Odd setup - what would you do?

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fleggett

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
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546
Hi, all. I just purchased two 4TB WD Reds to supplement my current storage and figure now is the time to ask this. I suspect that, if I don't make a radical change now (should it be advisable), it'll never happen.

First, the obligatory system specs:

o Norco RPC-4220 chassis.
o Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 motherboard (http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2831#ov)
o Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU (non-overclocked).
o Corsair CMPSU-1000HX PSU.
o nVidia GeForce GT 440 video card.
o D-Link DWA-552 WiFi card.
o 4 gigs F2-8000CL5-2GBPQ DDR2 memory.
o Two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards (http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm).
o OPTICAL: Slimtype DVD A DS8A2S (attached via onboard SATA).
o OPTICAL: HL-DT-ST BDDDRW GGC-H20L USB (in external housing, attached via USB).
o One Samsung HM100UI HD (1 TB, system drive).
o Two Samsung HD204UI (2 TB each).
o One WD1001FALS (1 TB)
o Five WD20EARS (2 TB each).
o Four WD40EFRX (4 TB each).
o Two WD20EADS (2 TB each).

All this running Windows 8.1 Pro (x64).

As you can see, it's quite a mishmosh of drives, but they all work just fine using the Gigabyte's onboard SATA ports and the two Supermicro cards.

This system is directly hooked into my TV via HDMI. I know how ghastly that probably sounds, but I really don't have any other alternative at this point (for various reasons). When I play movies, 99% of the time it's done via MPC-HC. Internet accessibility is through the WiFi card. I swapped-out the deafening Deltas with much quieter 120mm fans using cavediver's fan mount mod.

As you can tell, this is a bare-bones setup. No RAID, no server-oriented OS, just good ole NTFS via Windows with each physical drive having its own drive letter.

Here's the $64,000 question - before I install the incoming Reds, should I do a complete overhaul? One of the things that niggles at the back of my mind is that I'll eventually run out of drive letters and will then HAVE to do Something Else. What that Something Else is I have no idea.

The system will continue to be directly connected to the TV, so I need an OS that can run stuff like MPC-HC, Newsbin, the occasional Blu-ray application, 7-Zip, IE/Firefox, etc.

I know I'm playing with some serious fire with this setup since there's no redundancy anywhere (I'm aware that RAID is not a backup). And I'm betting many of you are choking back bile at the mere mention of Windows 8 running on hardware of this nature.

So, what would you do? I'm somewhat smart and can pursue any solution that is adequately documented and isn't TOO exotic.

Thanks in advance!
 
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I'm going to guess that this is a media server.

If this were my system, I would get rid of the Supermicro cards and replace them with something that supports hardware RAID.

The Green drives will not play nice with RAID 5 or 6 because when they power down, the RAID controller will think that the drives gave up the ghost and try to rebuild the array. You'll be limited to RAID 0,1 or 10.

You could take all of the 2TB drives and RAID 0 them for an excruciatingly fast, horrendously unreliable 18TB array. With 9 drives, the chances of failure are very high, so without a good backup plan, this might not be ideal. Remove one 2TB drive and use 8 to build an 8TB RAID 10 array. Still huge capacity and much better redundancy. I would RAID 10.

Another options is to ditch all of the existing drives save for the boot drive, pick up 2 or 3 more of the 4TB Reds and a good RAID card and run a RAID 6.
 
Or run vmware server/workstation/player on Windows with a ZFS-capable VM and pass the storage back to Windows host using iSCSI or CIFS.

The setup will be more complicated than hardware RAID and you may suffer some performance due to your CPU and RAM. However you can then get both a rock-solid storage which can take all your existing drives as well as nice Windows interface for media applications.
 
I would make a backup using 4TB drives. Perhaps add a hotswap slot to aid in future backups.

I would replace the 1TB and 2TB drives with 4TB drives as I needed more space. Might try to get the number of drives down and get rid of one of the controller cards.

Unless you need RAID for some reason, I would not mess with it.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. A few notes & questions:

o fluke420, I do have the unreleased driver already installed for the Supermicro cards. I've also flashed the cards to the latest BIOS I could find.

o Yes, this system exists solely to watch media. I don't play any games with this box.

o bao__zhe, that sounds like an intriguing setup, but also fairly arcane. Can you recommend a website or two which documents the steps needed to get such a beast going?

o GeorgeHR, it sounds like you advocate just using the current Windows 8 setup and skipping RAID altogether. Is that accurate?

o OhSnapWord, what card would you recommend to replace the Supermicro ones? I could go out on a financial limb and get another two or three 4TB Reds, but I would need to commit to something at that point. (Dumping all seven of my Greens is going to hurt.)

o mrkazador, I dunno, what about flexraid or snapraid? I'm a COMPLETE newb when it comes to any sort of RAID installation.

What I would eventually like to do is get a system in place that consolidates all my media drives into one pool from an interface standpoint. Having to constantly remember which drive letter has which movie or TV show is irritating.

I'm also at somewhat of a loss as to how I could efficiently backup about 18TB of data while still reusing the non-Green drives (assuming I wind-up using them in some fashion).
 
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fleggett said:
o GeorgeHR, it sounds like you advocate just using the current Windows 8 setup and skipping RAID altogether. Is that accurate?
Click to expand...

It is hard to say.

You don't appear to have a need for RAID.

On the other hand using RAID to create one large volume gives you one drive letter rather than a bunch. Since you asked for less drive letters, RAID is appealing. 4 4TB drives would yield 12TB of data under one drive letter.
 
Well, I just discovered something very irritating tonight as I was installing the drives. It appears almost an entire backplane is bad on my 4220. Looks like I'll be shelling-out $55 for a replacement.

Grrrrrr.

(The good news is that the drives appear to be working and I can see all 4 TB on each.)
 
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GeorgeHR said:
On the other hand using RAID to create one large volume gives you one drive letter rather than a bunch. Since you asked for less drive letters, RAID is appealing. 4 4TB drives would yield 12TB of data under one drive letter.
Click to expand...
If there was some way to consolidate all my media-based drives into one pool or drive letter without using a RAID scheme, that would probably be my best solution, as I really don't know squat about the various incarnations of RAID.

I should also probably investigate WHS, as that seems fairly user tolerant.
 
since you're already running windows 8.1, what about Windows Storage Spaces?
it seems the system is used mainly for playback (reads) so a somewhat low write speed shouldn't be much of a problem, just leave a disk or 2 out of the pool if you plan on ripping any media to the system.
 
Mr.Pernod said:
since you're already running windows 8.1, what about Windows Storage Spaces?
it seems the system is used mainly for playback (reads) so a somewhat low write speed shouldn't be much of a problem, just leave a disk or 2 out of the pool if you plan on ripping any media to the system.
Click to expand...

I'm a linux guy, and if this were linux I'd suggest LVM. In a quick search for Storage Spaces, it seems that it's basically the same idea.
 
I don't think I need RAID per-se. Just some way to consolidate different physical media onto one logical volume.

I did try out WSS w/parity and it looks pretty solid. The only thing that kinda/sorta concerns me is what sort of procedure is needed to reverse the process. What happens if the Windows installation that originally created the WSS goes belly-up one day and I have to reinstall the whole OS? Will the reinstallation somehow remember that drives M, N, O, and P should be treated as one drive?
 
from the Storage Spaces FAQ

What happens to Storage Spaces when moving physical disks between servers?

Storage Spaces records information about pools and storage spaces on the physical disks that compose the storage pool. Therefore, your pool and storage spaces are preserved when you move an entire storage pool and its physical disks from one computer to another.

Windows Server 2012 starts storage that could potentially be shared with a cluster in a safe state. For Storage Spaces, that means the first time Windows connects to a storage pool, the pool starts as read-only and the storage spaces will start in a detached state. To access your data, you must set the storage pool to read-write and then attach the storage spaces.

These steps do not apply to Windows 8 – storage pools start as read-write and storage spaces start as attached.
Click to expand...

I imagine the same thing applies when reinstalling the OS
 
I have a similar setup as you do and I use Win 8.1. Read speeds are fine and write speeds are slow. I have never owned a green drive, but the new 4TB seagates power down in a similar manner. Storage Spaces work fine with them, it just takes a sec to spin up. Parity is super simple to use. I know you can mix and match drive sizes in Storage Spaces, but let me run this by you. SCENARIO: You have two 4TB drives and one 1Tb drive installed and are using parity. .5TB of a file gets saved to one 4TB, .5 TB gets saved to the other 4TB, and the checksum (equal to .5TB) gets saved to the 1TB. What do you think your redundancy will be once the 1TB is full? It will work, but with no more room to save a third of the file you just put on your pool you no longer have redundancy on that file. Just my two cents, keep similar drives together and do not span across them.
 
Wow. Sounds almost magical if you can do a wipe/reinstall of the OS and the new installation will continue to recognize a previous WSS configuration.

Unborndragon, right now, I've just done a test with four 4 TB Reds. I probably won't bring the 2 TB Greens into the Red pool, but will give them their own pool with an eye towards replacing them altogether with Reds as money permits. The Black and the Samsungs I'll probably just keep them as they are.

Another unfortunate aspect of my system I just discovered - the Gigabyte motherboard I'm using only sees the Reds as having 2 TB of space. Ugh.
 
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