Too much storage, need to split it up else windows wont install

J

JP

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 7, 2001
Messages
256
Long story short:

Have 8 400GB drives and want to do a RAID 5 array with those.

RAID'ed them and left 1 hot spare, for a total of 2.8TB.

I went to install windows and apparently the most it detects is 2.0TB since that seems to be the max for an MBR.

The system is going to be used as a security system storage machine that is going to be constantly using the hard drive.

Here is my question/concern.

The only other alternative I saw to this was the following 3:

1. Make a full RAID 5 partition with all 8 drives and use 2 as hot spare, leaving me with 2.54TB of storage. Out of those make a primary partition that would use those .54TB=550-600GB's and then make the secondary partition a full 2 TB in order to save/record everything to that.
Now the thing with this setup, is that I heard that since the hard drives will be under constant writting, that its not really recommended to have 1 drive(RAID would make it seem as one drive) with multiple partitions if it needs to be constantly written to.


Other method would be:

2. Make 2 RAID arrays's.
FIrst one would be a RAID 1 array with 2 of the 400GB's. Install windows on that RAID array. Or I can replace the 400's for 2 36GB raptors, since I really dont need that much storage space on the windows partition.
Second would be a RAID 5 array with the other 6 disks, and 1 hot spare, and 5 working for a total of 2TB, and use it as storage.


Any other ideas? LOL I never knew having TOO much storage would be such a problem. :(
 
Windows 2000 and newer can circumvent the 2TB MBR limitation by converting the volume to a dynamic disk. I'm sure this is possible in Linux as well, but I do not know how.

A single disk is a much better choice for booting, even if it's a cheapie 40GB ATA drive. That will save quite a bit of thrashing on the RAID array, and prolong its life substantially for very little additional cost.

A hot spare is recommended for any RAID array of more than (this figure is arbitrarily made up in my mind) five disks.
 
I'd recommend two arrays. One mirrored array for the OS and DVR software with a second array for the actual recordings. Some RAID controllers support a "floating" spare HDDs, IOW you can configure two hot spares for to be used by either array in case of a hard drive failure.
 
DougLite said:
Windows 2000 and newer can circumvent the 2TB MBR limitation by converting the volume to a dynamic disk. I'm sure this is possible in Linux as well, but I do not know how.

A single disk is a much better choice for booting, even if it's a cheapie 40GB ATA drive. That will save quite a bit of thrashing on the RAID array, and prolong its life substantially for very little additional cost.

A hot spare is recommended for any RAID array of more than (this figure is arbitrarily made up in my mind) five disks.
Click to expand...

yes but initially you cant convert it into a dynamic disk. Really I want to stay away from dyanmic disk.
 
SJConsultant said:
I'd recommend two arrays. One mirrored array for the OS and DVR software with a second array for the actual recordings. Some RAID controllers support a "floating" spare HDDs, IOW you can configure two hot spares for to be used by either array in case of a hard drive failure.
Click to expand...


Maybe I will do that, but I am afraid that my 3ware 9500S -8 doesnt support the "floating" hot spare, which would be an ideal solution.

If I do RAID 1 for the bootup drive (OS and DVR software), and say one disk dies, will the array still be functioning or will the system halt and wait for me to re-build the array?
Basically I dont think RAID 1 supports a hot spare.

This seems like its going to be the solution I am going to do.

2x36 or 74gb raptors raid 1
6 400gbs with one hot spare raid 5
 
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