I'm thinking of building my self a server with a RAID 5 set up for storage and would ideally want a motherboard with the RAID chip built in. Has anyone had any experience with either an AMD or Intel compatible board with RAID 5 support?
Motherboard with on-board RAID 5?
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Yep and works fine. Just remember is Windows only and make sure load the driver either via F6 and floppy or integrate onto CD with nlite.
Used AMD and Intel. It isn't as good as a proper hardware raid card but they do RAID5 and it works.
Used AMD and Intel. It isn't as good as a proper hardware raid card but they do RAID5 and it works.
Anything showing Intel ICH9R will support a full software implementation of RAID 5, but I think you may be horrified how slow it is. There is a lot of data assembly/disassembly going on and without a dedicated hardware RAID controller it really does make a huge performance hit on your system.
It's also hugely space inefficient compared to RAID10 which is much faster and more robust.
It's also hugely space inefficient compared to RAID10 which is much faster and more robust.
I agree with the first point but not the second - RAID10 means the loss of half the available space, RAID5 means the loss of a maximum of a third and less as more disks are added.
The real question is why the OP wants RAID5. It's not the same as a backup - you still need one of those.
The only reasons I run RAID 5 are to give a single large partition and to allow me to carry on should an HDD fail - I still have the entire contents backed up to at least one and normally 2 sets of DVDs.
Neither is more redundant. Both RAID1 and RAID5 can only survive the loss of a single disk before the array becomes non-redundant. RAID5 however does allow for large arrays (3 disks and above) with only a single parity drive, RAID1 is limited to a pair of disks per array with only half the total capacity available.
I'm not too inclined to let WHS do that as if the OS fails, then I loose everything don't I? If I have all my storage on a RAID 5 array and my OS on a single HD not on the RAID if anything happens to the OS all the data will still be safe on the RAID 5 array?
Because DVD's are hardly convenient and it's going to be used as a file server.
invest in a BD-RW or something then?
does a home file server really need to be able to keep going if a hard drive fails?
it's your choice mate, it just sounds crazy to me to have a whole 500GB hard drive effectively giving you no extra space and slowing things down a bit.
If you're not going to have any sort of DVD backup, what would you do if 2 hard drives went down? Wouldn't you lose EVERYTHING then? whereas if you just had 4 hard drives not in RAID, you'd only lose half your data from the server and you'd have it all sitting on DVD somewhere anyway.
does a home file server really need to be able to keep going if a hard drive fails?
it's your choice mate, it just sounds crazy to me to have a whole 500GB hard drive effectively giving you no extra space and slowing things down a bit.
If you're not going to have any sort of DVD backup, what would you do if 2 hard drives went down? Wouldn't you lose EVERYTHING then? whereas if you just had 4 hard drives not in RAID, you'd only lose half your data from the server and you'd have it all sitting on DVD somewhere anyway.
What would you do if you deleted something by mistake? Corrupt filesystem? Malicious activity?
RAID whether it be at the hardware level or via software like WHS won't protect you from any of those. A backup to an external medium will.
No, if the system disk fails, you can rebuild the home server from the install DVD's. You will have to choose 're-install', it does wipe all settings and users, and they have to be set up again. I run one with 3x500gb hard drives and folder duplication enabled. If one fails, it still has the original file.
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I have raid because I can't be bothered with a full backup but don't particularly want to have to deal with disk failure.
If I loose everything it's an annoyance. Backing up to DVDs regularly is more of an annoyance. RAID is easy and hopefully reduces the chance of annoyance.
You can get RAID file servers for very little money these days. Things like the buffalo terestation or whatever it's called. They're fast, easy and network-attached. Sounds like what you want.
If you want just a RAID setup and don't care too much about transphere speed your origional suggestion is a good one.
If you have critical data on the system you need a backup solution (as has already been repeatedly noted) and DVD, tape or a second, physically seperate filestore are your main options.
If I loose everything it's an annoyance. Backing up to DVDs regularly is more of an annoyance. RAID is easy and hopefully reduces the chance of annoyance.
You can get RAID file servers for very little money these days. Things like the buffalo terestation or whatever it's called. They're fast, easy and network-attached. Sounds like what you want.
If you want just a RAID setup and don't care too much about transphere speed your origional suggestion is a good one.
If you have critical data on the system you need a backup solution (as has already been repeatedly noted) and DVD, tape or a second, physically seperate filestore are your main options.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking, most of the data is just going to be ripped DVD's and music (music is already backed up on another location) so if I loose my ripped DVD's due to a complete RAID failure then I already have them backed up.