External raid box or internal with pci card?

[WiLLiSTER]

I'm planning on finally getting my storage setup going across the next few months. It'll be 4-5 2tb drives and I'd like to have em in Raid 0, but since I've never dabbled with anything but onboard (and this new setup won't allow for that), I figured I'd ask the pros. Also, this is ONLY for storage. OS and apps will be on a separate drive.

First off, external or internal? I'm not really opposed to either, but I'm curious as to what you guys would suggest. If I go external, I'll be grabbing either either the Lian Li EX-503 (5 drives), EX-50 (5 drives), or EX-40N (4 drives). My choice in external solution is mainly aesthetics, but they all seem to provide what I want. I'm also leaning more toward the 50/503 because it'll mainly be connected to my rig and the network capability isn't too important. If I go internal, I have no idea what card I would go for. Prices seem to be all over the place and as the price goes up, I'm not really seeing a reason. And if I go internal, is there any real benefit to pci-e over pci cards? I'm not too worried about speed since this is going to be storage only.

Second, I don't plan on picking up all the drives at once. I'd like to be able to just grab one or two and add the other three or four later on. I've read that the Lian Li cases were hot swappable, does that mean I can just add as I go without rebuilding the array? If I go internal, what kind of card should I be looking for in order to just add em in? I've read about using cheaper cards and Acronis, but does it create a 1:1 image of what I'm backing up before I add in another drive? Any guidance through this is much appreciated

 

[WiLLiSTER]

Anyone have any suggestions? :\

 

[Old Hippie]

It'll be 4-5 2tb drives and I'd like to have em in Raid 0,

I have no idea why you would want that.

You have way too many questions for me and I'm sure the "guys in the know" get tired of repeating the same thing over...and over....and over when a little or a lotta reading should at least give you some basics.

Do some background reading and decide what you want.

Just off hand...storage should be on an external housing, hotswapping has nothing to do with adding drives to the array, always go for PCIe, and you'll probably need some kinda port multiplier card to connect.

Good luck and do a little reading!

 

[Dangman]

I'm planning on finally getting my storage setup going across the next few months. It'll be 4-5 2tb drives and I'd like to have em in Raid 0, but since I've never dabbled with anything but onboard (and this new setup won't allow for that), I figured I'd ask the pros. Also, this is ONLY for storage. OS and apps will be on a separate drive.

Yeah as Oldie noted, that does not make an ounce of sense. To be frank, that just sounds stupid. RAID 0 for that much storage as well as the actual use case of just storage just doesn't make sense at all. You might want to read up on RAID again dude.

First off, external or internal? I'm not really opposed to either, but I'm curious as to what you guys would suggest. If I go external, I'll be grabbing either either the Lian Li EX-503 (5 drives), EX-50 (5 drives), or EX-40N (4 drives). My choice in external solution is mainly aesthetics, but they all seem to provide what I want. I'm also leaning more toward the 50/503 because it'll mainly be connected to my rig and the network capability isn't too important.

I'd go external. However I would go with the EX-40N if you're planning on using RAID 5. The EX0593 and EX-50 will have to use your PC's CPU in order to do all of parity calculations for RAID 5. That will impact system performance. Since the EX-40N is a NAS, it's gonna have its own CPU to take care of the parity calculations which means no impact on your PC in terms of performance.

And if I go internal, is there any real benefit to pci-e over pci cards?

Speed mainly. Oh and the fact that most PCI-E cards will be newer in terms of design and version than a PCI card. That generally means better support for larger drives, additional features, etc.

I've read that the Lian Li cases were hot swappable, does that mean I can just add as I go without rebuilding the array?

No. Hot-swap means that you can add a hard drive to the PC/server/external bay/etc while that PC/server/external bay/etc is still running and online. However adding a new drive to the array will require rebuilding the RAID array. It doesn't look like any of those external bays including the NAS supports OCE or Online Capacity Expansion which will allow the RAID array to rebuild/expand without losing your data.

So now the question is whether or not you want to use any sort of RAID.

 

[WiLLiSTER]

Ah, maybe I misunderstood what I read then. Raid 5 does seem more like what I would want then. That still enables me to view it as one drive and it would write across the drives correct? That's really all I'm looking to do is be able to hook up the 4-5 drives and have it read as one. As I said this is just gonna be storage, not a backup. I'll have a separate drive for "essential stuff" that will only be in use when I need to back stuff up. Thanks for that info though, I didn't even realize that I was misunderstanding the different raid setups.

 

[Old Hippie]

That's really all I'm looking to do is be able to hook up the 4-5 drives and have it read as one.

ALL forms of RAID do that. It's up to the owner to decide which type of RAID redundancy they need.

RAID5 is what many users use.

 

[MrGuvernment]

raid 5 and large drives... isnt this a no no now a days, do at least raid 6.... or raid 10.

 

[griffinhart]

Ah, maybe I misunderstood what I read then. Raid 5 does seem more like what I would want then. That still enables me to view it as one drive and it would write across the drives correct? That's really all I'm looking to do is be able to hook up the 4-5 drives and have it read as one. As I said this is just gonna be storage, not a backup. I'll have a separate drive for "essential stuff" that will only be in use when I need to back stuff up. Thanks for that info though, I didn't even realize that I was misunderstanding the different raid setups.

I would definatley not go Raid 0. One drive failure and all data is gone. At least with RAID 5 you can lose a drive, replace it, and not lose any data. You also gain a lot of the performance. The downsize is you do lower the total disk space as one of the drives is basically there for Parity. I have a 5 disk array with 1.5TB drives with just shy of 6TB usable.

I have a Win2k8 server I built and went with an internal solution. The case had thre 5.25" bays so I picked up one of these. This particular cage did require me to break out the dremel tool to cut away the tabs inside of the case, but it's thing visible from the outside of the case. I find it keeps everything in one package and still looks pretty good with the added bonus of still having the drives easily accessible without opening the case.

My current server set up has the RAID 5 as the Data drive and I boot to a single internal SSD. I'm considering getting one of these so I have complete drive access without opening the case.

At first I tried to use the onboard RAID 5 from the motherboard, but that was a mistake. I ended up picking up an 8 port SAS/SATA raid controller and the difference was dramatically better than the onboard.