New internal HD install

VitcH

VitcH

VitcH

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Joined
15 Oct 2010
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7
Hi,

I currently have 2 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives in a RAID 0 config.
I've run out of space already and am looking to add some extra storage, along the lines of an extra 2 x 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black for a total of 6GB.

Since both types of drive have almost the same spec other than storage is it ok to add 2TB & 1TB drives together like that? Yes this is probably a very noob question but just wanted to make sure lol.

Now just one more leet question please ;)
What kind of cable(s) will I need to connect the drives to my mobo?
I have an NZXT Phantom Full Tower Gaming Case case and an Asus P6X58D-E mobo.
Amazon seems to suggest this, or do I need something else?

Any help is much appreciated, thanks :D
 
You can't make a single RAID 0 with 2x1TB and 2x2TB drives if that's your question.

RAID 0 needs the disks to be the same size so if you created a single array with the four disks you'd end up with 4TB in total.

You could create a second RAID 0 of 2x2TB disks if you wished but having all that data in RAID 0 is dangerous. If 1 disk fails, or the array fails, all your data is gone.

In terms of connections then you need SATA power and data cables.

Your power supply should already have SATA power cables if it's half decent.

You may find you already have some SATA data cables which were supplied with the motherboard.

A much cheaper alternative to the 2TB WD Black is the Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB. It's less than half the price.
 
Thanks for the advice, glad we got that sorted out.

I'd like to stick with the one array, so I'm now contemplating adding either 2 or 4 more 1TB drives to up the storage.

I'm aware it's dangerous, but we're talking mostly music/movies. Losing them won't be the end of the world.

What I wanted to ask is if a 4 (or 6 if I go all out) x 1TB RAID 0 is practical?
Do people do this or is that just too risky with so many separate drives?
 
VitcH said:
Thanks for the advice, glad we got that sorted out.

I'd like to stick with the one array, so I'm now contemplating adding either 2 or 4 more 1TB drives to up the storage.

I'm aware it's dangerous, but we're talking mostly music/movies. Losing them won't be the end of the world.

What I wanted to ask is if a 4 (or 6 if I go all out) x 1TB RAID 0 is practical?
Do people do this or is that just too risky with so many separate drives?
Click to expand...

I suppose somebody somewhere does it but it would be very rare for a home user to do it.

Effectively you're multiplying the chance of losing everything by a factor of 4 or 6 plus there's the chance of the array falling over and losing everything as well.

Is your RAID array the boot drive as well because you can't have a boot drive larger than 2TB?
 
The boot drive is a separate 64GB SSD, I wouldn't risk the whole thing collapsing lol.

So, what would you advise in this scenario if I was serious about getting at 4TB, preferably 6TB of storage? Get rid of the current 2 x 1 TB & start over with say 3 x 2TB of the drive you linked to earlier (in raid 0 of course)?

Thanks again.
 
VitcH said:
The boot drive is a separate 64GB SSD, I wouldn't risk the whole thing collapsing lol.

So, what would you advise in this scenario if I was serious about getting at 4TB, preferably 6TB of storage? Get rid of the current 2 x 1 TB & start over with say 3 x 2TB of the drive you linked to earlier (in raid 0 of course)?

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

You can buy 3 of the 2TB Samsung drives for the price of another 4 1TB drives so it would cost you the same for 6TB of storage but you'd halve the chance of failure by only having 3 disks instead of 6 and you'd have 2 1TB drives left over that you can do whatever you want with.

You have 6 Intel SATA ports and I assume you're using 3 of them at the minute.

Set up another RAID 0 with the 3 Samsung drives on the 3 remaining ports, copy over the data from your existing array and then you can remove the WD drives if you wish.

Word of warning. If you installed Windows onto the SSD with the WD Blacks connected then some operating system files may be on them so you wouldn't just be able to take them out.
 
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I don't see the point of RAID 0 for mainly music/movies storage, you don't need the transfer rate increase, you're just increasing the chance of failure.
 
Surveyor said:
You can buy 3 of the 2TB Samsung drives for the price of another 4 1TB drives so it would cost you the same for 6TB of storage but you'd halve the chance of failure by only having 3 disks instead of 6 and you'd have 2 1TB drives left over that you can do whatever you want with.

You have 6 Intel SATA ports and I assume you're using 3 of them at the minute.

Set up another RAID 0 with the 3 Samsung drives on the 3 remaining ports, copy over the data from your existing array and then you can remove the WD drives if you wish.

Word of warning. If you installed Windows onto the SSD with the WD Blacks connected then some operating system files may be on them so you wouldn't just be able to take them out.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for all your input, seems to be the best option so far.

BlackAle said:
I don't see the point of RAID 0 for mainly music/movies storage, you don't need the transfer rate increase, you're just increasing the chance of failure.
Click to expand...

Possibly, but then I'm new to all this raid setup business.
Which would you go for?
I'd be more than happy to sacrifice speeds etc for more reliability.
 
Just use whatever disks you have individually or in RAID 5.

With RAID 0 if one drive fails you lose everything across the whole array.

With individual disks if one disk fails you only lose what's on that disk.

RAID 5 distributes parity data across all the disks in the array. If one disk fails the array will still function (albeit slowly), the faulty disk can be replaced and the array will rebuild itself.

The capacity of RAID 5 is the size of the smallest disk * (the number of drives -1).

3x2TB drives would be 2TB * (3-1) = 4TB

4x2TB drives would be 2TB * (4-1) = 6TB
 
I have 2 x 2tb drives full of music and movies, why RAID them is what I would say. I have them in an external NAS and it is a case of drag and drop. When one drive fills up I pop another in, as someone else pointed out I thought RAID was just to increase speed if you don't need it why use it.
 
ristac said:
I have 2 x 2tb drives full of music and movies, why RAID them is what I would say. I have them in an external NAS and it is a case of drag and drop. When one drive fills up I pop another in, as someone else pointed out I thought RAID was just to increase speed if you don't need it why use it.
Click to expand...

RAID 5 will at least offer some redundancy.

I hope everyone with all these TB's of music, movies etc. has the data backed up.
 
Thanks again all.

Just to clarify, say I go with a RAID 5 setup, am I correct in thinking that even if one drive fails, the rest will function, and I will be able to restore the data from the failed drive as soon as I get a new, functional drive?

And out of curiosity, what kind of HDD setups (RAID or otherwise) do you people have on your systems?

Cheers ;)
 
VitcH said:
Just to clarify, say I go with a RAID 5 setup, am I correct in thinking that even if one drive fails, the rest will function, and I will be able to restore the data from the failed drive as soon as I get a new, functional drive?
Click to expand...

Yes, you're correct.

The performance of the array will be degraded with a failed drive and while it's being re-built with a new drive (which will take several hours).
 
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