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My current setup is basically:
- X3350 @ 3.2
- DFI LP LT X48-T2R
- 8 gigs of G.Skill PC8500
- 3x 500GB Seagate 7200.11 drives in RAID5 on the ICH9R (partitioned into a 250gig primary/boot, 750gig data)
- 3x 320GB Seagate 7200.10 drives in RAID5 on the ICH9R
- Corsair 750TX PSU
- Vista X64
The performance of the arrays are pretty horrible, in most cases I am barely able to break 30mb/s write performance. I have a large dvd and bluray library that I am encoding to h264 to play over the network on my media center box (all that is working great, no performance problems there). Besides encoding, a lot of my time is spent I/O bound when I'm muxing/demuxing tracks and I would like to improve this significantly.
I am also quickly running out of space with the other stuff I store on my system (mainly work stuff) so I would like to add at least another 1-2TBs short term, with maybe a couple more TBs next year.
I was looking at different internal and external solutions and what I am leaning towards at the moment is:
- Adding a 5-in-3 SATA backplane drive cage
- Adding a 8 port SATA controller (see below)
- Adding 3 Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drives in Raid5 to the new drive cage (using OCE when I get a couple new drives later)
- Moving my 3 500GB Seagate drives to the new controller in RAID5 and using it as primary boot and for encoding
The controllers I am currently considering are:
- Highpoint RocketRaid 3320 or 3520 controller - have heard bad things about Highpoint's longevity, cheapest overall at maybe $450 or so
- 3Ware 9650SE 8 Port - looks like I would need to also buy the battery backup unit to turn on write caching, maybe $650 or so
- Areca ARC-1220 - much harder for me to get from regular suppliers in Canada, lots of complaints about the software, $550 or so
Does anyone have any recommendations or other ideas? I have 2 16x slots and 1 4x slot so it would be great if I could get one going in the 4x slot as I may look at a crossfire setup in the fall to replace my 8800gtx.
- X3350 @ 3.2
- DFI LP LT X48-T2R
- 8 gigs of G.Skill PC8500
- 3x 500GB Seagate 7200.11 drives in RAID5 on the ICH9R (partitioned into a 250gig primary/boot, 750gig data)
- 3x 320GB Seagate 7200.10 drives in RAID5 on the ICH9R
- Corsair 750TX PSU
- Vista X64
The performance of the arrays are pretty horrible, in most cases I am barely able to break 30mb/s write performance. I have a large dvd and bluray library that I am encoding to h264 to play over the network on my media center box (all that is working great, no performance problems there). Besides encoding, a lot of my time is spent I/O bound when I'm muxing/demuxing tracks and I would like to improve this significantly.
I am also quickly running out of space with the other stuff I store on my system (mainly work stuff) so I would like to add at least another 1-2TBs short term, with maybe a couple more TBs next year.
I was looking at different internal and external solutions and what I am leaning towards at the moment is:
- Adding a 5-in-3 SATA backplane drive cage
- Adding a 8 port SATA controller (see below)
- Adding 3 Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drives in Raid5 to the new drive cage (using OCE when I get a couple new drives later)
- Moving my 3 500GB Seagate drives to the new controller in RAID5 and using it as primary boot and for encoding
The controllers I am currently considering are:
- Highpoint RocketRaid 3320 or 3520 controller - have heard bad things about Highpoint's longevity, cheapest overall at maybe $450 or so
- 3Ware 9650SE 8 Port - looks like I would need to also buy the battery backup unit to turn on write caching, maybe $650 or so
- Areca ARC-1220 - much harder for me to get from regular suppliers in Canada, lots of complaints about the software, $550 or so
Does anyone have any recommendations or other ideas? I have 2 16x slots and 1 4x slot so it would be great if I could get one going in the 4x slot as I may look at a crossfire setup in the fall to replace my 8800gtx.
