Another raid question - HTPC array

DavidS14

DavidS14

DavidS14

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I'm wanting to put together a box that will hold my music and movies and have been reading a lot of the raid threads and picking up some info on software vs hardware and the benefits of different raid levels.

Since a lot of people seem to migrate their arrays from PC to PC when they upgrade so I'd like to future proof myself a little.

Minimum of 8 ports with the ability to have 1TB+ per port (as the price of discs comes down).
Raid 5 or 6 as the files on the array are from my DVD/CD collection so I can start again if I loose the whole array.
Ability to add discs to the array (do all cards allow this ?)

I've been reading about full hardware cards (XOR processors), half cards (some on board processing) and software raid and looking at my proposed use I think the first two would be OK.

Would it be worth the extra money and go for something like an ARC-1220 over something like an LSI MegaRAID 8XLP or even a Highpoint RocketRaid RR2220.

I don't mind spending the extra on the ARC if I'm going to see the benefit of the extra on board processing but as the array is really just for storage and streaming I'm not sure I need it :confused:

Any help would be appreciated :)
 
For a media store the write speed of the array isn't going to be critical, the initial load of the content is going to be limited by how quickly you can get it off the CDs and DVDs which will be less than the write speed of the likes of a RR 2320 or 2220. However LSI look to be doing some full on hardware cards for the same kind of money as the Highpoints.

Couple of things to keep an eye out for:

What interface do the cards use (the ones you mention are PCI-X) and what slots do you have onboard?

Does the card support volumes > 2Tb? (The RR2320/2220 do, I have 8*640Gb in one array on mine)

What OS are you planning on using? (You need Vista or one of the Server OSes to support 2Tb physical volumes)
 
Thanks for the reply.

The spare MB I have is an A8N32SLI so it has two 16x PCIe's (as well as a 4x and 1x) so there will be one spare 16x that the raid card can go into.

It will have Vista 64 as I have a spare licence.

I'll have to read up on the specs for the >2Tb support
 
That motherboard wont support the cards if they are PCI-X. Its easy to confuse PCI-X with PCI-Express. I cant however offer you any advice on what card you should get, I just know you should look for a PCI-Express not a PCI-X or a 64bit PCI.
 
I thought PCI-X cards could fit in to a PCI slot (well, not all of it as its longer) but would be limited to a 133MB/s throughput?
 
Given the seemless nature of Vistas media tracking now is there any point running an array. For straight media usage, playing/viewing music/video it would be much simpler to simply buy 6 sata disks and fill them up as you go along. Saves on the cost of a card?

You could always use one of the drives, or an external to backup anything you can't restore from your cd/dvds and it means you can keep adding drives until you run out of sata ports.

Given that most mobos have at least 6 you could have up to 6TB of storage across the drives (as long as your dvd drive is IDE of course). I can see the use of a card if you run out of sata ports, but until then is there any advantage to the array?
 
cavemanoc said:
Given the seemless nature of Vistas media tracking now is there any point running an array. For straight media usage, playing/viewing music/video it would be much simpler to simply buy 6 sata disks and fill them up as you go along. Saves on the cost of a card?

You could always use one of the drives, or an external to backup anything you can't restore from your cd/dvds and it means you can keep adding drives until you run out of sata ports.

Given that most mobos have at least 6 you could have up to 6TB of storage across the drives (as long as your dvd drive is IDE of course). I can see the use of a card if you run out of sata ports, but until then is there any advantage to the array?
Click to expand...

REDUNDANT Array of....
 
cavemanoc said:
Given that most mobos have at least 6 you could have up to 6TB of storage across the drives (as long as your dvd drive is IDE of course). I can see the use of a card if you run out of sata ports, but until then is there any advantage to the array?
Click to expand...

It's going to take me a long time to transfer DVD/CD's onto even one disc (I have about 500 DVD's just in this room and more in other rooms) and I don't think that once I've done it I'll want to do it again if possible. I know that raid 5/6 is not a replacement for backups but it does give me a good level of security against hardware failure and for me spending hours/days/weeks putting info back onto a replacement drive easily outweighs the cost of the card plus the card is I hope, is going to last me through a good few PC upgrades.

As it's my first foray into raid I need some pointers as to what is important to look out for and what isn't as there are a lot of cards to look at (the PCIe/PCI-X being a case in point). I listed my needs at the top of the thread but there are probably features that are very good to have that I've not considered.

The main reason for looking at this now is that it's upgrade time for my PC and at the moment I have one rig doing everything. My idea is my current rig (Opty [email protected] on water, 1x150GB Raptor, 4x500GB WDAAKS, 8800GTX etc) will become the new media store and I'll then build a new rig based in a Lian-Li A05 for gaming. I can then keep the gaming rig as minimal/quiet as possible, I'll probably transfer the WC over as well.
 
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Fair enough - what motherboard are you running your opti on? It will most likely have 4 port raid built into it which can do raid 5. That means up to 3TB without the need for an add in card. Any idea how much storage you will need? Even at 'lossless' you DVD collection shouldn't top 2Tb.

Don't get me wrong - I loved my scsi array and was gutted when I finally shut it down, but there is very little justification for a dedicated raid solution in a media machine. They're very bling, and blisteringly quick, but is that what you really need? In a media machine?
 
The MB is a A8N32SLI Deluxe which has 4 SATA and two IDE.

If I strip out the extras the size of each DVD will drop but with the number I have I think it's going to be easily >3TB (based on SL DVD ~4.5GB and DL 9GB) plus all of the music I have as well which I'll want loss-less.

The movies are shown on a 50" Pioneer LX so I need every bit of data a standard DVD can give me so I'm not going to want to use any compression. I'm already replacing some of my favorite movies with Bluray which if I put on the array start eating up space fast.

I'm trying to look at a long(ish) term solution as I shouldn't have to upgrade the storage box other than adding drives when the size/price ratio gets to a decent level which it has now with the 1TB drives.
 
Couple of other options: the new P45 mobos (Gigabyte GA EP45 DS3P) have 10 Sata ports which obviously increases your capacity greatly, but means you can't recycle your old kit.

Failing that it might be worth looking at SAS controllers - they can be had quite cheaply now and can theoretically take hundreds of sata drives, but the breakout cables can be quite pricey. RPStewart can give you a better idea on the total expected cost of the system, but the advantage is that you can continue expanding almost indefinitely :)
 
I would say get a highpoint 2320, I have one and for streaming off it is perfectly fine.

It isn't the greatest card out, certainly not as good as the 3520 but is a fair bit cheaper and still does everything that you are asking for.

Can do RAID5 and can even have a hot standby drive on there as well.
Supports >2Gb arrays as well.
 
I'm leaning toward the Highpoint or LSI as the box will not be doing anything else so there will be plenty of CPU cycles to spare if needed.

There was a ARC1220 that went on a well known auction site over the last couple of days for ~£180 so not that cheap even secondhand.
 
It is also worthwhile looking at Microsofts Home Media Server software. This will give you unlimited online drive space expansion, plus give you the redundancy option that you are looking for at a fraction of the cost of a hardware raid card.

The WHS OS scores over raid in a couple of important areas for uses such as yours, firstly there is no limit on the size of the storage space, you can add as many drives as you like, via sata, ide, usb etc.

Secondly you can select which folders you wish to be stored on two seperate drives (mirroring) ,which give you the redundancy that you are looking for. This is also a significant improvement over any RAID 5 or 6 array. For example were you to have 12 x 1TB drives, you are protected against one hard drive failure with raid 5, or two with raid 6, however lose more that this and all of your data is gone. With WHS if you have no mirroring turned on at all and you lose one drive, you will only lose 1/12th of your data, lose two drive 2/12th, lose three drives and 3/12ths and so on. With mirroring enabled your losses are likely to be a lot less. If the entire server or array crashes the drives can be removed and read from any Vista machine as the drives use standard NTFS formatting, enabling you to retrieve the entire contents. This is absolutely not possible with raid.

Third the power requirements of a raid array are much higher, as to access any data, all drives must be spinning (adding to heat and failure) where as in WHS only the drive that has the actual data that you are using is spinning (reducing power and heat adn hence failure rate)

The only real benefits of raid cards is speed, and if you were considering using a card in a standard pci slot you are limited to 133 mb/sec anyways, you will get 100 + mb/sec from the Samsung 1TB drives anyways controlled via WHS.

I would definately have a look at WHS, it is sub £100 and gives you a whole lot more than the storage solution that you are considering and allows you to recycle the PC components that you have, add a £15 3114 based PCI card and you will have 8 ports, pop it all in this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...hieftec Smart WH-01B-B-OP Mini Server - Black
 
As cost isn't to much of an issue but I like to get value for money in what I buy I'll still probably go for my initial plan so the spec will be:

A8N32SLI Deluxe
Opty 170 (back on air will swap the water to the new gaming box)
4GB OCZ DDR
ATI 1900XTX
Enermax Liberty 620W
Raptor 74GB boot drive (as it's sat there doing nothing)
Vista 64
A yet to be decided PCIe Raid 5/6 8/12 port card
A yet to be decided number of drives (have 4 WD 500GB AAKS that can go in to start)
New case (I do like that Cheiftech listed above)

Most of the above from parts I'll have already so I'm hoping it will make a nice media storage box that will last me a good while with just drive upgrades/replacements.
 
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