Oh shiz...6TB of data gone. Replacement RAID?

D

DogChainX

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 8, 2004
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So I have one of those Sans Digitals 4-bay Raid Servers with a...yeah...Silicon Image SI3132.

Tonight I switched over to my HTPC to watch a movie with the wife, and when I went to pull up the list of movies the whole system froze. I rebooted, and the RAID array was offline. I couldn't rebuild it (that option was grayed out), and two hard drives of the 4-drive array was "orphaned." I googled, but couldn't find any info on how to restore the data. Silicon Image looks like a JUNK option, so many people have had issues with the SI3132 esata controller.

So. What are my options? Here's my thoughts.

1. I need something small. A regular desktop PC case won't work, since this RAID server needs to be hidden behind a TV in a small TV cabinet.
2. I need something reliable. I have a lot of this data (mostly movies) on disc, or on an external backup drive....but once i start ripping more movies, I NEVER WANT TO HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN.
3. I would like something expandable. This is something I would enjoy. I used up 90% of the 6TB of space pretty quickly. Can I add a drive to the array, and expand the array? That means 5+ HDD slots, since currently I have a 4 slot Sans Digital. Expandable is nice, but not 100% needed.
4. Price. I want to keep it under $300.
5. Needs to be esata connected or USB 3.0. I need performance on the system, so no NAS boxes.

So, since I need something small...i think that leaves me mostly with a RAID server box, like the Sans Digital I have. However, I don't want to loose data again.

So, what does everyone recommend? I want at least 6TB of storage, and I have 4x2TB drives now.
 
impossible... you need to raise your price a lot more unless you want to buy something that is very slow and unreliable... like what just killed all of your data
 
ripken204 said:
impossible... you need to raise your price a lot more unless you want to buy something that is very slow and unreliable... like what just killed all of your data
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Should I forget the whole idea about a RAID box and build a server with something like a LIAN LI PC-Q08B? That way I can do RAID-6, and have plenty of space for future expansion AND pick my own RAID hardware/etc setup.
 
ouch man i really do feel your pain, happened to me not so long ago :(
i ended up building myself a server with a LSI 9260-8i with 8x2TB in raid 6.
i really do recommend you do NOT skimp on the raid controller or the whole setup as you will regret it later.
Im loving my lsi card so far though, amazing speeds and no issues at all running under 2008r2.
im sure some people could recommend some equivalent areca cards but i have no experience on those
 
nicolas9510 said:
ouch man i really do feel your pain, happened to me not so long ago :(
i ended up building myself a server with a LSI 9260-8i with 8x2TB in raid 6.
i really do recommend you do NOT skimp on the raid controller or the whole setup as you will regret it later.
Im loving my lsi card so far though, amazing speeds and no issues at all running under 2008r2.
im sure some people could recommend some equivalent areca cards but i have no experience on those
Click to expand...

You know, I'm looking at just upgrading my HTPC case to a Silver Stone one that can hold 6 or 7 3.5" drives, and doing just that. Pop in a dedicated RAID card, and have everything in the HTPC case. It'll probably be a lot more reliable and less expensive than any other way.

This external RAID box is starting to look like an expensive nightmare, with very little GOOD solutions.
 
I would personally build a server box with Linux and use straight MDraid or FreeNas/Open Filer.

Put that in the basement somewhere, and then use a lower end box as the HTPC and just have a share. That's how I'm setup at home. My main server has the movies stored on a share and m HTPC just streams it over the network. It's an older box, Core 2 Duo I think, runs fine.

The little raid boxes can be nice but the problem is when they crap out you are screwed. At least with a PC based server you can replace the part that failed or do other troubleshooting steps to get back in the game.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I would personally build a server box with Linux and use straight MDraid or FreeNas/Open Filer.

Put that in the basement somewhere, and then use a lower end box as the HTPC and just have a share. That's how I'm setup at home. My main server has the movies stored on a share and m HTPC just streams it over the network. It's an older box, Core 2 Duo I think, runs fine.

The little raid boxes can be nice but the problem is when they crap out you are screwed. At least with a PC based server you can replace the part that failed or do other troubleshooting steps to get back in the game.
Click to expand...

That's a problem...I have limited room in a house we're currently renting. I'm leaning a lot to buying an HTPC case with a ton of 3.5" bays to hold 6-8 3.5" drives.

The other thing is connection between the server and the HTPC. I would just put a server somewhere...but I'd have to rely on ethernet over power or wireless. Not my choice to streaming HD content.

I'll do more research, and probably just post my new build in the HTPC forum for suggestions.
 
I don't know why you're ignoring the setups from Synology or Qnap. They're compact RAID boxes built on Atom platforms, based on Linux software raid so you can really do what you want. Not only that but you can mod them and use them as servers/download clients/whatever.

I've always thought it'd be interesting to build an entire FreeNAS server but size is a primary concern of mine and the pre-built boxes are rather compact. You could argue that I can't expand to 7-8-9 disks for future needs, but in the future I'd rather scrap my aging drives and migrate to larger capacity ones anyways.
 
HP Proliant Microserver meets your requirements almost - with a memory bump it's just over 300, and has 4 hot swap slots. (You can put a 5th 3.5" HDD in the optical bay if you want, and connect a 6th eSATA disk (no port multiplier)).

You would likely talk to it as a NAS though, not direct attached.

Finding something "small" that "doesn't look like a computer" with > 4 drives is going to be either really expensive or just not going to happen. You could build a small mATX case like a fractal design mini with I think 7ish drives, going to be more than 300 though.
 
I agree with the above poster. Love my little hp box. with just 4TB 7200RPM drives I get 100 MB/s both ways reading/writing large media files. I am also planning to add a small SSD as cache to help with read and writes for small files. ;)
 
Vengance_01 said:
I agree with the above poster. Love my little hp box. with just 4TB 7200RPM drives I get 100 MB/s both ways reading/writing large media files. I am also planning to add a small SSD as cache to help with read and writes for small files. ;)
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I'm looking for something that has fault-tolerance, say RAID-5. With what I've read, wouldn't I have to purchase a RAID-5 supporting RAID card, since the HP microserver only does RAID1 / 0?

I would love to tinker around the HP server, but this is only to dish out HD media to an HTPC, and not willing to spend too much time to get this setup and running well.

QNAP TS-419P+ is looking like my high-end choice. It seems plug-n-play, with a host of features, as well as great support and superb speed. $550 though for a lot of features I'll never use.

I'm also looking towards a Synology DS411J for an inexpensive solution. $350 and I have RAID-5 support, though Read/Writes are DIRT slow.

As for buying a RAID card, a new HTPC case, etc. Well, my wife uses this 95% of the time...I'm not really interested in a full-tear down and rebuild. I have too little time this spring/summer to waste on tinkering unfortunately. =(

So...what to get.

QNAP TS-419P+?
Synology DS411J?
HP Microserver and RAID card + tinker time?
 
RAID5 is fine....until you have to rebuild. In the days with smaller drives the exposure window was "small" (maybe a couple of hours). These days, the exposure window might be days (especially with SW RAID).
 
What you want is a NAS, whether its a brand name or a DIY job, is up to you. I have three NAS's and just over 6TB of movies on one NAS, about 3TB of TV shows on another, and I stream them to my Boxee box over my LAN no problem. I've had the NAS's for a few years now, not one hiccup, they are brand name (pay a little more) and they have support, although some might be out of warranty, I can always get some kind of support online.
 
You can get raid-5 / raid-Z on the microserver via software if you run a linux/solaris/FreeBSD based distro. (which would be my suggestion).

So no raid card.

As for tinker time it can be pretty minimal - you can use one of the NAS type distros (FreeNAS, etc.) - or if you go solaris based just install and then add napp-it and you configure everything through the web interface (you have to set the smb root password once through the command line).
 
Trepidati0n said:
RAID5 is fine....until you have to rebuild. In the days with smaller drives the exposure window was "small" (maybe a couple of hours). These days, the exposure window might be days (especially with SW RAID).
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This is only with really low end systems, a whole lot of disks, or very poor software raid. I mean at work I am seeing 8.5 hour rebuilds on my 11 drive software raid 6, using 2TB hitachi 7200 RPM drives (not the latest generation at that) on linux with a 3 year old core2quad and 4 GB of memory. I do have a LSI based SAS card for 7 or 8 of the disks but the rest are using the intel motherboard ports.

Edit: BTW, I am no longer recommending raid 5 however. Not for rebuild times but I am starting to see UREs (especially with Seagate drives) and with RAID5 you do not have as much protection from data loss as you do with raid6 or zfs.
 
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IMO ZFS is a safer then lower end raid cards. You don't need to buy expensive TLER enabled Hardrives. ZFS even on atom powered machine should offer plenty of performance for a media server.
 
So if going with ZFS and the HP Microserver, how will performance be compared to a NAS?
 
If you go with equivalent types of raid (e.g. zfs mirror vs raid-1, raidz vs raid5, raidz2 vs raid6), should be just as good. Mirrors can be even better on reads, since some crap raid cards don't balance on reads, so you get 1X drive thruput.
 
After looking into FreeNAS, ZFS, I think i'm going that route with the HP Microserver. Nothing like doing 10-15 minutes worth of research into a suggestion. At first, the thread listed here on HARD didn't look that promising...but now it does after going to freeNAS forum and looking at the quick start guide. =)

Thanks guys!
 
I think OpenIndiana or NexentaStor will be better choices. I am using NexentaStor and its working perfectly. Easy to use web GUI, solid performance, and its based off of a commercial product.
 
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Let's do some math ---

You spent $400 for 4 hard drives and your RAID controller went bad.

I would suggest that you spend $200 and buy 2 more hard drives. (4 old drives and 2 new drives) This will let you have backup copies of your stuff.

Get rid of the foolish RAID notions you have.
 
GeorgeHR said:
Let's do some math ---

You spent $400 for 4 hard drives and your RAID controller went bad.

I would suggest that you spend $200 and buy 2 more hard drives. (4 old drives and 2 new drives) This will let you have backup copies of your stuff.

Get rid of the foolish RAID notions you have.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

First, giving advice in a condescending manner doesn't lend credit to one's self.
Secondly, I need a stable and reliable solution, not just a backup method. Re-read the thread.
 
Part of his post I agree with. Get 2 more drives. Set up a raid6 (preferably using a ZFS solution). You can have any two drives fail and be okay, and you are not dependent on specific HW raid solutions.
 
danswartz said:
Part of his post I agree with. Get 2 more drives. Set up a raid6 (preferably using a ZFS solution). You can have any two drives fail and be okay, and you are not dependent on specific HW raid solutions.
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Great idea, but where to put 6 drives? Space, SATA ports, and enclosure options are an issue.
 
Sorry, I didn't see any post describing your limitations. Can you do 5 drives? Then do raidz.
 
DogChainX said:
Great idea, but where to put 6 drives? Space, SATA ports, and enclosure options are an issue.
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First have to decide if that's the route you want to go, then you can dive into the specifics. Even if you can't find a board with 6 on-board SATA slots you can always get an expander since you're not going HW RAID. There are plenty of case options that house 6 3.5" drives.

But you can't have both a minimal sized box *and* DIY hardware - you either need a NAS box for size or accept the clunk and do it yourself.
 
antioch said:
First have to decide if that's the route you want to go, then you can dive into the specifics. Even if you can't find a board with 6 on-board SATA slots you can always get an expander since you're not going HW RAID. There are plenty of case options that house 6 3.5" drives.

But you can't have both a minimal sized box *and* DIY hardware - you either need a NAS box for size or accept the clunk and do it yourself.
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Exactly. That's why I'm probably going with the HP microserver as a solution. I can easily fit two stacked behind the TV, just in case I want to go with expanded storage in the future. I'm still researching and looking into different options, but this seems like the best, easiest and most affordable solution for a compact media server while maintaining reliability.

All of this could be solved if there were 10TB hard drives available. :D
 
from the reports on ocau, you'll get over 105MB/s for read and writes...ie close to maxing out gigiabit.

you will want to put 4GB of ram in it though...it comes with 1GB iirc.


imho, this is the best option for you.

install solaris 11 express, then napp-it and presto...you'll be a very happy man with best in class performance and data integrity. plus plenty of option to play with it and expand...ie. add some vm's at a later date to run windows or linux for those other app's you want like mail servers of torrents etc.
 
DogChainX said:
:rolleyes:

First, giving advice in a condescending manner doesn't lend credit to one's self.
Secondly, I need a stable and reliable solution, not just a backup method. Re-read the thread.
Click to expand...

Your experience is that RAIDs are not too stable or reliable. If you want one, get one. But don't expect it to solve your problem.

A copy of data is much more than a backup. It is a reliable and stable solution to your problem.
 
GeorgeHR said:
Your experience is that RAIDs are not too stable or reliable. If you want one, get one. But don't expect it to solve your problem.

A copy of data is much more than a backup. It is a reliable and stable solution to your problem.
Click to expand...

My experience is that this particular RAID solution isn't reliable, not that RAID in of itself isn't reliable. I've used RAID-1 and RAID-5 successfully in the past.

A backup copy isn't a replacement to a media server. I first need a stable server, then I can think about a backup solution.

I can't just throw half a dozen or so external backup drives at the problem and think I've solved replacing a media server.
 
ZFS is 128 bit filesystem. You need 64 bit CPU to get full speed. I had 32 bit pentium 4 with 1GB RAM, I got like 20-30MB/Sek
 
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