*sigh* Yet another "rate my raid build" thread

Well, my school decided to screw me on my student loans, so it looks like that 3-4TB file server I was hoping for may be a bit out of my reach. However, if I scrimp, save, and love me some ramen... 2TB in my existing box may not be outside my reach. The content stored would be the same, 4-8GB .ISOs, and 100-300MB anime .AVI/MKV/OGMs. I'll probably be the only person ever accessing these files, so speed isn't too much of an issue. A bit of redundancy would be nice, I'm thinking something along the lines of the following:

$1375 5x500GB SATA
$125 AOC-SAT2-MV8
2TB Software RAID-5 via Windows XP for $1500

Yes, I have a backup plan. Re-rip my DVDs, and re-download my anime. There's nothing critical here. It's all for convience sake. Is there anything I should be aware of? I switched from a XFS/Debian to NTFS/Windows setup because I do still enjoy the occasional video game, and would very much like to be able to access my data without rebooting into another OS.

*sigh* I give it a 7 *sigh*

The HD setup and proposed RAID setup sounds good, but I think there may be better choices for the raid card. You'll have to wait on a response from someone who knows about this sort of thing more than me to answer, but so far; 8.

5x500 ST3500641AS = $1,327.50
10x250 WD2500KS = $910

Increasing the number of smaller, less expensive disks will decrease cost and increase speed. Think about going like 8 320 GB disks perhaps or 8 250. Just saw the controller only does 8 per card. You'll save money, and also I think it will decrease the time needed to rebuild a failed disk. Faster, cheaper, time saver = bingo imo.

CDW has the controller for $199.99

8 * $91 = $729
1 * $199.99 = $199.99
total = $928.99 for 1.62982 TiB once formatted, compared to your $1500 for 1.86265 TiB once formatted. You need to ask yourself if 232.83 GiB is worth $571.01? I think not. So I recommend 8 250 GB disks. You really end up paying premium for those 500 and 750 GB disks. The price per GB I've been tracking for about a year or so now and have a spreadsheet built up to do these types of calculations based on the lowest market price. Haven't toyed with it in a while and just rewrote some of the code for the larger disks. Adding raid configs per $ now.

Ok last edit:

For $923.92 you can get 2.08616 TiB formatted if you buy 8 WD3200KS. That would give you 2 TB formatted space for $451.08 less than the $1500 1.8 TiB setup you want. It's a parabola on these raid setups you need to find the minimum cost on the y axis over all the available drives and costs in the market. Be a good program to write if you were a IT person. Basically what you want to do is minimize the cost and maximize the formatted disk space. These type of problems are called optimization problems, and I've been studying them for a while now in a statistics/business administration/information technology program i'm about to graduate from. I'll eventually graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Decision Science, and Information Technology from an AACSB accredited business school. I'm happy.

As you can see I've shown you that by buying 8 WD3200KS you will save money, have faster speeds, reduce your rebuild time if a disk fails, increase your formatted disk space, and decrease you student loan interest payments in the future. You're welcome.

bravo dude.

piako said:

As you can see I've shown you that by buying 8 WD3200KS you will save money, have faster speeds, reduce your rebuild time if a disk fails, increase your formatted disk space, and decrease you student loan interest payments in the future. You're welcome.

Click to expand...

And left no room to expand in the future. If expansion is a plan, though, get a Highpoint 2220; they're cheap and support expansion. With 5 500s you get less initial capacity, true, but there are more ports left on your card to expand onto in the future. And the price of 500s will drop by the time expansion time comes, and the whole system yields more GB per $ than if you buy 320s now.

I second the 2220!

unhappy_mage said:

And left no room to expand in the future. If expansion is a plan, though, get a Highpoint 2220; they're cheap and support expansion. With 5 500s you get less initial capacity, true, but there are more ports left on your card to expand onto in the future. And the price of 500s will drop by the time expansion time comes, and the whole system yields more GB per $ than if you buy 320s now.

Click to expand...

one could also just add a second controller in the future.

Well, yes. I wasn't so much concerned with having enough ports to expand the array, as much as being able to add disks to the array. If you had a 9-port controller and 8 disks in the original array, you'd have to break and re-create the array, and that's a pain in the butt (even if that's all it is). Expanding the array makes that simple.

piako said:

$/GB stuff

Click to expand...

Yup. I've actually got an OOo spreadsheet with price/gig ratios. The reason I chose 5x500GB drives instead of any other option has to do with a factor not included in your equations - availible physical space in the case. I currently have five drives in my computer case already, and only have room for an additional six... Seven if I care to remove my DVD burner.

I'd lose 240GB of my existing storage space if I went with the 8x320GB setup, but it would save me $450, like you said. I'm going to give this option a bit of thought. Thanks for the long, but well-written post, piako. (Psst - CDW has the controller for 120, not 200... Probably a typo, but thought I'd mention it)

Thanks, mage, for the 2220 recommendation, and longblock for the second. RAID-5, XOR, and OCE for $250 make that quite a nice card. Would the difference in speed between this card and the SuperMicro card be noticeable? I must admit, the prospect of having a "real" raid card is exciting, but... Is the difference worth the price?

yeah good point on the expansion side. i think the high point software allows you to actually add disks to the raid array without having to erase and create a brand new array which is something that i've never heard of before i read about being able to increase the size without having to erase all the data and re-create. plus if you get the crossover cable you can link to rocket raid cards together to get insane tb on a single volume

that's a good point about playing the market for prices, so do like a wd3200ks 5 disk array and then add other disks in the future. my understanding is tho the drives have to be all the same make so adding other bigger disks would need to be it's own logical volume.

i feel ya on the lack of space in your case for disks. i've honestly searched for hours trying to find cases that hold mucho disks. the best i've found is the v2000 which can hold 19 if you ditch the 5.25 for sata mobile racks. some of the chenbro and supermicro cases hold more but are really expensive.

before you build your array consider an external enclosure. the new 'port multiplier' technology will allow you to add lots of future space and all you really need to do is buy an enclosure and controller with pm and then add disks at the best price you can find. another option i guess.

TeeJayHoward said:

Thanks, mage, for the 2220 recommendation, and longblock for the second. RAID-5, XOR, and OCE for $250 make that quite a nice card. Would the difference in speed between this card and the SuperMicro card be noticeable? I must admit, the prospect of having a "real" raid card is exciting, but... Is the difference worth the price?

Click to expand...

The difference in speed will be *quite* noticeable, from what I've heard. I've never heard numbers over ~10 MB/s writes on windows software raid. The Highpoint has some pretty good numbers in reviews I've seen, like >200 MB/s good.

However, like you imply, I don't think it makes any difference for your application. The killer here is the potential for expansion of the array. And if you want pci express instead of pci-x, you can get the 2320 for a very similar price.