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Maxtor 10, reliable?

Also, does it matter what kind of CPU/Mobo you use for a server? I dont really know much about this stuff. Say I get 2 of thos PCI-E Raid controllers, does the CPU of the actual computer matter much? Since all it will be used is for storage.

Thanks
 
200GBs can be had for $100ish. I don't trust Maxtor.

What capacity does it need to have & how many users, what kind of load?

Oh yeah, and is downtime a critical point or not very significant?
 
ashmedai said:
200GBs can be had for $100ish. I don't trust Maxtor.

What capacity does it need to have & how many users, what kind of load?

Oh yeah, and is downtime a critical point or not very significant?
Click to expand...

Canadian Prices

2 Users. It for home.

Its about a $1500 budget, I would like a terabyte (if that is what 1000 gigs is)

And what is downtime? If it's something that will last a couple of days, it is significant, if it's something that will last a little bit and only happens every couple of months, it's fine
 
Okay, so 120 Canadian.

1TB = 1024GB and don't let any of those marketing types tell you different. How anyone could think having a decimal order of a binary base unit makes sense is beyond me.

Downtime's a big factor for servers for corporate use, not much of one for personal use. Thus there you build in craploads of redundancy and such (it's more or less the point of RAID in the first place, so that if a drive fails you can keep running while you plug in a new one, assuming you have hot-swap capable drives).

So figure RAID 5 so that you have some cheap redundancy, you'd need 6 drives. Plus a controller (presumably 8-channel at that point) so probably a RocketRaid 1820A.

At that point get a cheap-ass motherboard with integrated video and maybe gigabit NIC if you anticipate using that. Plug in equally cheap-ass processor. If you have a small older hard drive sitting around use that to run the OS off of (or use fricking Knoppix...). System requirements really aren't that steep at this point.

Get a good PSU. Doesn't have to be something you'd put in your primary gaming system, but look for active PFC and check around to make sure it's relatively solid.
 
My Dual PIII 550 machine runs out PCI bus bandwidth when it's 'serving it up' long before I max out one of my CPUs, so anything >800MHz is going to plenty of horsepower for a strictly file server. Also, 512MB of RAM is more than enough. You want to focus on bus bandwidth and hard drive throughput before you look at anything in the league of Opteron/Xeon.

The DM10 is the same drive as the MLIII, Maxtor's NearLine enterprise drive. The MLIII ships with 'choice components and assembly' for 24/7 power on use in enterprise duty cycles, and ships with a 5 year warranty. The DM10 is a consumer drive marketed with a 3 year warranty. With that said, I would be willing to trust those drives, provided you use a good PSU and solid power protection (which I'd expect you will), and RAID arrangements will take care of the occasional failure that is to be expected. It is true that Seagate delivers the cheapest drives available with a 5 year warranty though. I have never had a Maxtor drive fail, even with a dozen of their rebate specials installed and humming away right now. Have had WD's go out though.

As for downtime, if you're using RAID-5, rebuilds on ~1TB arrays can take hours. RAID-1 rebuilds quite a bit quicker. I would not expect to rebuild very often, especially in your fairly light duty environment. You only have to do it when a drive goes out. ;)
 
Hours? That's pretty conservative...if you're not lucky, it can take over a full day.

RAID newbie pitfall avoidence advice - don't assume your data is now bulletproof. It probably won't fall victim to a drive failure anymore unless something catastrophic knocks out several at once (which is unlikely given a good PSU & UPS) but it's still just as vulnerable to data-level issues.
 
First thing, whats the diffrences between Raid 5/0/1? How is the storage seperated for each?

Also, What kind of RAID can be used with 5 Drives?

ALSO, is there a problem if I use more then 1 Raid controller card? I can't find a card that has more then 4 SATA ports, so if I have 1 4 port card, and one 2 port card, will there be a problem?

Also, whats the Cheapest PSU you guys would recomend for 5 Seagate Barracudas?

Thanks
 
There's plenty of info out there on RAID levels if you Google for it. There are also several threads here that you can search through. Sift through some of the info out there and post any specific questions you have.

Many controllers allow you to span arrays across controllers of the same model/firmware. I realize acquiring gear is a little harder in Canada, but you should be able to find 8 or 12 port SATA cards for PCI-X, if not PCI-E.

As for the PSU, I'd allocate 1 amp on +12 for each drive. Typically, the load on + is met easily by any quality PSU. Head over to the Power Supply forum and read their stickies to see what's a good brand.

The 'Cudas are not a bad choice, they will not let you down.
 
RAID 0 isn't a true RAID, it's a way of rigging it up so you can get nearly the sequential transfer rate of two drives at the expense of a failure rate more than of the two drives combined.

RAID 1, you have to have an even number of drives and the storage space is equal to that of half the drives. It works by making a mirror copy to the second set of drives.

RAID 5 you need N+1 drives with a minimum of 3 drives total. Your storage space would be equal to all the drives combined minus one. It works by calculating parity data and distributing it equally across all drives. If you want the storage space of the 5 drives you need 6 total like I mentioned previously.

Also the Highpoint RocketRaid 1820A I mentioned has 8 channels and performs rather well especially given that it's much cheaper than you'd have to go to beat it. It's PCI-X but works just fine in a normal PCI slot which is probably more than adequate for what you're doing.
 
DiamondMax 10 drives have been proven reliable and great performers unlike some of their "lesser" products
 
also, another use for this file server will be for compiling/encoding movies and video, so that should be taken into consideration
 
Hate_Bot said:
also, another use for this file server will be for compiling/encoding movies and video, so that should be taken into consideration
Click to expand...

If it has to be a cohesive array, do RAID 5. But note that because of the parity calc, the write speed is a tad slower than an individual drive, so you should do high write operations to an individual drive. If you maintain an individual system drive then just do them on that.

You don't have to RAID your drives you know, there's tricks you can do with NTFS and such that'll let it be functionally cohesive without having to get expensive controllers and such.
 
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