HTPC Server Storage

[howie_23]

So I've got a storage server that's serving video content to my WD TV Live that's connected to my TV. The server has 3 storage drives in it currently:

2x 1 TB
1x 2 TB

Right now the drives are separated into individual drives and each drive stores something different. One drive just does TV shows, one does SD rips and another does all my HD rips.

I'm finding that one of the drives is starting to fill up more than the others and I'm thinking it might be smart to switch from individual drives to a RAID.

My question is, with my current setup (I unfortunately don't have money to change the storage atm), what would be the best RAID to setup?

I'm thinking of just simply a RAID 0. Can I get drives of different sizes in a RAID 0? One of the drives is a WD Green (it's the 2 TB one I think), does that increase the likelihood of an array failure?

 

[drescherjm]

I'm thinking of just simply a RAID 0.

I would never use raid 0 for this. You do not need the speed or double the chance of losing everything.

Can I get drives of different sizes in a RAID 0?

Most likely. But it will only be double the size of the smallest drive.

 

[Xonim]

Have you looked into UnRAID or FlexRAID or similar?

In that scenario, you'd only have 2TB usable with your current drives (the 2TB would have to be parity), but you could lose 1 drive and recover everything from that drive. They're both parity solutions, FlexRAID runs on top of Win7 or WHS, UnRAID is a stripped Linux distro that boots off a flash drive.

I ended up going with FlexRAID, no particular reason other than I wanted to just add parity protection to my existing HTPC instead of a separate server, just due to cost issues. Took me maybe an hour to configure everything, 12+ hours to calculate parity for the first time (don't know, I was sleeping!). Now it updates in less than five minutes once a week.

 

[FrostBite]

If you just want drive pooling (e.g., one big 4TB drive), and you don't care about redundancy or up time (e.g., don't care if you lose it all and have to start over), I'd drive give SnapRAID a try. Drivebender and FlexRAID can do storage pooling on top of the file system too (e.g., you can run it through Windows), but it costs money while SnapRAID is free.

While I personally use FlexRAID, I would probably go with the free option, SnapRAID, if I were in your shoes. My HTPC/TV recordings are not included in my RAID setup as I'm constantly watching and deleting them.

 

[bbenz33]

I personally went with FreeNAS and RAID 0 as I wanted the speed and single disk space (smaller older drives). EVERYTHING I have on the server is also stored on my main computer as well so the NAS is essentially my working copy and my computer is the backup.

With that said I plan to move to a ZFS 5 or 6 array once I get 4 1TB drives from my father and add them to two 1TB drives I currently have which will give me 4-5TB usable space. I still plan on having everything backed up on my main PC but simply don't need that computer running 24/7 like my NAS.