Creating a RAID 5 array - shoudl I reuse existing pc

schford · 31 Jan 2008 at 11:25

I want to build a RAID 5 array to securly store all my digital media.

I want at least 3 tb of useable storage and ideally 5tb.

I was thinking of using my main pc adding in 6 5tb drives and the internal RAID controller to make them RAID 5 - othe roptions ar ebuilding a dedicated box or purchasing a NAS.

What do you think is the best approach?

Thanks

Stuart

The Badger · 31 Jan 2008 at 11:44

I think, Thats a lot of P0rn. Why would you need 5 tb's of space? I just about fill 400gb. Can you not wack them onto dvd? IMO it would be a lot cheaper. Its around £180 for 1 TB of space. You must have a lot of money to burn. Are you a photographer or somthing?

" I'm Sorry, I apologize I was still tired when i wrote this. "

schford · 31 Jan 2008 at 11:47

What an helpfull and frankly stupid statement.

I am moving my collection of 600 DVDs onto the pc to use with my new htpc so we have an easy library....

The Badger · 31 Jan 2008 at 11:53

You can purchase a 10tb Storage server for around 10k. Or wait untill Fujitsu brings out their 5tb hdd's

crazyDAJT · 31 Jan 2008 at 12:12

to get 5T in raid 5 you would need 6 1TB drives, as you will lose one to parity.

that's £1057.44 from OCUK :eek:

when you start having this many drives you run the risk of double simultaneous (or before you can replace and rebuild the array) disc failures. and to be honist I won't trust this to a cheap motherbord raid controller, its just asking for trouble.

I have heard of storage specialist mixing drives form manufactures in order to reduce the probability of two drives filing at the same time

if you really want to spend that kind of cash, just get an off the shelf solution, or if your really want to go DIY, get yourself a proper hardware raid controller, one that supports raid6, and get 7 1TB drives.

Morfik · 31 Jan 2008 at 12:51

Pauliee said:
I think, Thats a lot of P0rn. Why would you need 5 tb's of space? I just about fill 400gb. Can you not wack them onto dvd? IMO it would be a lot cheaper. Its around £180 for 1 TB of space. You must have a lot of money to burn. Are you a photographer or somthing?

It's a real shame people have to post snide remarks when someone asks for help on these forums.

It's actually quite conceivable to need several TB of storage space these days. Typically a 720p 45minute video file (such as a TV programme) takes up 1Gb of space. There might be 25 episodes a series and if you watch 10 a year then that's 250Gb per year from TV alone. If you want to keep your back catalog then a few years worth will send you over the 1Tb barrier alone. Add in DVD rips that you might want stored as videos or DVD Images to preserve the features, lossless audio (about 300Mb per album) and hitting 1Tb+ is easy.

Half the point of HTPCs is easy access to all your media files, and having to sift through a DVD for every 4 episodes of a TV programme isn't really feasible.

Pandobear · 31 Jan 2008 at 14:45

I had a 5tb array based on a 3ware 9500s 12 port raid controller with twelve attached 500Gb drives for all my tv shows, but to tell the truth it is still risky because of the likelyhood of 2 drive failures at the same time. Have you had a look at Windows Home Server, this is designed to provide the services that you are looking for, and uses cheap components to achive it. I based mine on a HP server (less that £200) which provided four hdd sata onboard and a silicon image sata card, providing four more, and have attached 7 x 750Gb WD drives. The 750Gb seem to be the best value right now, 500Gb being too small, and 1Tb too expensive. The Windows Home server uses a type of mirroring for important files that you do not want to risk to one drive, but also pioneers (for MS) Drive expansion, which means that you can add more drives to your storage "pool" at a later date, without additional drive letters, or raid rebuilds. It also supports adding USB2 storage which is handy if your case runs out of space. I have my server supporting five other media PCs (max 10) and three xbox extenders, with no problems. It is defineatly worthwhile in taking a look at it.

schford · 31 Jan 2008 at 14:48

Pandobear said:
I had a 5tb array based on a 3ware 9500s 12 port raid controller with twelve attached 500Gb drives for all my tv shows, but to tell the truth it is still risky because of the likelyhood of 2 drive failures at the same time. Have you had a look at Windows Home Server, this is designed to provide the services that you are looking for, and uses cheap components to achive it. I based mine on a HP server (less that £200) which provided four hdd sata onboard and a silicon image sata card, providing four more, and have attached 7 x 750Gb WD drives. The 750Gb seem to be the best value right now, 500Gb being too small, and 1Tb too expensive. The Windows Home server uses a type of mirroring for important files that you do not want to risk to one drive, but also pioneers (for MS) Drive expansion, which means that you can add more drives to your storage "pool" at a later date, without additional drive letters, or raid rebuilds. It also supports adding USB2 storage which is handy if your case runs out of space. I have my server supporting five other media PCs (max 10) and three xbox extenders, with no problems. It is defineatly worthwhile in taking a look at it.

Thanks very much for the advice - the 750gb tip is worth knowing I will also go look up home server,

decto · 31 Jan 2008 at 18:51

Hi,

Have you considered what format you'll use to store the files in?

I'm looking at a similar project on a smaller scale and from reading around mpeg 4 is well regarded in comparison to mpeg2 rips and should yield a much smaller file size.

Regards

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