Home file server (8 hard drives) which setup

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civic00typer

Gawd
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Dec 5, 2003
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I am building a home file server, I am going to have 1 small boot drive, 2 320GB drives, and 5 400GB drives. The small boot drive is still up in the air... what are the pros and cons of a dedicated drive for windows or partitioning another larger drive? Furthermore with all these RAID technologies now available, is there a recommended raid setup for these drives? Thanks for the input!
 
1 boot drive is a good idea - less swapping, etc on the array drives.

I'd raid-1 the 320s and use them for important stuff, and raid-5 the 400s for bulk storage. Depending on how fast you need it to be, you might look at Highpoint or Areca for a controller.

 
well the plan is for max storage with some redundancy... like raid 5... so the raid 1 mirror is not needed....
 
civic00typer said:
well the plan is for max storage with some redundancy... like raid 5... so the raid 1 mirror is not needed....
Click to expand...

But you can't put the 320's in the same array as the 400's.

Unless you want to loose 80 GB on each of the 400's when they default to the size of the smaller drives. :eek:

So u_m is recommending the best strategy for using them.
Or you can buy another 320 and have 2 RAID 5 arrays.

Next option would be JBOD, but you get no redundancy with that.

Man, I wish I had the money to buy all those drives. ::drools

 
Actually unhappy_mage has the best option for you.

With his option you will have a total of 1.92 TB of storage

If you RAID5 all 7 drives you will still only have 1.92 TB due to the extra loss of 80GB per drive on the 5 400GB drives. Also in this configuration you have a higher chance of lossing data than in the 1st option. Remember RAID5 is fault tolerant for a single drive failure, however the more drives you add to a single array, the higer the chances of having a 2 drive failure.

Also having different drive models and makes hurt the performance of the RAID. I would go with UM suggestion.
 
m1abram said:
Actually unhappy_mage has the best option for you.

With his option you will have a total of 1.92 TB of storage

If you RAID5 all 7 drives you will still only have 1.92 TB due to the extra loss of 80GB per drive on the 5 400GB drives. Also in this configuration you have a higher chance of lossing data than in the 1st option. Remember RAID5 is fault tolerant for a single drive failure, however the more drives you add to a single array, the higer the chances of having a 2 drive failure.

Also having different drive models and makes hurt the performance of the RAID. I would go with UM suggestion.
Click to expand...

Of course, either RAID 6, or having a hot spare both make the array more fault tollerant...
 
Atragon said:
Of course, either RAID 6, or having a hot spare both make the array more fault tollerant...
Click to expand...
Very true, but few cards and fewer people are aware of RAID6. And so many people do not understand what a hot spare is for, never mind conviecing them that it is a good idea.
 
civic00typer said:
What is RAID 6 I am not familiar with that?
Click to expand...
http://wiki.linux.net.nz/RAID

RAID6 is like RAID5 but has 2 parity drives, so you can have a concurrent 2 disk failure and still be running.
RAID5 can only have a single disk failure. You can have hot standbys with RAID5 however you are vulenable to a 2 disk failure during the time it takes the RAID controller to bring the standby drive up. Which can take hours depending on the size and speed of the array.

Also statisically with harddrives lightning DOES strike twice more often than it does not. Mainly cause the arrays usually all have the same make/model of drive at the same age with the same operating environment so it makes since that if one fails, that the odds of another failing in close time frame is high.
 
Very true, I could change my drive configuration. Perhaps 1 60gb boot/webserver drive, and 7 400 GB harddrives in RAID 5. That would basically mean that if one goes down then I can simply replace it and still have all my data intact, correct? Furthermore how does this process work? Is the raid 5 array appear as 1 physical disk to winxp? Is it basically 7 * 400GB - 1 * 400GB for parity?
 
Yes, assuming that you replace the drive before another drive in the array fails, your data is safe. Windows will see the array as a single large disc.
 
civic00typer said:
Very true, I could change my drive configuration. Perhaps 1 60gb boot/webserver drive, and 7 400 GB harddrives in RAID 5. That would basically mean that if one goes down then I can simply replace it and still have all my data intact, correct? Furthermore how does this process work? Is the raid 5 array appear as 1 physical disk to winxp? Is it basically 7 * 400GB - 1 * 400GB for parity?
Click to expand...
That's definitely a better configuration, however consider going with RAID6. With a 1.8TB array of 7 drives, if one of them fails, and while the array is being rebuilt with the hot spare another drive fails, you lose data. And rebuilding that array will take a long time during which all the drives will be under load and another drive failure will be a lot more likely.
Also, depending on how much storage you need, you might want to consider 300GB drives. 300GB get you the most GB/dollar currently.
 
RavenD said:
That's definitely a better configuration, however consider going with RAID6. With a 1.8TB array of 7 drives, if one of them fails, and while the array is being rebuilt with the hot spare another drive fails, you lose data. And rebuilding that array will take a long time during which all the drives will be under load and another drive failure will be a lot more likely.
Also, depending on how much storage you need, you might want to consider 300GB drives. 300GB get you the most GB/dollar currently.
Click to expand...

Rebuild time also depends on the controller card, the Areca ARC series of controller cards (both PCI-X and PCI-E 8x) are ranked highly by reviews for high performance.
 
The one thing I will PUSH you to do is GET A RAID CARD WITH Online Raid Management and Online Drive Migration. It will let you add/remove drives to the array WITHOUT breaking the entire array.

Here's what I've spec'ed out for my server

Board:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813182032

RAID card:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16816115022

Power supply:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817103928

Drives: (6 of them starting, 4 in array, 1 lost due to RAID 5's nature, and 1 hotspare)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148065

Raid cages:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817119403


I'm going to use a single 40GB drive for the OS. Yes, I've already done the calculations and that drive has enough room for 2 more drives to max out the ports on the RAID card.
 
Just to agree with The_Mage18. If you are spending that much on disks, get a GOOD controller. Remember if the controller fails it can take your data with it. So spend some money on a decent one.
 
Get the drives from ZZF (They do cost $5 more each, but those $5 get you much better packing and two day shipping instead of 3-day shipping.)
 
Let me give everyone more details of the project I envision. I want to have a file server, which will run a web server, that will store a number of backup dvd's and other media. While redundancy is a good idea, its not number one priority. I would like to have some redundancy, like RAID 5. I am also looking to do this on a budget. I found the following board which will allow me to support 8 SATA hard drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131533 . The additional storage controller will allow me to support RAID 5 on 4 drives. The NV raid controller will not support RAID 5, only 0/1/0+1 JBOD. So I was thinking, borrowing someone else's suggestion purchasing 4 320GB hard drives for the additonal raid controllor running them in RAID 5 with software raid. The other remaining 4 hard drives I will have a small boot/web server drive, and 3 more 320GB drives that I will just run in a non-raid setup. How does this sound?
 
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