RAID 5 - 3TB Array (Will clients see it?)

plasticmekon

plasticmekon

plasticmekon

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Hi,

I am planning to set up a 3TB RAID 5 array on my my Asus P5K-E Wifi board using 5x 750 Seagate 7200.10s on the array and another single one as the boot drive.

So I am doing a bit of reading and I see that XP32 doesnt see volumes higher than 2TB without a bit of jiggery pokery. Ok not a prob, I run Vista 64 and all should be fine.

But! The machine with the array will also share the big volume on the network to a couple of XP 32 machines and also my PS3. The question is - will these clients see the 3TB volume? I'm not sure if they will see it fine because it's going to be a network drive and the Vista box will deal with it or whether the 2TB limit still applies..

I also saw a few posts saying that the way to do it is to split the array into two <2TB arrays and then get Windows to span across the discs as a single volume. This screams of bad performance to me and I'd like to avoid it if poss.

Any thoughts?
 
I'm quite happily sharing bits of a 4Tb volume to an XP based media PC. Haven't looked at the space measurements though.
 
only the host is concerned about the volume type, the clients aren't actually aware what type of disk system the host has - that's all handled through the host.
 
Are you not gunna use the 3tb as partitions? Might be a better idea to cover this.

But i've never heard of this 2tb problem. At work we have a 6.5tb NAS storage. All clients are XP and we don't have any problem.
 
leezer3 said:
You've misread things :)
XP32 won't format above 2TB, should read volumes with over 2TB just fine.

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

sorry to hijack,

but will 32 bit VISTA be the same, not format past 2T, as I'm looking to build a HTPC with 3TB of storage.

it seams pointless to have one with 4GB of ram and a 64 bit OS, although very tempting :p
 
Isn't there another problem here? The P5K-E has 4 SATA ports off the ICH9R and the other 2 off the J-Micron controller. I don't think you'll be able to have a 5 disk array (as there aren't 5 ports on one controller), unless I've missed something...?

Simon
 
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crazyDAJT said:
sorry to hijack,

but will 32 bit VISTA be the same, not format past 2T, as I'm looking to build a HTPC with 3TB of storage.

it seams pointless to have one with 4GB of ram and a 64 bit OS, although very tempting :p
Click to expand...

"16. Can Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
Yes, all versions can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for EFI-based systems"

From: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

So as long as you convert the disk to GPT (Before you make any partitions), you get around the 2tb issue, as long as you have a different disk to boot from.
 
crazyDAJT said:
sorry to hijack,

but will 32 bit VISTA be the same, not format past 2T, as I'm looking to build a HTPC with 3TB of storage.

it seams pointless to have one with 4GB of ram and a 64 bit OS, although very tempting :p
Click to expand...

/Scratches head.
Becomes more complicted here :)
In all theory, Vista 32 should format/ read beyond 2TB (This was a limit in the disk format tool in XP), but this depends if the driver support has been implemented correctly.

Other bits and bobs- You can't boot from 2TB plus partitions in Vista.

Cheers

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
/Scratches head.
Becomes more complicted here :)
In all theory, Vista 32 should format/ read beyond 2TB (This was a limit in the disk format tool in XP), but this depends if the driver support has been implemented correctly.

Other bits and bobs- You can't boot from 2TB plus partitions in Vista.

Cheers

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

That's sick? So when 2TB+ harddrives are commonplace no one will be able to boot with them? Are you absolutely sure about this? I was hoping that this stuff would be gone with vista :/
 
Nope, not quite true ;)
Only an EFI based machine can boot from GPT based disks under Vista, which means that no current machines can boot from a 2TB plus disk!

64-bits or otherwise doesn't come into the equation.

Cheers

-Leezer-
 
leezer3 said:
Nope, not quite true ;)
Only an EFI based machine can boot from GPT based disks under Vista, which means that no current machines can boot from a 2TB plus disk!

64-bits or otherwise doesn't come into the equation.

Cheers

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

Oh damn this, yet another stupid comptability thing :/

At least a move to EFI will be good when it happens, but so far that's just an incredibly stupid thing, i seriously do not see how software companies do not see these things coming? I'm particularly blaming MS here, not because of them in particular but because of their market share, they should have gone 64-bit only Vista, and prepared for 64-bit a long time ago. I'm getting fed up with thse constant stop blocks for compatability.

"Is this particular restriction a BIOS thing, as in the current BIOS cannot recognize over 2TB drives or? And how did that happen, who could not see those sizes coming?" (before edit)

Okay so i read up on it now, and it's an MBR restriction, that doesn't really change my stance, it's incredibly stupid that it's taken this long to even consider a replacement.
 
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leezer3 said:
Nope, not quite true ;)
Only an EFI based machine can boot from GPT based disks under Vista, which means that no current machines can boot from a 2TB plus disk!

64-bits or otherwise doesn't come into the equation.

Cheers

-Leezer-
Click to expand...


Ahh, your right.. I was thinking of the 64 Itanium Build, as the Itaniums do use EFI. Apologies for the additional confusion :)
 
S_D said:
Isn't there another problem here? The P5K-E has 4 SATA ports off the ICH9R and the other 2 off the J-Micron controller. I don't think you'll be able to have a 5 disk array (as there aren't 5 ports on one controller), unless I've missed something...?

Simon
Click to expand...

Raid5 is 3+ disks :)

Its essentially striping (raid 0) with parity. You get some performance boost (usually moreso when reading than writing as there's a large performance overhead from calculating the parity info when writing unless you have a dedicated hardware controller) and any drive in the array can fail without data or availabilty loss.

Eg:

Disk1 -Disk2 -Disk3
Data1 Data2 Parity
Parity Data1 Data2
Data2 Parity Data1

If any of those disks fail you still have at least half the data and the parity info so you can rebuild the failed drive.
 
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Mercutio said:
Raid5 is 3+ disks :)

Its essentially striping (raid 0) with parity. You get some performance boost (usually moreso when reading than writing as there's a large performance overhead from calculating the parity info when writing unless you have a dedicated hardware controller) and any drive in the array can fail without data or availabilty loss.

Eg:

Disk1 -Disk2 -Disk3
Data1 Data2 Parity
Parity Data1 Data2
Data2 Parity Data1

If any of those disks fail you still have at least half the data and the parity info so you can rebuild the failed drive.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the lesson ;) but you missed my point. He wants a 5 disk array and there aren't 5 SATA ports on one controller on the P5K-E.
 
In the OP he says he's making a 5-disk array, which isn't going to work cross-controller unless it's a software RAID5, which I don't think non-Server Windows OSes support.
 
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