Building a 1TB+ File Server

[jamori]

Originally posted by: 21stHermit
Nick,

I read and reread your excellent RAID 5 discussion. Please a few questions:
1) Does the large RAID "drive" have effectively a single drive letter? That's my biggest HD problem, moving large (say 50GB groups) file blocks to different drives.
2) Does the software "help" you move from the old non-RAID to the RAID-5?
3) Do you need to start with newly formated HDs?
4) How do you know a drive has failed? Does the software tell you?

Your newest post reminded me that I meant to go back and answer these.

1) Yes! One of the many nice things is that it can show up as a single drive (or be partitioned just like a normal large drive could be)
2) I'm not really sure what you mean, but I think I touch on this in the next question.
3) No, you don't, but depending on what card you use / what sort of intelligent software it has, you may or may not (probably will) lose the data initially stored on the drive. It all depends on the formatting software. Try looking through docs on the manufacturer's website or even emailing them to ask.
4) Typically yes, the software will tell you. Some controller cards have LED's that light up when there's an error. The software can often be setup to do things like email you, emit a loud annoying noise through the PC speaker, or have an onscreen popup error message when a drive fails. Again, it depends on the software, but there is some sort of monitoring. You don't just have to become attuned to the sound of a properly working array and sense when something is out of place

Sounds like you're in the boat I am -- just wanting a bit more data security on your desktop computer. FYI, I just bought the Promise sx4000 (4 port IDE) on eBay for $80 and a 256MB ECC DIMM for cache for $20ish. Just looking for my drives, now

I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier -- the cards I was looking at for hardware RAID5 in a desktop/workstation were the adaptec 2400a and the promise sx4000 / sx4060 / sx6000.

Nick

 

[lansalot]

Originally posted by: lansalot
Why not mirror the system drive? Single point of failure there still. Or make it part of your raid5, just carve off a small partition for that.

Why risk the stability of the system on a single drive? Not worth it.



The single drive is independent of the array. If that fails, the array is protected. This isn't mission critical so I'm not worried about it. We'll just buy another one if anythig happens. If push comes to shove, I'll do a RAID-1 of the system drive down the road.

I would do the RAID1 straight off, or like I said, carve a slice out of the whole thing. It's the gamble between no downtime at all, and having to scrabble around finding restore CDs, worry about permissions on folders etc..

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: lansalot

Originally posted by: lansalot
Why not mirror the system drive? Single point of failure there still. Or make it part of your raid5, just carve off a small partition for that.

Why risk the stability of the system on a single drive? Not worth it.



The single drive is independent of the array. If that fails, the array is protected. This isn't mission critical so I'm not worried about it. We'll just buy another one if anythig happens. If push comes to shove, I'll do a RAID-1 of the system drive down the road.

I would do the RAID1 straight off, or like I said, carve a slice out of the whole thing. It's the gamble between no downtime at all, and having to scrabble around finding restore CDs, worry about permissions on folders etc..

I'm going to buy another Spinpoint and RAID-1 that after we build it. Too late now.

 

[PerfeK]

I decided to drop the 3000+ and VNF4 for these:

Sempron 2600+

DFI Lanparty NF3 250GB

I hope the $30 is worth losing 64-bit support and PCI-E in the long run.