprise matrixes will take place.

[jcolby]

Okie,

I am not bashing anything. I have said over and over and OVER (and over) that WHS is a good product that does some things very well, and other things not so well. Data duplication IMHO is one of the "not so well" things it tries to do. Saying that is not "bashing", it is simply accepting that it does some particular thing poorly.

That's about like saying I am "bashing" the old VW bug when I say it doesn't go over a hundred miles an hour easily if at all. I am just pointing out a fact.

WHS TRIES to accomplish data duplication, and it succeeds. It is just not particularly good at it. Saying that is NOT bashing.

And you are correct, WHS is not a business storage replacement, but TONS of small businesses are trying to figure out how to make it one. "Raid underneath" can go a long way towards actually making WHS a very useful, and much more robust small business tool. Of course it not a "grandma" system anymore, I understand and acknowledge that, but it is taking two tools and using them together to create "more".

[daphatgrant]

I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105) has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105).

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?

[Ockie]

I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105) has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105).

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?


You can save yourself time on re-ripping by uploading all those videos to me and I'll "store" them for you :p

Your configuration looks good, but my recomendation would be to use the largest hard drive possible for the OS drive.

[jcolby]

My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

Let's back up a bit and stop discussing specifics and discuss strategy. Everyone who has a lot of DVDs has the same problem. I solved mine by using MyMovies.

MyMovies is a two part system, where the first part is a database application that stores the information about the movie being ripped, as well as the storage locations of the movies. MyMovies also provides a tool for doing the ripping itself (with the help of AnyDVD). It is a tad klunky but it works. the nice part about it is that you just tell it where to rip to and it does so. It creates the directory, does the ripping, looks up information (cover art, actors etc) in it's proprietary database out on the internet and downloads it into its local database. I can't discuss the "movie only" part because I actually rip the whole thing. We like to use the subtitles (getting old and hard of hearing ;)

The second part of MyMovies is an "add-in" to Media Center that allows you to see and play the movies inside of Media Center.

I am NOT pushing MyMovies, I am just noting a "solution" for this rather generic problem. There are other very similar solutions out there.

What MyMovies does (and the others as well I suppose) is record WHERE on your system each movie is stored, i.e. the share and the subdirectory. MyMovies CREATES the subdirectory as it rips the movies, so it "knows" where to go to get it.

What this means is that you do not need a single large storage pool, you can simply throw a bunch of disks on ANY system, share them, then start ripping your movies using MyMovies. As the disk fills up, tell MyMovies to use the next share.

It is slightly, but ONLY slightly less convenient than something like WHS where there is a single large share that keeps growing.

This is in fact the system that I use. I have a large RAID server (PLEASE DO NOT START RAID BASHING AGAIN) up in my office. It serves up shares which I point MyMovies to as I am ripping. I only have to tell MyMovies where to Rip to the first time and from that point (until I tell it a new location) it puts all the movies it is ripping on that share.

So basically, RAID or no RAID, WHS or no WHS, a solution like MyMovies allows you to do the ripping and place them out on ANY SHARE.

Note that I am not discussing the pros and cons of WHS or RAID, I am simply discussing a solution for the ripping, storage and playing of DVDs. This type of solution really doesn't care where the storage is, but it has to be one or more shares that MyMovies can see.

So, if you love WHS, by all means use that. If you love raid, then do that and share volumes on a raid platform somewhere.

This thread has had a lot of "pros and cons" of using WHS and / or RAID to make the storage of the movies (and other files) more reliable. I have no interest in what any individual out there does in that regard, I do what I know and trust.

Using an application like MyMovies you can build RAID 1 arrays and share the entire thing, then fill it up. Build another, rinse and repeat.

Or you can use WHS and let it do the file duplication.

Or you could build RAID1 volumes, feed them to WHS and not use WHS file duplication.

Or you could build RAID 5 storage, feed it to WHS. Etc. Etc.

There are many paths to making the storage "redundant". In the end, NONE of that is true backup (as has been stated here so vociferously. However a true backup of DVDs if you have any form of redundancy is probably not such a pressing issue.

I hope this has helped, and I hope this will not start the WHS / RAID "debate" all over again.

[daphatgrant]

You can save yourself time on re-ripping by uploading all those videos to me and I'll "store" them for you :p
I'd love to but I'd probably get smacked by Time Warner Cable for ganking bandwidth :p.


Your configuration looks good, but my recomendation would be to use the largest hard drive possible for the OS drive.
I'll add another 1TB drive for the OS then for a total of (9) 1TB drives.

Any thoughts on the Vantec swap cages? Kyle seems to love them which is one of the reasons I thought of them.

[MrMike]

Any thoughts on the Vantec swap cages? Kyle seems to love them which is one of the reasons I thought of them.

How much are eight or nine of those cages going to run? Wouldn't it be more economical to join the Norco 4020 club? :p

Although the one I got shipped with jet engine delta fans, but it's not too bad getting it from mwave on ebay with cashback. I had six quiet 80mm fans sitting around.

[daphatgrant]

Let's back up a bit and stop discussing specifics and discuss strategy...

I appreciate the info that you have provided an absolute ton. Like I said I have learned quite a bit regarding data storage in the last few days :p. I will absolutely look into MyMovies, so far everything I have has been ripped using Clone DVD and turned into .ISO's

[daphatgrant]

How much are eight or nine of those cages going to run? Wouldn't it be more economical to join the Norco 4020 club? :p

Although the one I got shipped with jet engine delta fans, but it's not too bad getting it from mwave on ebay with cashback. I had six quiet 80mm fans sitting around.

I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p

... ... ...

<comes back from looking up Norco 4020>

DAMN IT! :mad: :p

That is a pretty cool device... might have to find another use for the Antec 900.

[MrMike]

I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p

Wow, yeah, you should get a Norco 4020 dude. Mine was $311 from mwave/techtreasure on ebay, shipped. Before 25% cashback.

[daphatgrant]

One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.

[nitrobass24]

I have got to say that I have learned quite a lot here :). I want to thank everyone that has responded so far, your help is very very much appreciated. I live in a tiny tiny apt (335 Sq Ft) and have an absolute ton of DVD's, just shy of 600 that are all sitting in a huge Rubbermade tub. My main goal is to get them all ripped so I can get the discs put into storage and out of my tiny living room :p.

I have quite a few that are ripped right now (365GB's worth) and the average size is between 3.8 - 4.4GB's (I strip them down to just video and menu) so I figure I'm going to need around 2.5TB's right off the bat. I currently have what I have ripped on an external 750 that makes me a little nervous as there is no backup which is the 2nd reason I want to build this media server. I just want to note that I will not have anything on this media server that is earthshakingly vital to me. If I loose a drive or 6, I will just have to re-rip the discs and go through the RMA process for the dead drives.

I just bought an Antec 900 case from NewEgg which has placement for 9 drives which is what I am looking at using, 8 new WD 1TB green drives and 1 old Samsung 500GB drive. I figure that this case will allow for adequate cooling and the price was right at $60 shipped. For additional cooling the thought of putting the drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105) has crossed my mind but that’d be an additional $360 so it’s just a thought.

As I said before I currently have a P4 2.8 system that uses an Abit IC7-G board that uses PCI and has no PCI-E. I am a bit embarrassed to ask this but is this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) both a PCI and PCI-E card?

If the above card is PCI and gets approval from the rest of you this is what I am looking at for the final product.

Antec 900 case
Corsair CMPSU-620HX PSU
Abit IC7-G
Intel P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 500GB Samsung HD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD Green HDD’s*
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) (8 port SATA card)
Windows Home Server
Some random optical drive that I'll only have installed for the OS installation

*Possibility of placing drives in Vantec swap cages (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817122105).

The total cost of this little adventure is going to be right around $1,300 wo/ the swap cages, $1,700 w/ the cages.

Any additional thoughts?

That supermicro card is a PCI-X not PCI-express....that said it will run in a PCI slot which myself and others here do, and it works quite well.

[jcolby]

One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.

The easiest wat to do this is to look closely at the photos. Notice that this specific card has a VERY long back plane connector. That is a 64 bit PCIX, definitely not PCI.

If you are truly looking for PCI then you need to look here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150410+1193512552&Configurator=&Subcategory=410&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

[jcolby]

Wow, I didn't know PCIX could runin a PCI slot. Learn something new every day.

[nitrobass24]

I appreciate the info that you have provided an absolute ton. Like I said I have learned quite a bit regarding data storage in the last few days :p. I will absolutely look into MyMovies, so far everything I have has been ripped using Clone DVD and turned into .ISO's

I would reccomend either putting the movies into video_ts folders or remuxing to mkv/avi's
That will make it much easier to play back on HTPC's and other computers, and allows for Placeshifting.
Mymovies can handle ISO's by mounting them with Daemon Tools...however I have never had good luck with that. So I remux all my DVD's/BluRay to MKV files.

I think right around $360 for 9 swap cages.

<goes to find out what a Norco 4020 is> :p

... ... ...

<comes back from looking up Norco 4020>

DAMN IT! :mad: :p

That is a pretty cool device... might have to find another use for the Antec 900.

Norco 4020 FTW
get one seriously its kick ass.

One other thing I just wanted to confirm is that that SATA card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009) is indeed a PCI card not a PCI express card and that sending data from 8 SATA2 drives through that PCI slot isn't going to cause issues.

It will work in a PCI slot....only sata card I would buy for WHS
Yes it is fine for this type of application because you are essentially limited to jbod disk speeds.

[nitrobass24]

On the MyMovie note

I would definately reccomend it to anyone looking to use their dvd library on a VMC HTPC. It is just simply awesome.

That said the WHS version Suck ASS. It only works if you have DVD's in video_ts folders. It claims to work with iso's and daemon tools but I F8xked around with it for a week and could not get it to mount iso's and play them in Media Center.
It also will not play video files:mkv, avi, etc. or do BluRay

So I installed the standard Server/Client Version on WHS and the Client Version on my HTPC and it works swimmingly...just awesome.
So if your going to use MyMovies use the original, because the WHS version is just not up to snuff yet.

[MrMike]

What does MyMovies do that just mounting an ISO with Daemon Tools over the network doesn't? Does it have something like DVD Shrink built in?

[nitrobass24]

It is a meta-data provider as well so in VMC it will show all your movies with the cover and it gives all the imdb data
Check it out its sweet

www.mymovies.dk

[[LYL]Homer]

Another vote for a Norco 4020 and making the OS drive a 1tb.

Has anyone run into a clearance issue with the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 card (the extra length hitting a northbridge heatsink or onboard SATA ports)? Something to check out.

[jcolby]

It is a meta-data provider as well so in VMC it will show all your movies with the cover and it gives all the imdb data

Not quite correct but close. MyMovies has its own movie database (online). As of the version that I use (downloaded last year) it depends on users copying the data out of imdb and putting it into the online MyMovies database, for which the users are compensated with "privileges". As a result, some movie meta-data might not be there yet.

But it is sweet!

[daphatgrant]

One more final parts check/review before I commit :p.

Norco RPC-4020 server case
PSU*
Abit IC7-G
P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 1TB WD green HDD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD green (storage)
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (SATA x 8 card)
LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows Home Server

*I have not yet decided on a PSU, I was leaning towards the corsair HX620 PSU, not that this would cause any real issues but I'd have to use a bunch of 4-pin molex to SATA gender changers. Any thoughts on going to the 750TX? or should I stay with the HX620 and just use the adapters. Do you have any other PSU recommendations? I usually stick to Antec, OCZ, Enermax, or Corsair but am happy to try PCP&C if it is recommended.

[Blue Fox]

Why would you need molex --> SATA adapters? The backplane in the case takes 10 molex connectors. You don't even need the HX620. I would get a 450VX (or 550VX) instead mainly because it is single rail. You'll overload the HX620 with more than about a dozen drives, so stick with single rail power supplies. In my experience, you'll need about 1.4A per drive on the 12v line for them to spin-up if you don't use staggered startup.

[nitrobass24]

PC Power and Cooling PSU's are da bomb.

[Danny Bui]

Do you have any other PSU recommendations? I usually stick to Antec, OCZ, Enermax, or Corsair but am happy to try PCP&C if it is recommended.

Considering that the Norco case has room for 21 drives and since you are probably planning to use all 21 drives, just go with a larger PSU now like the Corsair 750TX or PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750.

@ Bluefox
The Corsair 620HX is a single rail PSU. The multiple rail listing is false and was a mistake that was too costly to fix, according to Corsair's rep here on the forum.

[daphatgrant]

Why would you need molex --> SATA adapters? The backplane in the case takes 10 molex connectors. You don't even need the HX620. I would get a 450VX (or 550VX) instead mainly because it is single rail. You'll overload the HX620 with more than about a dozen drives, so stick with single rail power supplies. In my experience, you'll need about 1.4A per drive on the 12v line for them to spin-up if you don't use staggered startup.

This is why I am double checking everything :p. I have switched and changed parts and ideas more times than I'd like to admit in the past 2 days. I guess I was thinking that the HDD's were still going to be powered via SATA power cable as opposed to the backplane.

Another question is if I decide to add another 4 - 8 drives over the next year is this still the same PSU that you'd recommend? Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. And as far as the staggered startup how many drives do you need to have before you need to move to this?

Thanks again to everyone that has helped so far :).

[Adidas4275]

i love mymovie with HTPC client on VMC and addin on my WHS.

i have close to 300 dvds on it with folder duplication on my movies :)

[Blue Fox]

Considering that the Norco case has room for 21 drives and since you are probably planning to use all 21 drives, just go with a larger PSU now like the Corsair 750TX or PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750.

@ Bluefox
The Corsair 620HX is a single rail PSU. The multiple rail listing is false and was a mistake that was too costly to fix, according to Corsair's rep here on the forum.
Ah, well, it is still overkill. I was able to run a Q6600 at 3.6ghz, an HD4850, water cooling, and 22 hard drives off my 610w PC P&C power supply, so the 450VX or 550VX would be plenty. If you are desperate for modular, there is the 520HX too (safe to say that newegg incorrectly lists it as multi-rail too?).

[Danny Bui]

Ah, well, it is still overkill. I was able to run a Q6600 at 3.6ghz, an HD4850, water cooling, and 22 hard drives off my 610w PC P&C power supply, so the 450VX or 550VX would be plenty. If you are desperate for modular, there is the 520HX too (safe to say that newegg incorrectly lists it as multi-rail too?).

Yup, the 520HX is also a single rail design

Anyway, 450VX for 22 hard drives? Too close for comfort for me. I still don't think either of those 750W PSUs are overkill. I'd err on the side of caution for this. With those 750W PSUs he'll be close to optimal efficiency, temperature and quiet range of those PSUs. If you're wondering WTF I'm talking about, just quoting this guy here:

4) Power supplies last longer if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

5) power supplies are quieter if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

6) Power supplies are cooler if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

[Blue Fox]

Well, with my E2180, 22 drives, and a Matrox video card, I was pulling ~300w at the wall.

[Danny Bui]

Well, with my E2180, 22 drives, and a Matrox video card, I was pulling ~300w at the wall.

Using a Kill-A-Watt or UPS? Because Kill-A-Watts, UPS and other power reading devices aren't that accurate:
Yes and a quick search would turn up this topic a million times over. Here is the recap:

1) APFC can fool Kill-A-Watts into giving you abnormally low readings (some times giving better than 100% efficiency)

2) Power supplies derate with temperature anywhere from 2w/c above a nominal rated at value to 10w/c.

3) Kill-A-Watt's and most power meters sample too slowly to catch transient loads (the Transient load from our tests is 117w and is COMPLETELY missed by Kill-A-Watts).

The power meters in UPS software are just as bad. You have to spend some change before you get anywhere near an accurate power meter when your PSU has APFC.

[Blue Fox]

UPS. Going by the components inside, it isn't that inaccurate.

[nitrobass24]

I run a 750w PCP&P Silencer in my MediaServer
You might could get away with less but I err on the side of caution.

[Yakyb]

Norco RPC-4020 server case
PSU*
Abit IC7-G
P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 1TB WD green HDD (OS)
(8) 1TB WD green (storage)
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (SATA x 8 card)
LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows Home Server


this is a great thread and i must admit that im slighlty jealous of the op's build (thinks i need more storage space) however considering the amount of money your investing would it not possibly be an idea to remove the hot and power hungry p4 and replace it with a 7300 or something similar in a p35 epu board? should only run you and extra $150 dollars or so.Or even an intel ATOM maybe?

also would it not be better to run a wd black as the os drive so th eos can run on a faster drive (only speculation as i ponder my build)

[MrMike]

FYI you will need this cable (http://estore.circuitassembly.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43_126_147&products_id=181) for the slimline SATA DVD-RW. Get the 0.5m to be safe. :)

[jcolby]

How do you control staggered spinup in this system? I know my raid controller does that in my systems but without such a controller I am guessing that all of them will start spinning up on system power up. Until I told the raid controllers to use staggered spinup it was causing my power supply to turn back off about two seconds after I switched the system on, and that was with a 700 watt supply.

[Trepidati0n]

A typical and modern HDD is 20W (PEAK) on spinnup. The seagates are a bit higher ( 2amps). Therefore 20 drives * 25W = 500W max a startup on the 12V rail. If you go with WD's, it would only be 400W.

jcolby...you left out a lot of information on your system. Right now it is like saying "I put my keys in my car and it didn't work. How did you get yours to work?"

[Blue Fox]

How do you control staggered spinup in this system? I know my raid controller does that in my systems but without such a controller I am guessing that all of them will start spinning up on system power up. Until I told the raid controllers to use staggered spinup it was causing my power supply to turn back off about two seconds after I switched the system on, and that was with a 700 watt supply.
You probably had a multi-rail power supply. I had the same problem at one point. Your power supply may provide enough amps on the 12V rails, but all the molex/SATA connectors share the same rail and you can't use any of the others. I haven't seen any other way to do staggered startup other than a RAID card. Doesn't really need to be included in the BIOS because most boards don't have support for more than 10 drives (highest I've seen is 12 SATA connectors).
A typical and modern HDD is 20W (PEAK) on spinnup. The seagates are a bit higher ( 2amps). Therefore 20 drives * 25W = 500W max a startup on the 12V rail. If you go with WD's, it would only be 400W.

jcolby...you left out a lot of information on your system. Right now it is like saying "I put my keys in my car and it didn't work. How did you get yours to work?"
When I tested my Seagate 7200.10s, they took ~1.35A on the 12V rail to spin up.

[jcolby]

Sorry. AMD motherboard, low end quad core, low end ATI video. Thermaltake toughpower 700W power supply. This is a SQL Server machine.

I was successfully running an 8 disk array with old Seagate dot10 320s on an Areca 1220. I was not using staggered spinup at that time.

I was upgrading the system and put a second raid controller in (a Promise) and started adding 4 newer Seagate dot10 500g drives. I could get up to 3 of them to run but when I added the 4th the system would shut down. I tried turning on staggered spinup in the Areca, though I left it on the lowest setting (.75 seconds I think). IIRC for some reason (I don't remember the details) I did not set staggered spinup on the Promise controller.

I eventually mounted a second power supply in it and ran the extra drives off that second supply.

I have just recently replaced the two controllers with a single 16 port Areca, set the spinup to 2.5 seconds and am back to using that single power supply. I credit the ability to use the single supply to increasing the staggered spinup time, but I have no definitive proof of that.

I eventually pulled the 8 dot10 320s and replaced that with 6 new Western Digital WD6400AAKS, so I am now running (4) 500g Seagates and (6) 640g drives. I believe the 500s have the same current specs as the older 300g drives had, but the newer 640s use less power IIRC.

None of which has anything to do with my question, which is... if he is going to run (eventually) 20 drives, how will he control staggered spinup? That is a lot of disks to try to start all at once. I can't say it won't work on any given PS, I am just saying that I had problems with fewer (but older) drives until I used staggered spinup.

[MrMike]

That Thermaltake Toughpower has four 12V rails...

I have a Seasonic 550W with two 12V rails in mine, but reviews and OCP tests show the rails aren't actually enforced.

[jcolby]

Blue Fox,

It was a multi-rail supply. I assumed (we all know what THAT means!) that since each rail was specced at ~18 amps, I could distribute the disks across all of the connectors coming out of the supply (which I did) and it would work (it didn't). I still don't understand how you can have X 12v rails and have all of the molex connectors come off of a single rail. Seems pretty stupid to me!!!

But that is EXACTLY the answer I got from Thermaltake when I asked them. They told me that the PS was designed to drive power sucking video cards, not disk drives. It just never occurred to me that the cables feeding the disk drives wouldn't be distributed across the rails, that just seems like an obvious thing to do.

I ended up just throwing in a second power supply. However once I increased the staggered spinup rate to 2.5 seconds, the single supply worked just fine.

[houkouonchi]

I am sorry but I would never use WHS just like I would never use software raid10 or raid10 in general. You lose too much space and you can be screwed if the wrong two drives fail. I feel that raid6 is much safer than raid10 since you have parity to work with where as you will get corruption if the still living drive in a raid10 rebuild has unreadable sectors, etc...

With a small number of drives (maybe 8 or 10) it might make sense to go WHS vs buying an expensive raid controller (for some) but in a 20 drive array WHS doesn't make sense to me.

The biggest/foremost reason I would never use WHS is simply because its MS. I am sorry but I don't like MS OS's nor the NTFS filesystem. 80% of the systems at my house run linux and the only time I ever use windows (once or twice in a month) is to play a game that doesn't run on linux. I feel that windows does not belong if you plan to use the system as a server.

Hell, my system isn't even a 'server' considering its mainly just for my own use and I play games/watch media/etc on the same system that my raid array is on. I do have a samba server so others at my house or my family can access my machine but for the most part 99% of its use is just mine and done locally.

I have never lost data due to a stupid mistake (formatting, deleting files, etc... IE: user error) and don't think I will in the future. The only thing I could think of that would cause me to lose data is the raid controller screwing up and corrupting the array. I am not too worried about losing data due to a drive failure since there are two sets of parity which should help with read erorrs during a rebuild.

Sure raid is not a backup like so many have said but considering I have only lost data (allbeit a small amount) when drives have started to fail. Considering the fact that raid should prevent that issue I don't foresee myself losing data on this array so raid is good enough for me!

Also the performance with a hardware raid controller will always be better than WHS. This doesn't matter to some people but I like the fact that when doing checksum/hashes of my files on my array I am CPU limited where as WHS would be disk limited and go 1/4th of the speed.

[Adidas4275]

i think the best part of WHS isnt the folder duplication but rather the ability to easily expand the size of the volume and the ability to have automatic backup and an easy restore process

[jcolby]

Hmmm... here we go again? ;)

[nitrobass24]

i think the best part of WHS isnt the folder duplication but rather the ability to easily expand the size of the volume and the ability to have automatic backup and an easy restore process

And you dont have to worry about RAID controller corruption, or a failed rebuild.
Also speed doesnt really matter because unlike your environment where the 99% of the data is used locally, this is going to be a server accessed over the network so essentially that becomes the bottleneck.

[Ockie]

The biggest/foremost reason I would never use WHS is simply because its MS.

I stopped reading right there....

[Trepidati0n]

I stopped reading right there....

No doubt.

[epimetheus]

I have never lost data due to a stupid mistake (formatting, deleting files, etc... IE: user error) and don't think I will in the future.

I actually litterally laughed out loud at this one...

[daphatgrant]

FYI you will need this cable (http://estore.circuitassembly.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43_126_147&products_id=181) for the slimline SATA DVD-RW. Get the 0.5m to be safe. :)

So a regular SATA power cable won't work here ehh?

[daphatgrant]

FYI you will need this cable (http://estore.circuitassembly.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43_126_147&products_id=181) for the slimline SATA DVD-RW. Get the 0.5m to be safe. :)

So a regular SATA power cable won't work here ehh?

[Danny Bui]

So a regular SATA power cable won't work here ehh?

Sadly enough no.

[daphatgrant]

Well it's coming down to the end of this thread... almost* :p.

I have my finger on the Submit Order button at NewEgg's site and am going to throw out the final build list

Need to buy = -------
Already own = -------

*Norco RPC-4020 server case - (Currently out of stock :(, called and was told a few will be back in stock in about 3 - 5 days)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer S75CF 750watt PSU (Got it for $70 after MIR on NewEgg :D)
Abit IC7-G
P4 2.8C
1GB Corsair XMS PC3200
(1) 1TB drive (OS)
(8) 1TB drives (storage)
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (SATA x 8 card)
LITE-ON Slim 8X DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows Home Server
Slimline SATA Cable

I am switching back and forth between different HDD models though. I was initially looking at WD 1TB green drives but seeing that they are 5400rpm drives I thought that I might be better off switching to 7200rpm solutions.

I have narrowed it down to either:
Samsungs HD103UJ for $99.99 w/ 3yr warranty (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102)
or
WD's WD1001FALS (Black) for $119.99 w/ 5yr warranty (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284)

So I'm a bit torn.

Any input?

[nitrobass24]

Get 5 or 6 of the 1.5tb drives

[ghostee]

Sounds like a good setup. I have no experience with those WD's, but the Samsung's are known for running quiet/cool. They're also cheaper so that's a win/win. Less warranty, sure, but in 3 years you may have outgrown them and replaced them with 3TB drives anyways. :-D

[Dew]

this is a great thread and i must admit that im slighlty jealous of the op's build (thinks i need more storage space) however considering the amount of money your investing would it not possibly be an idea to remove the hot and power hungry p4 and replace it with a 7300 or something similar in a p35 epu board? should only run you and extra $150 dollars or so.Or even an intel ATOM maybe?

If he is doing that he may as well go for a 45W AMD Dual Core, they go as low as $40 and as high as $63 for the best one(BOXED). Low power requirements, and with the price of DDR2, he could go for a whole CPU+MOBO+8GB RAM for under $220. I have had my newegg shopping cart with this setup for a few days, just can't quite work up to pressing buy(I have no need of the upgrade, my 939 setup is just fine as a fileserver, just tempted so I can run Untangle in a VM).

It really only becomes expensive if he wants PCI-X on his motherboard. Difficult to find non-Opteron/Xeon motherboards anymore that offer PCI-X.

[daphatgrant]

For right now I am going to stick with the P4 system simply because I already own it and the IC7-G board and matched chip/ram are 100% rock solid and have been since they were first paired back in '03 :p. I may very well do an upgrade when I upgrade my desktop next year and do a shift of power from one unit to the next :p.

[daphatgrant]

The only other note on differences between the Samsung and WD black drives is that the WD drives require less power to run whether it be idle/load/sleep then when compared to the Samsung drives.

[[LYL]Homer]

I run WD green drives with no issues, speed isn't a big deal with WHS. This isn't a RAID 5 array on a $1000 controller. Low operating costs are a plus.