Rebuilding media server?

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hexden

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I have a old media server to hold my DVD rips and TV recordings that I built back in 2005 using a CoolerMaster CM Stacker case and five 3-into-2 drive cages. It has a 2.6 ghz P4 with 1.5 Gb of memory running XP Pro SP2. It has a 3Ware 7506-12 PATA RAID controller with 12 PATA drives partitioned into two RAID 5 units (one 2 TB the other 1.5 TB) connected to it. I also have 4 external fanless two disk ESata RAID 1 cases connected to it as well as two 4 bay Sans Digital USB 2.0 external cases. I'm starting to have trouble with the drives connected to the 3Ware controller. Since PATA drives are hard to come by these days I was thinking about replacing the motherboard with a newer up to date one and retiring at least the 3ware controller and 12 PATA drives.

I understand that there are some AMD motherboards that offer up to 10 SATA ports. Is there a way to use one of these boards to update my setup. I don't want a Norco type case because they are too noisy and expensive. I also can't afford a server motherboard. I'd very much like RAID redundancy on the drives holding my DVD rips because it's a royal pain to rerip them. I have them separated into different categories (Movie DVD rips TV Show DVD Rips, etc so I don't want them all in one big pool). I'd also like to have the drives be formatted in NTFS instead of Linux so I can just pop them into another machine to read them. Any ideas on how to go about this? Thanks.
 
I'd also like to have the drives be formatted in NTFS instead of Linux so I can just pop them into another machine to read them.
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Maybe snapraid on top of ntfs3g. However if you really want ntfs you probably want to run windows as your media server. Although if you do format in one of the linux filesystems there will be no difficulty reading them in some other PC. I mean boot of a linux livecd or live usbstick like sysrescuecd and have full access to your data on any PC without need of any OS install.
 
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hexden said:
I understand that there are some AMD motherboards that offer up to 10 SATA ports.
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There probably were some in the past. But nowawadays AFAIK, there aren't. The most I've seen on an AMD mobo is 8 SATA ports.
hexden said:
Is there a way to use one of these boards to update my setup.
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Kinda. The big problem is that PCI slot: not many modern mobos these days have that.
hexden said:
I don't want a Norco type case because they are too noisy and expensive. I also can't afford a server motherboard. I'd very much like RAID redundancy on the drives holding my DVD rips because it's a royal pain to rerip them. I have them separated into different categories (Movie DVD rips TV Show DVD Rips, etc so I don't want them all in one big pool). I'd also like to have the drives be formatted in NTFS instead of Linux so I can just pop them into another machine to read them. Any ideas on how to go about this? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Well with the exceptionof the AMD A85X motherboard chipsets (8 drives in the same RAID array), the most drives you can have in the same RAID array using the motherboard's onboard RAID controller is generally six. So even if the mobo had ten SATA ports, only six of those SATA ports could be used for the same RAID array. However, last I heard, AMD's RAID implementation wasn't entirely that great. Then there's the issue of RAID itself: It's generally recommended to go with RAID 6 for larger storage considering the relatively higher failure rates of current hardwares, the unpredictability of the success of a RAID rebuild before another drive dies, the sheeer size of hard drive storage these days which means if one drive dies. and that the two extra drives worth of loss would increase the chances of data surviving. Unfortunately though, most motherboard onboard RAID controllers do not support RAID 6.

So what to do if you want some form of redundancy for your data but you just don't want to spend all that cash for a true hardware RAID controller nor are you inclined to learn how to use Linux 9MDADM RAID) or Unix (ZFS RAID)? Basically use Windows Home Server 2011. After that, I recommend trying out Drive Bender, StableBit Drive Pool, SnapRAID, or even FlexRAID as those offer you quite a bit of flexibility and significantly lower costs. All of the above solutions work in Windows and do appear to have followings over in the Data Storage subforum. And the paid options have trial periods
 
How much total space are you looking for?

I'd suggest flexraid, stablebit drive pool or snapraid to pool single drives into one large pool without using RAID.

I'd suggest a small SSD for the OS. and I would utilize 2, 3, or 4TB disks. 5400 or 7200RPM are both fine.
I would use a inexpensive all-in-one motherboard like the ASUS C60M1-I

I would use a good quality inexpensive power supply like the antec earthwatt 380w.

I'd suggest an inexpensive case with lots of drive bays for expansion like the Antec 300 or the NZXT Source 210

I would do a full backup onto a second machine with the exact same setup using a simple syncing program like syncback or rsync.

I wouldn't use RAID unless you're looking for uptime or performance.
This setup with regular windows or linux should hit gigabit speeds (100MB/s) sequential reads.

The simpler the better.
 
That is very close to what I did and I have been a bit disappointed with the performance under Unraid. I am now looking at a bit heavier hardware and going to a ZFS or MD raid system.
 
If i may throw my hat into the ring here, i would keep the same enclosure and upgrade the internals. Workstation/Low-end-server grade components are not as expensive as you might think, and your media server need not be built with cutting edge equipment to leverage some of those benefits (such as ECC RAM, which I have personally switched over to). I personally have two of the supermicro H8SMi-2 (very happy with them) one i purchased used (revision 1) the other i purchased NOS (revision 2). The revision 2 board, equipped with 8GB DDR2 unbuffered ECC RAM and a quad-core am3 processor can easily run you less than $200.

Since you seem most comfortable with Microsoft operating systems i would recommend looking into Storage Spaces and ReFS (more-or-less a descendant of NTFS, with some advantages) under Windows 8 or Server 2012. If you intend to keep your physical disks under 2TB each i would recommend adding one or two Host Bus Adapters based on the LSI 1068e (like the DELL UCS-61 or IBM BR10i) in order to add ports; they are DIRT cheap, fairly well supported and should be more than adequate for your purposes. When the HBAs are in Initiator-Target mode they will present raw disks to the operating system in the same fashion that on-board SATA ports would. Collect the raw disks into a pool using storage spaces and provision it in whatever way you see fit; though using 2 or 3-way mirror volumes formatted as ReFS is supposed to grant the capability of scrubbing your array and actively correcting errors in order to ensure data integrity.
 
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drescherjm said:
Maybe snapraid on top of ntfs3g. However if you really want ntfs you probably want to run windows as your media server. Although if you do format in one of the linux filesystems there will be no difficulty reading them in some other PC. I mean boot of a linux livecd or live usbstick like sysrescuecd and have full access to your data on any PC without need of any OS install.
Click to expand...

I wanted to use Windows because I don't know anything about Linux and don't really want to learn. I've also heard that Linux is picky about driver support and what hardware it runs on. Once I've done the DVD rips I back them up to USB external drives formatted NTFS under Windows. Would the bootable Linux you mention support these? Finally I view my DVD rips and TV recordings around the house using media players like the Patriot Box Office and WDTV LivePlus. Will they work with Linux?
 
Danny Bui said:
There probably were some in the past. But nowawadays AFAIK, there aren't. The most I've seen on an AMD mobo is 8 SATA ports.

Kinda. The big problem is that PCI slot: not many modern mobos these days have that.
Click to expand...

I don't care about PCI slots. I want to retire my 3Ware RAID card.

Well with the exception of the AMD A85X motherboard chipsets (8 drives in the same RAID array), the most drives you can have in the same RAID array using the motherboard's onboard RAID controller is generally six. So even if the mobo had ten SATA ports, only six of those SATA ports could be used for the same RAID array. However, last I heard, AMD's RAID implementation wasn't entirely that great. Then there's the issue of RAID itself: It's generally recommended to go with RAID 6 for larger storage considering the relatively higher failure rates of current hardwares, the unpredictability of the success of a RAID rebuild before another drive dies, the sheeer size of hard drive storage these days which means if one drive dies. and that the two extra drives worth of loss would increase the chances of data surviving. Unfortunately though, most motherboard onboard RAID controllers do not support RAID 6.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of using this motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138366 Also I'd like to break the RAID array into two RAID 5 arrays instead of one big one


So what to do if you want some form of redundancy for your data but you just don't want to spend all that cash for a true hardware RAID controller nor are you inclined to learn how to use Linux 9MDADM RAID) or Unix (ZFS RAID)? Basically use Windows Home Server 2011. After that, I recommend trying out Drive Bender, StableBit Drive Pool, SnapRAID, or even FlexRAID as those offer you quite a bit of flexibility and significantly lower costs. All of the above solutions work in Windows and do appear to have followings over in the Data Storage subforum. And the paid options have trial periods
Click to expand...

I'll look into these. Thanks for the links.
 
hotcrandel said:
How much total space are you looking for?

I'd suggest flexraid, stablebit drive pool or snapraid to pool single drives into one large pool without using RAID.

I'd suggest a small SSD for the OS. and I would utilize 2, 3, or 4TB disks. 5400 or 7200RPM are both fine.
I would use a inexpensive all-in-one motherboard like the ASUS C60M1-I

I would use a good quality inexpensive power supply like the antec earthwatt 380w.

I'd suggest an inexpensive case with lots of drive bays for expansion like the Antec 300 or the NZXT Source 210

I would do a full backup onto a second machine with the exact same setup using a simple syncing program like syncback or rsync.

I wouldn't use RAID unless you're looking for uptime or performance.
This setup with regular windows or linux should hit gigabit speeds (100MB/s) sequential reads.

The simpler the better.
Click to expand...

I want RAID because the 1st time I ripped my DVD collection to disk I had a hard drive crash and I lost all my rips. I was so discouraged it took me over a year to work up the nerve to try it again. The next time I ripped them I had bought a 3Ware PATA RAID card (this was back in 2005) and setup two RAID 5 arrays so that one hard drive crash wouldn't cause me to have to rerip them again. I also copied the rips to external USB drives as a fall back.

I want to use as few drives as possible to reduce heat and energy use so I intend to use 3 or 4 TB drives. My only concern is that hard drives this size seem to have a high failure rate judging from reviews on Newegg & Amazon compared to 2 TB drives. I already have an Antec 650 watt power supply that is powering my media server right now. If it can power the 15 hard drives I have in my server I figure it's good enough to power a lot fewer. As for a case I'm going to be reusing my CoolerMaster Stacker 810: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119093. I've replaced the 4-in-3 drive cages which hold 12 drives with 3-in-2 cages which hold 15 drives.

I do have a gigabit wired LAN network but I'm only streaming recordings of TV shows and DVD rips over it so I don't need too much in the way of bandwidth or hard drive performance. I may in the future put Blu-ray rips on the server and they require more performance and bandwidth. Thanks for the motherboard reccommendation but I think I need more than 6 Sata ports. And I definately can't afford to build a duplicate media server as a backup.
 
I want to use as few drives as possible to reduce heat and energy use so I intend to use 3 or 4 TB drives. My only concern is that hard drives this size seem to have a high failure rate judging from reviews on Newegg & Amazon compared to 2 TB drives. I already have an Antec 650 watt power supply that is powering my media server right now. If it can power the 15 hard drives I have in my server I figure it's good enough to power a lot fewer. As for a case I'm going to be reusing my CoolerMaster Stacker 810: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119093. I've replaced the 4-in-3 drive cages which hold 12 drives with 3-in-2 cages which hold 15 drives.
Click to expand...

That's why you should run RAID 6. It has a higher fault tolerance. Also you should forgo on-board RAID. Doesn't matter if it's Intel or AMD. The on-board implementations are not going to be better than what can be had using a software based solution. Dedicated RAID cards are nice if you have the money. If you don't, stick with the software based solution.
 
I wanted to use Windows because I don't know anything about Linux and don't really want to learn.
Click to expand...

That part I fully understand. Linux is different from windows and it will require some understanding on your part to manage.

I've also heard that Linux is picky about driver support and what hardware it runs on.
Click to expand...

For storage devices, motherboards and chipsets I would say linux is less picky than windows and the drivers are of better quality as a whole on linux versus windows. What linux is picky about is third party sound cards and non nVidia graphics cards although radeon drivers are improving.

And remember guys I use both OSs daily as an network admin of a department (and programmer) since the late 1990s.
 
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Dalfo002 said:
Collect the raw disks into a pool using storage spaces and provision it in whatever way you see fit
Click to expand...
Note that if you use parity with Storage Spaces, your write speeds will be on par with a single drive from the early 90s. I've not seen a parity Storage Space yet that can exceed 25MB/s write. For Simple Volumes, though, things are flat out amazing. I've got 6x3TB set up that way and get 800MB/s seq read and 850MB/s seq write.
 
I'd look on eBay for a RAID controller if I were you...you can find some decent multiport cards a few generations old for a reasonable price. Look for rebranded cards from the big manufacturers...often they'll end up as surplus when companies upgrade their servers and can be quite a bargain.

Drives are pretty much a balance between what you can afford, the space needed and the class of drive (consumer vs enterprise). Try to get a newer generation drive if you can...they'll often have higher areal densities and can offer more performance than an equivalently-sized drive from a previous generation.
 
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