Looking for Possibilities

[AirPower4ever]

So I am in the planning stages for a back up system, but I also want to use it to gain access to our music library. I will call this computer C

Currently the wife and I have two computer systems (will call these computer A and B) with our own stuff including our own music. We have a third computer that is our back up, this is where I want to upgrade. I do know that she does have some of my music and I have some of hers so it got me thinking that when we back up, we actually will have two files of the same songs in some cases. Our music is growing and I figure this duplication will just get bigger as well.

So I want to get rid of that and put all our music in computer C. So my planning is this;
6 drives

Drive 1 and 2 - Small size in RAID0 for operating system, will use SSD for this
Drive 3 and 4 - 1TB for our music and for our back up information like pictures, docs, etc.
Drive 5 and 6 - 1TB as an image or back up of drive 3 and 4

A couple of questions come to mind, I have read about the 2TB limit, is that per RAID configuration or 2TB's combined all drives? This will define the size of the drives to get.

Then the next question is that I am unfamiliar with RAID5, but it seems that I can RAID5 drives 3, 4, 5 and 6. Would that be better for computer C? Or RAID1 drive 3 and 4 and RAID1 drives 5 and 6?

As mentioned, my ultimate goal is to have computer C on all the time and so when the wife or I want to listen to our own music on computers A and B, we can tap in to computer C and play our music. And then to also be able to back up our other stuff to computer C as well as our new single music library.

Please, any thoughts and plans on this would be great. And if you have any parts suggestions, that would be cool too. I saw some single platter hard drives (Seagate 7200.12, 500GB at newegg pretty cheap and I was gravitating to that.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Greatone123]

just out of curiosity, why the ssds? 1 ssd for being more reliable the hdd fine... but in raid 0? for just a file server u wouldnt notice the performance difference.


what OS do u plan on using for this also?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device

 

[simplesam]

I've never used it myself, but from reading this forum it sounds like you want WHS.
Your needs, sound like a description of the feature set of WHS.

 

[farscapesg1]

Windows Home Server all the way Drop the 4 1TB drives into the drive pool for 4 TB of storage, then choose which folders you want duplication on so it copies the files in those folders across two drives for duplication.

As for the OS drive, one drive should do it. There isn't a need for RAID0. Maybe RAID1 if you are really concerned (I used two older 250GB drives in RAID1 for my system), but if you are thinking about SSD drives, one 80GB drive should do it. Just remember that when Vail comes out (WHS 2) it is listed as needing a minimum of 160GB for the OS drive.

 

[AirPower4ever]

Thanks for the responses. You guys are right, why two RAID for just the OS. Thanks for the savings. Sometimes it just gets muddled with me. One SSD is sufficient, I just like the higher numbers. But you guys are right, it's just serving not like our main PC's

WHS, never thought of it. I'll read up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Just some added info, will be using Gb LAN for entire home, probably does not matter about this though.

Thanks to all three of you.