Storage recommendations for my Mini-ITX build

HaxNobody

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Nov 20, 2012
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Hello [H], I'm building this little tiny beast:

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=29469847

All I need now is to figure out my storage subsystem. The mobo has 4 6gbps ports, and the chassis can support any combination of the following:

3.5" x 3,
or 3.5" x 2 + 2.5" x 2
or 3.5" x 1 + 2.5" x 3
or 2.5" x 4

What do you guys recommend? I really love Samsung 8xx series drives, but I can't use RAPID mode unless I have only one of them (no raid).
Workload: Heavy duty desktop replacement, including software compilation, some video editing/transcoding, photoshooping, and general interneting.
 
I'd recommend if you're spending $1300 on a storage server that you consider the move to ECC RAM.

How much storage space are you looking for?
 
Nah not a storage server, this is going to be my daily driver. Right now I have a single 256GB Crucial C300 (the first SSD with 6gbps :eek: :D) and it's pretty full, but most of my storage lives on my NAS box (ISOs and whatever).
I want raw performance.
 
Sorry, with that many drives I just figured it was for a storage server. Still, how much space do you need, especially if you have storage devices already on the network? My machine at home has a 256Gb SSD and a fast 640Gb laptop hard drive I use for VMs and stuff. Everything else is on my server.

What about just a single 512Gb SSD? In a daily machine, I'd favor fewer devices over more, if I could reasonably fit it on a SSD. If your video editing has a lot of large files, and you can afford it, maybe consider a 512Gb main drive and a 128Gb or 256Gb scratch drive. I'm not sure what prices are now, but if you do that you might be into 1TB SSD territory, which I would still probably prefer over 2 SSDs.
 
I was thinking SSD RAID, but I don't know how well modern SSDs will tolerate RAID with no TRIM. I could do a RAID 10 with slower SSDs for data protection and speed, or I could do RAID 1 with really fast SSDs for just data protection, and then add a pair of 3.5" HDDs for bulk storage.
 
2x intel ssd's raid 0 (supports trim) + 2x 4TB hdd's raid 1, or no raid if you live on the edge/backup elsewhere, if you don't offsite backup already I'd recommend backblaze.

Insta-edit: I'm coming from the point of view that you want to max out your chassis, if you do not want to I'd just get the biggest ssd I could afford that was SLC/MLC based
 
Do only the Intel SSDs support TRIM while in RAID?

Are there any good backup solutions that will check for modifications every few minutes and copy them to the HDDs? I can then back the HDDs up to the internet and to my NAS. Currently, Mozy backs up my SSD, but I'm thinking I want something a little better if I'm going to run a RAID 0.
 
Why do you want RAID 0 for SSDs? In general practicality terms, one larger SSD is usually better than two in RAID 0. Real-world performance generally doesn't support RAID 0 for SSD's from the tests I've seen. If you just want it to have RAID 0 SSD's, go for it!

There are several programs that will backup constantly, either by manual task setup or by the design of the software. How involved do you want to be in the process, and how much do you want to spend?
 
and better sequential read/write.

Not necessarily. I mean only for high queue depths or very large transfers. Most applications will not benefit from high STR since they do not operate in large transfers at a time.
 
Where I would benefit from high sequential read/write is when I am modifying WIM files for my custom deployments. Mounting and unmounting WIM files takes a bit of speed, as does copying them - 5+ GB for each file.
 
I've decided to get 2x 4TB WD Blacks for the bulk storage requirements, so that wraps up my storage questions. Thanks for everyone's help.
 
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