Recommend a External RAID Enclosure

O

Oswald_

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 21, 2005
Messages
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I'm in the market for a inexpensive esata enclosure that supports RAID5 for a simple backup system for my system. Can anyone throw out some suggestions?
 
Inexpensive and RAID5, are generally mutually exclusive terms. Whats your budget like?

Do you already have a eSATA PCI/PCI-E/PCI-X card, that you just need an enclosure for?
How many drive bays or what sort of storage capacity are you looking for?
 
Oswald_ said:
Well, the budget I'm trying to meet is staying under $400 for everything, it's going to be tough.

I already have eSATA capability so that's not a problem.

Something like this might work ...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111048

With 4 320GB caviars ...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136098

That should put me around $400, thoughts?
Click to expand...

All I can say is that case looks awesome. I ordered one for my 4 one TB drives. Thanks...
 
I would say if you can spring for a tad more money a Drobo is well worth it. I have been using one for awhile now since I hated my NAS box. $400 for the box w/o the drives but its great.
 
From what I hear the Drobo is a dog in the transfer speed department. Maybe that was only the NAS part though. If you're going to direct attached storage and you have eSATA, then the Sans Digital is probably a good choice. If you're going to do RAID 5 with it though don't expect blazing speeds. I believe they are doing RAID5 via a software application as the port multiplier (Silicon Image 3726) in the enclosure doesn't support RAID on it's own.

I bigger question though is why are you using a RAID array as backup? RAID is not backup. It only protects against drive failure, not data corruption, viruses, user error, etc.
 
That drive bay looks nice. What I am wondering though, is does the motherboard's SATA connector that would connect to the PCIe card need to support port multiplier technology, or does the PCIe card provide that capability for motherboard controllers like ICH9r?

Reading a bit more it looks like it takes advantage of FIS-based switching so it would require something like a motherboard with ICH10r. I don't think ich9r would work with this tower.
 
epimetheus said:
From what I hear the Drobo is a dog in the transfer speed department. Maybe that was only the NAS part though. If you're going to direct attached storage and you have eSATA, then the Sans Digital is probably a good choice. If you're going to do RAID 5 with it though don't expect blazing speeds. I believe they are doing RAID5 via a software application as the port multiplier (Silicon Image 3726) in the enclosure doesn't support RAID on it's own.

I bigger question though is why are you using a RAID array as backup? RAID is not backup. It only protects against drive failure, not data corruption, viruses, user error, etc.
Click to expand...

Good info, yeah I'm not pressed for blazing speeds as this is just a way to transfer data off my primary home systems for nightly backups.

Dumping my files from my systems nightly (with no RAID) to external storage with RAID5 and uploading the data to Amazon S3 weekly seems pretty solid to me. What would you suggest as a backup solution?
 
Oswald_ said:
Good info, yeah I'm not pressed for blazing speeds as this is just a way to transfer data off my primary home systems for nightly backups.

Dumping my files from my systems nightly (with no RAID) to external storage with RAID5 and uploading the data to Amazon S3 weekly seems pretty solid to me. What would you suggest as a backup solution?
Click to expand...

I see. I didn't understand that you are doing a complete second copy of your data. It seems a lot of people think RAID is a backup my itself.

As far as port multiplier support, I belive the ICHxR chipsets all have the same capabilities are far as SATA/eSATA support. Also, doesn't the Sans Digital enclosure come with a PCIe eSATA card?
 
epimetheus said:
As far as port multiplier support, I belive the ICHxR chipsets all have the same capabilities are far as SATA/eSATA support. Also, doesn't the Sans Digital enclosure come with a PCIe eSATA card?
Click to expand...

I know that the ich9r has port multiplier, but it is not FIS based switching, and only one of the drives on the multiplier can be accessed at a time (no raid). FIS based switching is what is required to make them all accessible at the same time.

I didn't realize this card adds esata ports. For some reason I was thinking it required a sata port from your MB. But it looks like it adds 2x esata so there shouldn't be a problem as long as your MB supports PCIe (or one of the other cards they have) and your OS.
 
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