creating nas need raid help

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mode87

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Sep 5, 2005
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Hi, i am thinking about making a nas for my mom's work(she works at home). The nas would be used as a central server for all of her work files that would be uploaded at about a gig at a time. i would also be putting some of my video files on the system(no not pron :p) and be streaming them to my computer when i want to watch them. my question is what would be the best raid setup for a situation like this. i was thinking a nice hardware raid 5 but i am having a hard time determining the best controller for my needs. Also my moms computer is a wireless laptop and i was thinking about upgrading my network to a draft2.0 n/gigabit , is it really worthwhile or should i just keep it as a wireless g network/10/100 network? thanks all help is appreciated.
 
cant anyone at least point me in the right direction as to where to find the answer? I have already tried to search to no avail.
 
I've been wondering the same thing about Raid5 myself. Not sure if I should get a controller card or just use the onboard raid as well. For home usage which would be like 1 or 2 people, the onboard should be plenty fast enough I would think.

I'd suggest keeping the G wireless until the N stuff isn't draft anymore and the prices come down. It's plenty fast, only thing it may (I'd guess it was fast enough but I don't know) have problems with is streaming HD video.
 
I was thinking about using an onboard controller too but it would be harder to replace the array if it where to fail on me, but i guess that would not be a problem since i plan to do backups to an external drive anyways. thanks
 
mode87 said:
I was thinking about using an onboard controller too but it would be harder to replace the array if it where to fail on me, but i guess that would not be a problem since i plan to do backups to an external drive anyways. thanks
Click to expand...

This is true, but how many mobo's have you had die on you? That was my theory behind using the $ on larger drives instead of a stand alone card :)
 
If you have external drives that you make regular backups to and you can afford down time (power down to replace drives and recopy data from backup) then a JBOD or RAID-0 would be good enough for concatenation in a home NAS.

The primary role of a RAID-5 is not data security but to maximize uptime by allowing failed drives to be hot swapped while continuing to serve data. A performance RAID-5 is often expensive too.
 
Personally, I'm picking RAID-5 due to the fact I plan on using 4 drives and will get 3 drives worth of storage where as with RAID-0 I would only get 2 drives.

The uptime is nice as well, while it's not of critical importance, it's a nice benefit. But mainly it gives more storage while keeping the data if a drive fails. I'm not too worried about performance, but am about not losing data (As it's not likely to be backed up) and having as much storage as possible.

I have a DVR that records huge amounts of data every day and I'm sick of running out of space as I archive series that I like and such.
 
You will get all four drives worth of space with a RAID 0 given the drives are all the same size.
 
puffcap said:
You will get all four drives worth of space with a RAID 0 given the drives are all the same size.
Click to expand...

But then if a drive fails, hundreds of hours of recording and encoding goes out the window. And I'm not about to back up 500+ GB (currently at about 500GB and it's growing) of stuff to DVD... Perhaps thats a good enough reason for me to even get a cheap raid card. If anything related to the raid would die other than a hard drive in raid 5, unless I could get a new NF4 mobo (Proally have to be 939 as well) I'd be out all my data. Though I'm not sure how often raid cards are taken off the market for new ones and I'd run into the same problem.

To the OP, as was said you may want to look into other RAID levels. It all depends on how much data your storing and your ability to back it up / take the time to restore it if a drive fails.

What were you planning on using to back up the data? And how much data are you talking about storing? We may be able to help you think out what's best for your needs if you want to give us some more info to ramble on with ;)
 
well i was thinking about it and the files that would be backed up are totaling around 500gb in total but that is rapidly expanding so i was thinking about getting a 1tb hardrive and putting it in an enclosure and backing up the data that way. if i went with raid-0 would i be able to upgrade the array in the future? because i know with raid-5 all you have to do is put in a new drive and that expands the array but i assuming that is not the case with raid-0? and i did look at thta controller buying guide but it does not really state what would be good enough for a situation like mine. although looking around it seems like alot of people are using the highpoint but isnt that software raid?
 
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