Another raid question - HTPC array

DavidS14 · 4 Jun 2008 at 14:53

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

DavidS14 · 4 Jun 2008 at 17:50

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

DavidS14 · 4 Jun 2008 at 19:26

I was looking at the spec for the ARC-1220 (http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie.htm) which is why I had PCIe stuck in my head sorry.

There seem to be loads available on PCIe so would they be better than PCI-X or are they the same (thoughput wise) ?

DavidS14 · 5 Jun 2008 at 01:21

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?

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.

DavidS14 · 5 Jun 2008 at 22:40

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.

DavidS14 · 6 Jun 2008 at 19:35

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.

DavidS14 · 6 Jun 2008 at 23:55

Thanks for the info, more reading required by me I think

DavidS14 · 7 Jun 2008 at 09:48

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.