MicroServer Storage Options

jewii

jewii

jewii

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12 Jul 2010
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Hi guys,

I'm building a microserver with ECC memory and Xeon processor. Just not sure which hard-drive setup I should get. I'm not that concerned about drive failure but more concerned with data integrity/correctness.

Currently have 3 setup options:

A) 2 WD Red 2TB drives in Raid1.

B) 1 WB SE 2TB drive

C) 2 WB SE 1TB drives in Raid0.

WD RED: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-397-WD&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1954

WD SE: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-445-WD&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=2269

I could go for 2 WB SE drives in Raid1 for the best case but that is at least an extra £70.
Question is does Raid0 incur a higher chance of data error and does Raid1 reduce the chance of data error due to redundancy?

Which case performs the best for data integrity, little care about the drive failure risk.

Hope someone else on here as been in a similar decision and can shine some light on the matter.

Cheers.
 
Last edited:
With RAID 1 you would have to lose BOTH drives to lose your data. With RAID 0, if you lose a single drive, you lose all your data. So RAID 0 is 2x more likely to lose your data than just running on a single drive.
 
RAID 0 means no redundancy. If you lose 1 drive, you lose the lot.
RAID 1 means mirroring. You need to lose both drives to lose anything.

No RAID solution is a replacement for decent backups. Its a means to limp along while you get a drive replaced (bit like a spare tyre in the car)
 
skyripper said:
RAID 0 means no redundancy. If you lose 1 drive, you lose the lot.
RAID 1 means mirroring. You need to lose both drives to lose anything.

No RAID solution is a replacement for decent backups. Its a means to limp along while you get a drive replaced (bit like a spare tyre in the car)
Click to expand...
Snap!
 
True, but I'm not worried about drives failure and complete data loss, I have a good backup system. All i'm worried about is the data integrity/data correction.

From what a understood, parity correction is only available with three drives plus in a raid 5 configuration which I don't intend on doing.

However all drives now come with a type of ECC Read so I assume if an error is detected but not correctable, in the raid 1 configuration, the raid controller will then attempt to read the data from the other drive (due to redundancy). Therefore Raid 1 would be the best case. Is this correct?

Then it's a simple matter of WB RED Vs WB Se.
 
Any RAID controller worth its salt will mark a disk as failed as soon as it detects read or write errors. All drives have spare sectors that are mapped over failing/faulty parts of the disk, so to get an actual read/write error is 99% of the time a harbinger of doom for the drive.

RAID doesn't give you integrity, not even RAID 5. The parity used in RAID is to rebuild the data in case of disk loss, it's not for checking data integrity. RAID is solely intended to protect you against disk failure.
 
rotor said:
Any RAID controller worth its salt will mark a disk as failed as soon as it detects read or write errors. All drives have spare sectors that are mapped over failing/faulty parts of the disk, so to get an actual read/write error is 99% of the time a harbinger of doom for the drive.

RAID doesn't give you integrity, not even RAID 5. The parity used in RAID is to rebuild the data in case of disk loss, it's not for checking data integrity. RAID is solely intended to protect you against disk failure.
Click to expand...

Thanks! that's what i was looking for.

Just to confirm Raid 0 doesn't increase the chance of data corruption then? Just the chance of data loss due to depending on 2+ drives.

Also anyone got any idea which hard drive to get? Red has a higher load/unload cycles whereas the SE has 2 years more warranty. Negligible real world performance. Is the SE worth the premium?
 
jewii said:
Thanks! that's what i was looking for.

Just to confirm Raid 0 doesn't increase the chance of data corruption then? Just the chance of data loss due to depending on 2+ drives.

Also anyone got any idea which hard drive to get? Red has a higher load/unload cycles whereas the SE has 2 years more warranty. Negligible real world performance. Is the SE worth the premium?
Click to expand...
RAID 0 doubles the chance of data corruption because it doubles the chance of anything going wrong. Say a file is split over both disks, if either of the disks has an issue, you have corruption.
 
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