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Software RAID 5 and WD3200JB Drives?

J

John G.

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2005
Messages
163
I currently have two 320GB WD3200JB UltraATA100 drives, and am using them to store large quantities of media. As my media continues to expand, I had originally planned just add additional 320GB drives to the system as need dictated.

Recently, however, this plan is making me a bit nervous. If one drive fails, I'll lose an entire 320GB of media. Now before you tell me that I should have everything backed up anyway, I do. The vast majority of the media is .avi files of my large DVD collection, so I still have all the original DVDs. But the data on the hard drives is still worth as much to me as the time it took to rip and encode hundreds of DVDs. Which is a lot. So I was hoping for a more robust solution.

But I should first note that minimizing cost is paramount. I don't have the kind of money to spend on dedicated (good) controllers, or RE (RAID Edition) WD drives. I've read articles on the internet that explain how to get WindowsXP to do software RAID 5, which seems like a good idea to me. I'd probably pick up three more WD3200JB drives (for a total of five) and a cheap IDE controller, put it all in a beige box and run software RAID 5.

My question is, does this sound like a good idea for my situation? Considering the SE drives, the IDE interfaces, are there any better options? Remember that I've already got two of these drives, and don't want to spend even $10 that I don't absolutely have to. And I'm willing to put up with a big hit in performance-- I just need a place to store all my files.

Thanks for any advice!
 
Windows XP can not do software RAID 5, only the server versions do.

There is a hack to get it to do it on non boot drives, but doing this violates the EULA and so we can not discuss how to do that on this forum.

You can get a relatively inexpensive Highpoint Rocket Raid card that will do what you want. And some of the new Nvidia and Intel Chipsets have RAID 5 built into them.

And you only need 3 drives to do RAID 5 BTW.

==>Lazn
 
Yeah, not looking for tips on how to do RAID5 in software-- I know how to make it happen in an operating system of my choice. Basically I'm just wondering if people would hear my plan and think, "that's the stupidest thing ever."

Seems to me like "relatively inexpensive" means about $90. While I'd love to make this a project "done right," I just don't have the resources at this point. Every extra dollar would need to be extremely well justified. Would a hardware RAID controller be considered absolutely necessary at this point?

Also, I realize I could do it with three drives, but I'd like to have a little room for future data-- if I ever need to expand the array, I know it would be a HUGE pain to find someplace to offload what I have while I redefine a new array. Seems easier to just make a bigger array now.

Thanks for the help!
 
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