2.5" bulk storage

Mercutio · 25 Feb 2012 at 03:50

If i'm reading everything correctly the 750GB scorpio black is still the winner for bulk storage at 2.5"?

Anything better short of SAS drives in the 2.5" range?

Considering a move back to shuttle form factor so was going to pack 4x 2.5" mechanical, 2x SSD and a slim BD-R in for drives. (2x 3.5 to twin 2.5" internal adapters, 1x 5.25" to 1x slim, 2x 2.5" backplane giving me 6 drive bays total)

The other thought was 2 big, regular drives but then I loose the (slight) data safety of raid 5.

Does the Z68 ssd caching setup allow for a ssd infront of a raid 5? that might be a rather sweet setup if so. edit - checked this, seems so

Can go with a newer SSD for the main boot etc and a small older one for the intel caching with 4x whatever ends up the fastest mechanical wise behind it.

marms · 25 Feb 2012 at 19:29

Raid 5 shouldn't be needed if you've got a backup of your data, if it were me i'd get 2x 3TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives.

Surveyor · 25 Feb 2012 at 20:19

marms said:
Raid 5 shouldn't be needed if you've got a backup of your data, if it were me i'd get 2x 3TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives.

RAID 5 isn't a backup, as you imply, but it does provide some redundancy so the system can still be used while the array is rebuilt if one disk fails.

Yamahahahahaha · 26 Feb 2012 at 00:48

@OP depends on your budget. Seagate Momentus disks are about equivalent to the WD Scorpio disks.
The Constellation disks are a bit 'higher end' and do cost a lot more because of their warranty.

When the drives come back in stock, I'll be adding a second WD Scorpio disk for a RAID1 with SSD cache in front. It seems like a good way of doing things.

The only down side is that 2.5" disks are limited to 1TB at the moment. With reslivering times on 3TB disks taking up to 72 hours, I don't think this is a bad thing necessarily...

Surveyor · 26 Feb 2012 at 00:51

Yamahahahahaha said:
With reslivering times on 3TB disks taking up to 72 hours, I don't think this is a bad thing necessarily...

What's reslivering?

d_brennen · 26 Feb 2012 at 01:04

Surveyor said:
What's reslivering?

Probably means re-silvering, copying a disk or mirrors of disks to another disk or mirror. Can't say I've seen the term used for years though

Surveyor · 26 Feb 2012 at 01:20

d_brennen said:
Probably means re-silvering, copying a disk or mirrors of disks to another disk or mirror. Can't say I've seen the term used for years though

Never heard of it.

I mustn't be old enough

Yamahahahahaha · 26 Feb 2012 at 01:29

d_brennen said:
Probably means re-silvering, copying a disk or mirrors of disks to another disk or mirror. Can't say I've seen the term used for years though

Nor me. Just seems to be phrase du jour when talking about rebuilding RAID arrays!
I always thought it was a stupid phrase, sorry for trying to be on-trend

Mercutio · 29 Feb 2012 at 07:47

marms said:
Raid 5 shouldn't be needed if you've got a backup of your data, if it were me i'd get 2x 3TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives.

Indeed, raid 5 certainly isn't a backup. I'm flying a little dangerously though and using it for data security too. While, yup, accidents can and probably will still happen I can more or less remove the problem of a disk dying in a raid-0 and loosing everything while still having (most of) the speed.

Backups I should sort it's true but I never quite get around to it