RAID 5 - How?

TheDean · 15 Jul 2009 at 16:27

Hi all,

I am wanting to set up a RAID 5 array using 3 x 1TB WD Hard drives in my Pc. This will be used for storing digital media on and streamed accross a wired network to the, as yet unrealeased, Popcorn Hour C-200.

I have a Gigabyte DS3 mobo which only supports RAID 0 & 1. Are there RAID cards I can buy which support RAID 5? And if so, would the array be easy to set up and share accross the network?

I have investigated NAS', and while they are significantly easier to manage and have lots of fancy features, they are pretty pricey! The ReadyNAS NV+ is £360!

Anyway, I'm looking for a solid solution which doesn't cost very much.
Cheers

TheDean · 15 Jul 2009 at 16:59

miniyazz said:
Or get the PERC 5/i controller, best RAID 5 controller for the money. Obviously your PC will have to be on to be able to stream the media but it should be fairly easy to set up. A dedicated RAID 5 controller will have its own processor; using onboard SATA will use CPU resources for writing.

How much are we talking for that then? Googling that doesn't bring up much...

TheDean · 16 Jul 2009 at 09:27

AWBbox - I'd be interested to hear your experiences setting up and maintaining the array as I'm going to be setting up a 3TB (4 x 1TB HD's) array the same as you. There is one on the bay which has a battery pack as well - should I be going for that one?

Once the array is set up, would I be best to put the os on a separate drive independant of the array?

TheDean · 16 Jul 2009 at 10:09

snakefood said:
Definite plus points for getting a raid card is that if you suffer a failure on your motherboard, you can move the array with the card to another box.

This could prove damm tricky if using on board raid, also, as mentioned, you will always get much better performance from a dedicated card.

Yeah. The card looks to be a must, but is proving difficult to source from within the Uk

TheDean · 16 Jul 2009 at 10:50

snakefood said:
What drives are you going to be using, sata?

Yeah, SATA. 4 x 1TB Western Digital Green. Not exactly sure of the model number. Think it's the WD10EADS. Would it matter if they were different drives? I take it the hard drives all have to be the same size as well?

TheDean · 16 Jul 2009 at 12:13

What's a BUU?

TheDean · 16 Jul 2009 at 13:14

SeriousPigeon said:
BBU is Battery Backup Unit. If there is a power cut, it maintains the data in the cache for upto 3 days. You can use the card without it, by either taking a performance hit or accepting the loss of whatever data happens to be in the cache.

Be warned that most Perc 5 cards on Ebay come without the SAS to SATA cables. These can be found for approx. £10 each (one cable is enough for 4 drives).

So if power is lost to the array, will all data be lost?!

TheDean · 18 Jul 2009 at 18:49

I'm going to be using 4 x 1TB drives in RAID 5 and am leaning towards software. I just worry what would happen if the card fails. I guess the array would die and I'd lose everything?
I'm thinking now of building a server with Windows Server or Ubuntu or something.....at least then I could buildthe array back up easier? Is that right?

I does seem so much easier to buy a Rady NAS or something, but the cost is huge, and expandabilaty is very reduced.

Thank you all for your responses so far guys!

TheDean · 22 Jul 2009 at 14:12

I'm now leaning toward Windows Home Server - What are peoples on this? The purpose is to stream meadia to a popcornhour networked media tank

TheDean · 28 Jul 2009 at 12:49

PeterNem said:
Did you have any driver issues? I'm currently using a PERC 5i with 4*500gb machines in a machine set up with ESXi but not really using it to its potential. Tempted to reuse the machine as a windows 7 desktop.

Well if you have no use for the Perc, sling it my way please