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Good Evening. First Post.
I have a large amount of information, roughly 1.5TB, and in its current state, any single hard drive failure results in a loss of data, as much as almost 2/3. I want to migrate this data to a system that is 'non-volatile'; meaning that I can safely lose a single drive without losing data.
I did a little bit of searching throughout this forum and on my own, and I still am at odds what to do. My criteria is this: I want a small, compact solution that is expandable, reliable, and relatively easy to maintain. This system replaces having a bunch of drives in my main rig, therefore I prefer an interface that maintains that "local" quickness.
The ultimate goal is to make a system that is inexpensively fault tolerant with an emphasis of ease of maintenance. The budget is $500.
The Drobo seems nice: its compact, very easy to maintain, straightforward, and 'non-volatile'. I like that you can mix-n-match drive sizes, and its effortless to understand. However, Firewire 800 and USB2.0 doesn't seem all that quick, and I keep hearing that its very slow to use.
HP MediaSmart servers seem nifty in that I get a full computer system in a small package. Like Drobo, I can use different drive sizes, but I can also selectively add protection using duplication. However, I don't like the idea of having to maintain ANOTHER Windows machine JUST to store my data, duplication uses more space than parity.
There are also a few more options, like RAID 1, RAID 5, unRAID, FlexRAID, etc, and all of these have benefits like >4 drive capacity and more flexibility, but all seem to have severe drawbacks. unRAID looks complicated to setup, RAID requires matching drive sizes on the same controller and I can't expand it, and all of the configurations I find seem far too large. I can't find comparable small form factors similar to the HP or Drobo.
What are your thoughts? Thank you for your time.
-Cool-
I have a large amount of information, roughly 1.5TB, and in its current state, any single hard drive failure results in a loss of data, as much as almost 2/3. I want to migrate this data to a system that is 'non-volatile'; meaning that I can safely lose a single drive without losing data.
I did a little bit of searching throughout this forum and on my own, and I still am at odds what to do. My criteria is this: I want a small, compact solution that is expandable, reliable, and relatively easy to maintain. This system replaces having a bunch of drives in my main rig, therefore I prefer an interface that maintains that "local" quickness.
The ultimate goal is to make a system that is inexpensively fault tolerant with an emphasis of ease of maintenance. The budget is $500.
The Drobo seems nice: its compact, very easy to maintain, straightforward, and 'non-volatile'. I like that you can mix-n-match drive sizes, and its effortless to understand. However, Firewire 800 and USB2.0 doesn't seem all that quick, and I keep hearing that its very slow to use.
HP MediaSmart servers seem nifty in that I get a full computer system in a small package. Like Drobo, I can use different drive sizes, but I can also selectively add protection using duplication. However, I don't like the idea of having to maintain ANOTHER Windows machine JUST to store my data, duplication uses more space than parity.
There are also a few more options, like RAID 1, RAID 5, unRAID, FlexRAID, etc, and all of these have benefits like >4 drive capacity and more flexibility, but all seem to have severe drawbacks. unRAID looks complicated to setup, RAID requires matching drive sizes on the same controller and I can't expand it, and all of the configurations I find seem far too large. I can't find comparable small form factors similar to the HP or Drobo.
What are your thoughts? Thank you for your time.
-Cool-
