Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JungMin]

I am looking for some advice on setting up a RAID array.

I have around 4TB (maybe closer to 5 - I'm at work and can't check right now) of data on my computer and last night i think a 500GB drive kicked the bucket. Ouch...there goes a lot of data. I have been meaning to setup RAID for ages, but also kept putting it off.

I've been trying to figure out which is the best option (raid 0,1,0+1,5...etc) but its pretty confusing. Raid 5 sounds like the best, but I've read that its overkill. Data isn't being written constantly. Once a drive is full, its stays full and is only occasionally read. I'm running Mac OSX (hackintosh) on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 motherboard. I've seen talk about raid in the BIOS as well as somewhere in OSX itself.

So, my question. How does one go about changing my setup to RAID? I have 8 HDs (I think, maybe 7) of varying sizes (500GB, 750GB, 1TB) and they are all full basically. Which RAID would you recommend? Is it better to get some 'external bay' things and let them do it? I'm guessing I would need a shitload of new drives to get this going?

I'm sure its probably more complicated than it seems. Would really appreciate some insight.

Cheers

[crossmr]

raid works in a variety of manners. Striping, mirror, parity disks, and both
raid 0 isn't really raid it provides no redundancy it only stripes across two disks and if one fails. you've lost everything.
its purely for performance.
raid 1 is a pure mirror. you need to double the disks you have exactly.
which often means acquiring the exact models you already have. Which means 8 TBs of disks gives you 4 TBs usuable space
Raid 5 is striped with parity bits. It can withstand the loss of a single drive and rebuild. you lose the equivalent of 1 disks space. So 5 TBs (in 1 TB disks) will give you 4 TBs of space.
raid 6 has some extra parity stuff. 6 TB (ini 1 TBs will give you 4 TBs)
1+0 means to combine sets of disks in nested arrays. A mirrored pair of stripes. 4 disks = 2 usuable disks of space

5 is usually your best bet, but unless you already have a perfectly m atched set of disks you'll need to go out and buy them. you'll also need to check if your motherboard supports it, if you have room in your box, etc

[JungMin]

Cheers for that. That's basically what I have read around on the net and to me raid5 sounds like a good option (but what do I know). The other problem is that the software in OSX will only create a mirrored set, striped set or a concatenated set. The motherboard only supports '1' and '0' it appears. I'm guessing that limits my options. I may have to get another housing of some kind and then just connect it to my system via LAN? But this seems like a pricey route to take.

[crossmr]

[pkang0202]

That's a lot of porn on your pc OP.

1 TB hard drives are pretty cheap. I would just buy 4-6 of them (depending on your space requirements), and RAID them.

Take your existing hard drives, buy a few External Enclosures and put them up on Dave's B/S forum. External Hard Drives tend to sell pretty well on here.

[JungMin]

The problem is that i'm going to need 10, 1TB drives just to cover the data I have now if I just install them in my OSX box as it only does RAID 0 and 1, not to mention the fact that there isn't enough room in there for that many drives.

I think i need to get a NAS, with around 5~6TB (RAID5 will be 4TB?) to cover what I have now. I just need to find a decent NAS that will play well with OSX and not completely break the bank. Then I will raid the current hard drives on my system (5TB in RAID1or0 is 2.5TB?) to give me around 7TB which in reality, won't last too long.

[crossmr]

to do raid 1, you need matched pairs, not 5 disks but 6.
because they're NAS the brand shouldn't matter with OSX, it works across the network. As long as you can browse a share you can use NAS.

[Giant]

Finally a good question. LOL!!

Yes.. crossmr is right. Raid 5 is likely your best bet.

A main question would be... what is your budget?

You will most likely need something like this:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/value/AAR-2820SA/

Around W500,000 at when I last checked a while back.

Or if you have the bucks:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/performance/SAS-51245/


Still... Not cheap, but it will do the job, if you need more than 8 ports then....

How are you currently managing all your drives, are some internal and some external?

You are probably gonna have to buy a big case, I like the Micronics cases myself, but there are other good ones out there too.

Also... just from my personal experiance... I have been managing HP and Dell servers for quite some tme, when comparing proper raid controllers vs desktop raid controllers I have had lots of issues with the desktop raids failing. As far as you can try to avoid using an onboard controller. What I mean to say is have your OS using the onboard controller, and then your data on the RAID array.

Oh, and you should get all the same size HD if you gonna make a raid. 1TB drives are pretty chesp these days. Make your array and then copy from your other drives onto the raid array.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
G

[JungMin]

So to get a decent NAS box isn't looking cheap!! Atleast 500,000won and even then, the lower end of the scale all get bad reviews. QNAP boxes sound great (TS-4/509), but they also cost a bloody fortune.

So if I got the other route and the Adaptec card and build my own box, will have 8 'slots', but still need to build another system. A quick look on GMarket and the cheapest I see is over 800,000won!!

Wow....$$$. Hmm....I don't know what to do.

[Giant]

Thats why I asked what the budget is.

May I ask what or why you have so much data? Also, is this simply storage or do you need it on demand like through the web?

[JungMin]

I hadn't planned on doing this, but the recent loss of a drive has meant I need to get something sorted out. I realize I am going to have to spend atleast a million. From there, I guess the cheaper the better.

The data isn't accessed all the time. It is basically storage only.

[JungMin]

Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage. Now, if only I had a spare $8000...

[Giant]

yes.. I saw that before already... very cool!

[Demophobe]

Oh my...

[matthews_world]

Here's something local:

http://www.sarotech.com/english/product/dvp-570x.html

I'm not hardcore like you all but I bought an external harddrive from them and was pretty happy.