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3 disk RAID 5: worth it?

C

c3k

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
2,331
Folks,

I've got an Asus Z87 Pro mobo. It has 6 intel Sata ports and 2 Asmedia ports. (Asmedia cannot be used for Atapi.)

Current Devices:
1: SSD w/OS on it
2: Bluray drive
3: 1 TB WD black (data)
4: 1 TB WD black (backs up SSD's OS)
5: 1 TB WD balck (backs up data)

I'm thinking about grabbing a 4 TB WD black to use for my data back ups. I have an extra 1 TB WD black drive.

If I put the 4 TB drive on the Asmedia controller, as well as one of the 1 TB drives, that would be my backups. (4 TB would backup the array, 1 TB would backup the SSD.)

That would leave 4 Sata ports on the intel controller (Of the six, one for the SSD, one for the Bluray, leaving 4 remaining.) If I create a 3 disk RAID 5 array (3x 1 TB), I'd have 2 TB capacity, with a backup (the 4 TB disk) and, of course, data parity to rebuild.

Would I see any improved performance? Or, would it be simpler to just keep non-arrayed drives and segregate my data manually?

(15 years ago I ran a Raid 1 and Raid 0, 4 disk, rig. What a nightmare that was...)

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Ken

Edited to add: the other option would be to create a Raid 0 array with 2x 1 TB drives, and back them up onto the 4 TB drive.
 
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I personally think the best backup solution is some sort of NAS device running some sort of RAID. I currently use a low end box with unRAID that I built just for the hell of it and loved so much I have kept it going for a very long time. You have lots of options for things you could build on your own or prebuilt NAs devices you can purchase.
I backup all my DATA to the NAS and to Crashplan so I have it in the cloud in case of something catastrophic
I know that isn't your question though.

Reading from a RAID 5 is fast, writing to it is not. I am not a fan of having RAID 5 off my motherboard controller on the same box I use to do stuff, but it works and its not that hard to setup.
 
Reading from a RAID 5 is fast, writing to it is not.
Click to expand...

Writing is slow if you have a poor implementation that does not have an effective write back cache. I found that on windows all software or firnware raid5 seems to lack an effective writeback cache unlike linux.
 
I've found Intel's matrix RAID driver can slow down your system if you're running RAID 5 and any little thing will set it off to do a full check which takes days. Read latency isn't great either, but it's not a problem if you're only using it for mass storage. I wouldn't recommend RAID 5 without a hardware controller.

If all you want is to aggregate your storage you could use Windows Storage spaces functionality to aggregate your drives, which is much simpler.
 
Hmm, this gives me a lot to think about. My goal is to expand my storage and increase the speed, if possible.

I have 3 home rigs. A NAS would be a fourth. ;) The wife may start to complain. (Plus the various laptops.) May do a NAS, but it'd have to support all my rigs and stream to my HTPC. That's a project for a later day.

Currently, with my data platter, I've got 800MB on it. My backup disk cannot archive any backups. 800MB + 800MB > 1 TB. I've got to delete the backup before writing the next. (I've got an external 1 TB I use to prevent total loss. That's my archive drive.)

A simple 4 TB would solve my backup woes. But my 1 TB data drive will overflow its capacity in a while.

As a gaming rig, I certainly don't want to have RAID 5 processes drive performance to its knees.
 
I use and like StableBit Drive Pool (as I have different sized disks but you can use it with same size disks obviously) instead of a raid solution for my current storage situation.

It allows you to pool the drives together for more space and you can set duplication up at the folder or file level to have things copied to more than one drive in the pool for redundancy. If something is duplicated it also allows reads of that data to be done in a striped manner so the reads are much faster without the write penalty of RAID 5.

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool
 
jacqkeen said:
I use and like StableBit Drive Pool (as I have different sized disks but you can use it with same size disks obviously) instead of a raid solution for my current storage situation.

It allows you to pool the drives together for more space and you can set duplication up at the folder or file level to have things copied to more than one drive in the pool for redundancy. If something is duplicated it also allows reads of that data to be done in a striped manner so the reads are much faster without the write penalty of RAID 5.

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool
Click to expand...

Glad you posted this...
I too use stablebit on Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials (what a mouth full)

and after just getting back on this site over the last few days and drooling over all of the guys info on their NAS and drive setups which are AMAZING!!!!!

made me wonder if my 4x 2tb drive system could be faster if I ran it in a raid situation vs stablebit....

what I do like with stablebit is if machine goes down you can put the drive into any machine and get your stuff of of it...
 
TeleFragger said:
Glad you posted this...
I too use stablebit on Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials (what a mouth full)

and after just getting back on this site over the last few days and drooling over all of the guys info on their NAS and drive setups which are AMAZING!!!!!

made me wonder if my 4x 2tb drive system could be faster if I ran it in a raid situation vs stablebit....

what I do like with stablebit is if machine goes down you can put the drive into any machine and get your stuff of of it...
Click to expand...

This is what I like about my unRaid box, I can use drives of any size and if it all goes to hell I can read the data directly of any drive. it also allows me to use an SSD as a cache drive to speed up writes. It is not known as the fastest platform, but it works great for my needs, I can stream directly off it and use it as a backup.
 
zaniix said:
This is what I like about my unRaid box, I can use drives of any size and if it all goes to hell I can read the data directly of any drive. it also allows me to use an SSD as a cache drive to speed up writes. It is not known as the fastest platform, but it works great for my needs, I can stream directly off it and use it as a backup.
Click to expand...

right... all reasons why i use it... plus i feel I dont need any other mega backup solution as I have stable bit have 1 copy of pc backups... 4 copies of super duper important stuff and only 2 copies of all others that I dont care about
 
First off, RAID isn't a backup. It's redundancy. There is a difference. Secondly RAID 5 on the onboard controller is slow. There is a lot of overhead in RAID 5. RAID 5 is never the fast solution. It's used primarily when someone wants to use most of their disks for storage rather than using half of them for redundancy. This is also done when performance is a secondary concern.
 
I would like to add that an ideal backup target does not use RAID.

Reasoning? I can take a disk out of any computer, put it in another and read the data. A raid controller limits that.

A proper backup strategy has two separate backup targets, ideally in different machines. Typically the second target is off site too but that's sometimes a bit much for large ammounts of data in a home environment.
 
All my backups are at home.

Machine A backs up Disk 1 (A1) to A2, and external alpha, and to machine B disk 3 (B3).
B1->B2, beta, C3
C1->C2, gamma, A3

So, each machine has a prime, a backup on itself, a dedicated, unplugged external (once every few months) and a backup on one of the other three desktops. And, yes, I checked that the backups can rebuild the prime disk. (Ask me why I do that now. ;) )
 
Raid 5 on mechanical drives, no..dead and dusted, raid 10 or raid 6 and always raid 10 unless you have a definitive reason to use Raid 6.

Raid 5 on SSD's, go nuts.
 
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