Setting Up a Home File Server - my plan

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paladin0

Gawd
Joined
May 9, 2001
Messages
632
Description:
I am thinking about setting up a file server in my house to store all sorts of data. I want to put all my documents, pictures from my digital camera, drivers, computer game image files and dvd image files on this server.

I have about 40 DVDs and probably 50 or 60 computer games so this would require maybe 450 gigs (being generous). A lot of the games are old so they may not use too much space and I probably won’t play them ever again but it will be nice to have them all in a central location. Then I probably have 5-10 gigs worth of documents pictures and other various accumulated stuff I should keep.

Storage needs:
Image files: 450 gigs
Docs and Pictures: 5-10 gigs

Hardware:
(parts I have laying around or in lightly used computers)
Motherboard: MSI KT3 Ultra ARU (via kt333 chipset socket A)
Processor: 1.33 GHz t-bird
RAM: 256 MB Corsair PC2700 (enough?)
HD: 40GB Maxtor 7200 rpm
2x WD 80GB JB drives (from office max for $20 like 4 months ago)
Optical: DVD-ROM
Video: Old 4meg agp card
Network: IBM 10/100 nic with intel chip
Case: My first computer case black mid tower 5 3.5” bays 3 5.25” bays pretty roomy
Software: I can get windows server 2003 for free through my schools msdnaa program so I think this would be the obvious choice. Maybe Linux would be better though?
PSU: 350watt for now, ill get a good quality one before I start putting data on

Current plan:
40 gig Maxtor for OS
2x80gig WDs for a RAID1 array using the onboard controller for documents and pictures
3x250gig in windows 2k3 software RAID5 for image files (will buy soon or maybe a different size, suggestions?)

Questions:
1 .Since I do not want to spend $500 for a real raid5 controller card I want to use the built in software raid. I assume this is near as reliable as a hard ware solution, it just eats more cpu. Has anyone had problems with software raid5?

2. Will it be possible to dynamically add disks to the raid 5 array? It will only have a 500GB capacity with three drives, so I will most likely need more space as I buy more games and movies. Is it possible to add to a raid 5 array with out having to rebuild it and erase the data?

3. With only 5 3.5” bays I would need to stack the drives right next to each other. I usually leave one bay in between each drive when building computers and have never seen the effects of adjacent stacking. Will there be any heat related reliability problems with the drives? I also plan to add an additional HD rack as needed (maybe put a lianli rack in the case since it is open in the front bottom.)

Sorry for the long post. Comments questions suggestions?
 
256 megs RAM is marginal for Windows Server, although it will work. A linux distro running samba, dhcp server, and possibly DNS would be excellent for that machine, as long as you run CLI only. I have a similar machine I use for fileserving and firewalling duties, with a T-bird 650 and 256 megs RAM, Gentoo Linux. No complaints here, and I sometimes hammer on that thing (video editing, multiple tracks, over gig ethernet).

I have limited hands-on experience with RAID 5, so I won't comment on questions 1 and 2. As for the optical drives, I have never had any heat problems from the configuration you describe.

I would add a good UPS to your hardware list. It is totally worth the extra cost for your server. RAID 5 will not protect you from a power glitch.
 
Well, you'd be suprised at what a decent power supply can tolerate, so I doubt you'll have a big issue there. The only problem may be on startup where all the drives fire up at the same time... the current draw will definately be higher than usual. That said, a decent power supply (not a fly by night company) will be more than fine. Of course, you'd need to check the manufacturers specs to be sure.

As to running software RAID, if the box is merely a file server, you won't need to worry about other crap hogging the CPU, so it'd be fine. Windows is bloatware, but even so the CPU should be fine. If you can, *nix does a much better job with software RAID, but Win will do the job too.

I'd definately bump up the amount of RAM. With the amount of data you seem to plan on pushing around, you'll be killing your OS drive with a lot of virtual RAM.

Adding HDDs to a RAID array really isn't recommended and isn't even possible in some situations. Your best bet is to plan on using larger drives or more of them off the bat. I believe that some of the high end RAID cards will allow you to add drives down the line, but I suspect that they're completely out of your price range... and mine for that matter. ;)

Also, why are you planning on having the documents on a seperate RAID array?? With the small amount you need, you'll just be adding to the CPU overhead for something that seems like it's almost a non-issue. On board RAID solutions use the CPU for their calculations too. Personally, I'd just have a seperate folder on the larger array.

And finally, IDE HDDs aren't quite as heat tollerant as SCSI, but plenty of people run them in confined spaces for years without any problems... have you seen the crap case design on some brand name machines?? Perhaps you could mount an 80mm fan to blow across them if you're concerned about it, I probably would, but I wouldn't worry too much. Besides, you can always set them to power down after a period of inactivity.

And, just a friendly reminder. RAID is not a backup solution. If this data is important, you'll need to back it up in another manner as well. If you have the original DVDs, you can always rip them again, but the other stuff should be backed up. You can buy an inexpensive external HDD (USB or Firewire) to back them up so they're in 2 locations. If they don't change much, you won't need to back it up constantly.

Hope that helps a bit.
 
*nix software RAID5 performance is usually a little better than Windows, too. Just understand that the learning curve is steep for things unix. I've been working with unix for 8 years now and some days I feel like that old 3 year-old staring at the Vic20 command prompt.
 
Snugglebear said:
*nix software RAID5 performance is usually a little better than Windows, too. Just understand that the learning curve is steep for things unix. I've been working with unix for 8 years now and some days I feel like that old 3 year-old staring at the Vic20 command prompt.
Click to expand...

This is the exactly reason I would prefer windows. If anything goes wrong ill be comfortable with the OS. With a *nix solution I wont know what is going on and have a higher chance of messing something up.


Thanks for the extensive input animeguru.

Ok ill bump the ram to 512 not a big deal, just steal some out of my almost unused comps. I’m sure it will help with windows especially.

I was planning on doing a separate raid1 array for documents because it seems to be a more simple and robust back up method and also I have the drives already. As you said however consolidating my data all in one box may not be the best idea. This is exactly why I made this thread for suggestions such as that. Instead I could just distribute the data among my other computers as well as the server, since the data doesnt change all that often. Maybe an external drive as well.

RAID5 arrays seem to be less robust. It’s nice that they have some redundancy so in case of a failure I wont have to re-image all my dvds. But ill have to play with it a little to get used to it and make sure I can replace a bad drive with out data loss. Ill just do a few test runs.

If I were to not use those WD80s in the server I’d have enough room to put drives every other bay. So heat probably will be even less an issue with that arrangement. Also there are 2 120mm fans in the case.

Pagan Wizard - I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing in your sig. So you have multiple single drives for storage? Any problems with that, how are you doing back up? A manual copy to the external?

I have another question, In a JBOD array if one drive fails does it take down the whole array or do you just lose the one bad disks data? Does it just depend on the implementation? This might be an option for dvd storage since I will get to use all available space, and in the event of a failure ill just have to rip my dvds again which would be annoying but not terrible. I’m wondering if I’d have to rip them all or just the failed drives files. I'll probably stick with raid 5 since ripping takes a while.
 
paladin0 said:
This is the exactly reason I would prefer windows. If anything goes wrong ill be comfortable with the OS. With a *nix solution I wont know what is going on and have a higher chance of messing something up..
Click to expand...

dont get too comfortable, its like youll be entering a Province
where a whole different dialect is employed
http://labmice.techtarget.com/windows2000/diskmgmt/dynamic_disk.htm

wasnt sure if you already speak that dialect or not ;)

its a good idea to plan on forcing an airflow over and inbetween those drives
while you dont loose much heat through radiation, drives in close proximity do catch the radiated heat from each other, but more importantly, disrupt "typical" convection heat transfer do to decreased airflow inbetween the drives, which increases the heat, which increases the radiation, which increases the heat :p It still reaches a stable point, but its considerably higher, drives are rated for temperatures that are quite high, but keeping them cool will make them last longer, all things being equal

some vary highend hardware RAID5 solutions allow for dynamically adding capacity
but not software RAID5, if it wasnt RAIDed at all, it would be a simple matter of mounting a new drive as a folder in another drive\partition (employing NTFS) but you cant do that in a dynamic disk RAID volume

the "dynamic" part refers to the ability to enlarge a partition in a simple volume
not a RAID volume (there are some additional limitations, like adjacent space)
and you can actually do that with a basic disk as well employing the Windows diskpart.exe commandline tool (which youd need to download)
but I use Partition Magic, since I got it
 
paladin0 said:
I have another question, In a JBOD array if one drive fails does it take down the whole array or do you just lose the one bad disks data? Does it just depend on the implementation? This might be an option for dvd storage since I will get to use all available space, and in the event of a failure ill just have to rip my dvds again which would be annoying but not terrible. I’m wondering if I’d have to rip them all or just the failed drives files. I'll probably stick with raid 5 since ripping takes a while.
Click to expand...

Depends on the controller/software. Sometimes you can continue boldly on in the face of a drive failure, only crashing when you find those bits on the failed drive. Sometimes the system will see the failure and refuse to mount the volume or otherwise do anything useful. Understand that the data is still there on the disks, you just may have to recover and reassemble the data using a low-level tool. After all, the filesystem is going to be spanning drives and the others may not be able to access the MFST and thus require a bitwise recovery.

You could probably also make a logical JBOD, putting independent filesystems on each drive and then linking them to a common directory or set of directories.
 
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