Building a RAID 5 array, have some questions

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Whitebread

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Over the last 6 years or so I've amased about 1TB of irreplacable data. So, I'd like to build a redundant array for use with my desktop that will help protect against disk failure and provide me with room to expand my music, video, picture, etc collection. I've done a little reading and concluded that a RAID 5 array would provide a good solution to my problem, but since technology moves so fast, I still have some specific questions that old posts from 2004-2006 can't answer well.

My current rig (see sig) has failed me so I decided to investigate the possibility of using an onboard RAID controller to build my array. I decided on purchasing an ASUS P5Q LGA 775 board with its ICH10R southbridge. Before I do this, I have some questions:

  • Does this chip support Online Capacity Expansion (I think that's what it's called)?

    Does anyone know how much overhead is required to access a 3 to 5 drive array built with this chip? I plan on buying a Q6600 and OCing it as far as I can while on air.

    If the controller or, more generally the mobo fails, will I be able to recover/rebuild the array with another P5Q or controller that uses the ICH10R chip?

    Does anyone know if this Intel chip has any compatability issues with Samsung Spinpoint drives like the ICH9R did? I want to buy 3 750gig Samsungs to build this array.

    Does this chip support staggered spin up?

    I've seen some posts claiming 2-3 week rebuild times after a drive failure or expansion on arrays not that much larger than the one I plan on building. Has anyone experienced such long rebuild times with this southbridge?

    Is using a ICH10R as the controller for a 1.5-(eventually)3tb array a good idea? 300+ dollars for an enterprise level RAID card is really not an option since my old rig failed but I don't want to get caught in a corner in 3-4 years when/if I'm doing a whole system over hall or if my collection of data expands beyond the capabilities of my hardware.

    Around when should a casual home user consider moving to RAID 6?

    I also want to create "out of case" backups with either a NAS or an external drive connected via USB or eSATA. Any recommendations as to which piece of hardware I should be looking into? It need only last as long/be as large as the array within my PC. So a maximum of 5 750 (3TB by HDD manufacturer standards) gig drives and 3-4 years.

Thanks guys.
 
My recomendation if you are concerned about your data, you should look at a real hardware raid solution to protect your data.

Why risk guessing if it's going to work with a Samsung drive, just play safe and go with a confirmed working drive. The last thing you want to do is gamble on compatibility.

A casual home user doesn't need Raid 6.
 
truly irreplaceable data needs to be backed up regularly.

RAID is not backup, and backup is not RAID.

RAID is for uptime.. that is keeping a system running in the event of a hard drive failure, it is not for securing valuable data. (as the added complexity etc often reduces the security of the data, controller failure etc)

Backup is for data security, preferably stored in a separate physical location from the main storage of the data.

I am not telling you to not do RAID, go ahead with it.. but still backup your important data in addition to RAID.

As for that size of an array, I'd get something like a Dell Perc 5i from Ebay since they are cheap enough and good controllers, then you could move the array to a new PC in the future etc.
 
I don't know what drives are comfirmed to work with the ICH10R. I searched Intel technical documentation and couldn't find anything.

A hardware solution is preferable but, I cannot spend the extra money for such a card until at least some of these questions are answered. If one of the mandatory requirements are not satisfied then I will have no choice. Otherwise, the risk may be worth the money savings. At least until I can afford to spend the extra cash and get a hardware card.
 
Lazn_Work said:
truly irreplaceable data needs to be backed up regularly.

RAID is not backup, and backup is not RAID.

RAID is for uptime.. that is keeping a system running in the event of a hard drive failure, it is not for securing valuable data. (as the added complexity etc often reduces the security of the data, controller failure etc)

Backup is for data security, preferably stored in a separate physical location from the main storage of the data.

I am not telling you to not do RAID, go ahead with it.. but still backup your important data in addition to RAID.

As for that size of an array, I'd get something like a Dell Perc 5i from Ebay since they are cheap enough and good controllers, then you could move the array to a new PC in the future etc.
Click to expand...

Like I said, I do want to back up my data. But thinking about RAID as a method of increasing uptime makes me think that its not a good idea after all. The data I've got is important, but uptime isn't critical since its almost completely personal stuff that I don't need to have access to all the time. JBOD plus an "out of case" back up (off site is too much, I'd cry my eyes out if I lost the data I'm got, but I won't loose any money over it and life will continue as normal the next day) with a NAS or external (as I said in my original post) will be cheaper and provide the redundant copy I was looking for.


hmmmm
 
As for your question, I dont think the ICH10R supports raid 6, OCE, or ORLM , but I could be wrong. From what I've heard, the ICH10R is not much diffrent than the ICH9R
 
Ockie said:
As for your question, I dont think the ICH10R supports raid 6, OCE, or ORLM , but I could be wrong. From what I've heard, the ICH10R is not much diffrent than the ICH9R
Click to expand...

At this point, thats not that dissapointing. I don't think I'm going to bother with RAID anyway.
 
Ockie said:
A casual home user doesn't need Raid 6.
Click to expand...

Most home users do not require the amount of data that your Galaxy projects entail, either. I hope you're not lumping yourself in on this one, Ockie!
 
while RAID isn't good for backup, i've found external drives to not be a good solution either. maybe its the enclosures / brands i've bought, but i've had 3 externals fail on me. two were WD drives, one was a seagate. one WD was on a WD brand storage device, the other two were my own enclosures (different brands).

so an external isn't a great backup solution either. i suppose the best would be a combination of the two. raid 1 based external solution. usually any enclosure that holds multiple drives will be able to do this.
 
Hard drives shouldn't be used to backup anything that is deemed irreplacable. DVD5s offer the cheapest £/GB ratio, but it takes time to burn a single disc even at 16x and is not practical considering the amount of data you have; perhaps reserve it to your most important data. However when properly stored and handled the data can be archived for decades with no degradation so you can simply copy the contents on the disc to a new medium.

Since uptime isn't important to you, you may wish to take a look at tape drives as a backup medium. It is used extensively in large corporations across the board (I am making an extrapolation here) to backup data from hard disks. From my previous work experience with the IT branch in a major bank, they used DDS DAT-72 offering 32GB of uncompressed data or 72GB of compressed data. DAT-160 is now available, but may be more expensive than the older DAT-72 tapes.
 
The data I have is irreplacable because I simply cannot find hard copies of the music, movies and data I've amassed. Some of it is out of print, some of it is lost, some of it is rare, some of it is special recordings make by friends. It isn't data that will compromise my finances or personal life should it be lost. Because of this, I can't justify spending more than 3 or 4 hundred dollars of my 14 and hour salary on a backup solution. Another issue is that the data I've got changes continuously. I trade media and data with friends and people who share professional and scolastic interests. Before I filled my HDDs up, it wouldn't have been unusual for me to add 10 or 15 gigs in a week.

I don't know much of anything about tape backup systems, but I have a feeling they wern't meant to function as backup solutions that are updated in real or near real time. Also, wouldn't I have to keep track of changes to my collection and manually backup myself? I doubt any system I could afford would be able to automatically search the 10+ DAT-72 tapes I'd need to buy to fully back up my stuff.

I understand that harddrives are some of the most unreliable forms of data storage, but what's the actual likelyhood that the probability of failure of two independent systems (my desktop and a NAS or backup file server) is intertwined? I've got an old PIII system at home that I can turn into a 1.3tb file server for less than 300 dollars. Download a synchronizing utility and bam, instant backups of my important data. Also, I've never had a HDD fail on me without some warning be it grinding, popping or a SMART warning. The only exception were those Deathstar drives, but I think its safe to say they were the exception rather than the rule. Going that route is riskier but its economically feasible for me at this point in my life. It's also far mroe convenient because lugging tapes and a tape drive back and forth 300 miles to and from school isn't practical. What do you guys think?
 
Whitebread said:
The data I have is irreplacable because I simply cannot find hard copies of the music, movies and data I've amassed. Some of it is out of print, some of it is lost, some of it is rare, some of it is special recordings make by friends. It isn't data that will compromise my finances or personal life should it be lost. Because of this, I can't justify spending more than 3 or 4 hundred dollars of my 14 and hour salary on a backup solution. Another issue is that the data I've got changes continuously. I trade media and data with friends and people who share professional and scolastic interests. Before I filled my HDDs up, it wouldn't have been unusual for me to add 10 or 15 gigs in a week.

I don't know much of anything about tape backup systems, but I have a feeling they wern't meant to function as backup solutions that are updated in real or near real time. Also, wouldn't I have to keep track of changes to my collection and manually backup myself? I doubt any system I could afford would be able to automatically search the 10+ DAT-72 tapes I'd need to buy to fully back up my stuff.

I understand that harddrives are some of the most unreliable forms of data storage, but what's the actual likelyhood that the probability of failure of two independent systems (my desktop and a NAS or backup file server) is intertwined? I've got an old PIII system at home that I can turn into a 1.3tb file server for less than 300 dollars. Download a synchronizing utility and bam, instant backups of my important data. Also, I've never had a HDD fail on me without some warning be it grinding, popping or a SMART warning. The only exception were those Deathstar drives, but I think its safe to say they were the exception rather than the rule. Going that route is riskier but its economically feasible for me at this point in my life. It's also far mroe convenient because lugging tapes and a tape drive back and forth 300 miles to and from school isn't practical. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...


Don't waste your time with tapes. The probability of losing two entire systems at once is next to none.
 
Whitebread said:
I plan on buying a Q6600 and OCing it as far as I can while on air.
Click to expand...


I would not OC a system designed to store and protect my data.

Whitebread said:
Sweet. Two 750 gig drives and a cheap SATA controller card and I'm set!
Click to expand...

Why buy a controller card? Don't you need to buy a new motherboard anyway?


Sounds like you could get by on JBOD for now. Build a second computer for your storage.
 
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