hdd storage server raid5 thingy

[SLR_65]

Hi Guys,

I have a Western Digital 1.5tb drive and it's starting to get full and I'm starting to get nervous! So I'm just starting to think about a backup solution for it (though most of the stuff on it my son has on his NMT drive also).

I think I'm getting a handle on things, but I have a quick question . . . if I would use the raid controller on my motherboard for a Raid 0 (mirror) setup then do I take it that I'm protected from a drive failure, but if the motherboard fails and I switch to another model motherboard that the new motherboard may not be able to read the two raid drives?

I saw where there's a hack for XP to do software Raid so it's probably a better choice?

If I add a drive then I need to empty my current drive, add the new drive, setup the raid, then reload?

Thanks!

Steve

[johnsonx42]

but I have a quick question . . . if I would use the raid controller on my motherboard for a Raid 0 (mirror) setup then do I take it that I'm protected from a drive failure, but if the motherboard fails and I switch to another model motherboard that the new motherboard may not be able to read the two raid drives?

Naturally you mean RAID 1; RAID 0 is striping - very fast, but no protection.

As to being unable to read the drives with a different motherboard, that may be true (leaving aside the obvious case where the new board uses a similar controller). But you can always re-create your RAID-1 with the new board; many BIOSes will let you create a RAID-1 relationship between the drives without overwriting either one (ie, just assume the drives are already in sync, at your own peril). Others will insist on mirroring from the first drive to the second one. Either way, you don't have to lose your data.

I saw where there's a hack for XP to do software Raid so it's probably a better choice?

Your call on that I guess. I've always preferred to let the controller and driver handle my mirroring, but Windows' software mirroring works just fine and is of course hardware independent.

If I add a drive then I need to empty my current drive, add the new drive, setup the raid, then reload?

I guess my answer to the first question also answers this one: you can create a RAID-1 mirroring relationship using data on one existing drive, and have it mirror onto a blank drive. You have to be careful of course to tell the BIOS what you want to do... one wrong button push and it could initialize the partition table on both drives, or copy the new blank drive over the one with data instead of the other way around.

[SLR_65]

Thanks for the comments!

I'm thinking I may have to look into UnRaid for a media storage solution.

Thanks again!

Steve

[Stereodude]

I prefer real hardware RAID myself. Used working Dell Perc 5/i card that have been pulled from servers are a great thing!

[SLR_65]

I'm kinda liking the UnRaid feature of being able to mix and match hard drives, increase capacity, etc. easily. <- that's kinda difficult with real raid, isn't it?

[Stereodude]

I'm kinda liking the UnRaid feature of being able to mix and match hard drives, increase capacity, etc. easily. <- that's kinda difficult with real raid, isn't it?

You can increase capacity with most modern raid cards using Online Capacity Expansion until you run out of ports. You typically want to keep all the drives the same size and model though for maximum performance. Another nice thing about the Dell Perc 5/i (LSI MegaRAID SAS 8408E) card is that it supports port expanders so you can hook up to 32 drives to it. Oh, and it's really fast.

Here's what it does with 6 Samsung Spinpoint F2EG HD154UI 1.5TB 5400RPM drives in RAID-5.