Some Advice?

[Fanaticjam]

Hey all,

So basically I'm re-hauling all the data side of my pc, I'm a photography student and avid gamer who's worked their a$$ off most of the summer and wants something to show for it.


I ordered four of these cheap SSD's from overclockers at around 4 in the morning after work(didn't think it through), they arrived today and I'm wondering if I should change them for faster SATA III drives?

Spoiler

I'm planning on using them as two pairs in RAID 0, one set for general software such a Vegas and PS, and all non games, and the second set for games.

Would people recommend keeping these or suggest returning them for something else?

Also, I need something to actually hold them in my computer, my current ssd is sitting where a floppy drive used to sit as that was the only possible thing when I got it... I've been looking around Overclockers but can't seem to find anything relevant. Since I have a Thermaltake case I looked at their stock list to see if they had something fitting and came across this: Beep bop boop

Currently my machine has a 2TB Data drive, an old 320GB drive that needs retiring and a 64GB SSD for my OS, I'm planning on adding an additional two 2TB drives in RAID 1 for important data that I need backed up as I recently had a drive die on with with some 300-400 films and a fair amount of photography, with no backups of 99% of the data.

Is getting 2 2TB drives in RAID 1 a good idea? Any better suggestions? And what drives if this seems like a valid option? Also need to get a bay to house these as I misplaced a second three bay housing my PC had..



So with all that in mind, I guess I will need some sort of RAID controller, or PCI slot HDD manager(if they exist...?) as I will have most surely run out of sata slots? Will a raid controller be able to handle multiple raid set ups? I don't know anything about RAID TBH.


To summarise:
1.Shall I keep these SSD's? If not; what should I replace them with?
2. What should I use to house these?
3. What set up should I have for mass data?
4. How should I set up these RAID sets?
5. Anything else I should know? Bottlenecks and the such that might hold back any new set up?

Also... One last thing bahaha, I came home to find the drives had just been posted through the letterbox and consequently would have fallen to the concrete floor below, with DPD not getting a signature from me or my housemates; should I be concerned that the drives might have been damaged etc? (I don't know much about how fragile they are but being cautious never hurt!)

Thanks for any and all help!

 

[Hagar]

Personally I would have gone for just two of these at £155 each and £20 cashback each or about £270 for the same capacity.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-150-SA&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=1427

Pros,
SATA III and fast drives.
Same 480GB capacity.
Only two SATA ports required.
Could be raided.
Could be partitioned into programs and games drives.

Cons,
More expensive ~£70.

You can return under DSR within 14 days of delivery. Reason no longer required.
What motherboard is it?

EDIT

I would not raid your mass storage for speed or capacity. There is little point. I would consider getting another 2TB drive to mirror your current data or to store backup sets as you say you currently do not backup.

There is an akasa 3.5" adaptor which will take 2 no 2.5" drives in a single bay.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-059-AK&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=
I would also convert the 320Gb to a USB3 or ext. sata with a caddy.
This would then require 3 no. 3.5" bays for your two SSD and two 2TB HDD.
You would need 5 internal SATA ports, at least 2 should ideally be 6GB/s SATA 3.

 

[Fanaticjam]

Mobo

2x SATA 6Gb/s, 4x SATA 3Gb/s connectors w/ SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

I was thinking of using the current 2gb on top of new drives as I will need more than 2gb of data storage total; perhaps I'm better of at looking for 3 2tb drives with two sets of RAID 1 (The mirroring one I believe) or 2 3TB drives or larger?

Those SSD's look great, and larger storage, if only a little, it'd help! And twice the speed, nice stuff.


As for bays, I only have 3 3.5" at the moment, and one 2.5", and some 11 5.25" etc. So that's what I'm working with!

 

[Fanaticjam]

The current 2TB drive is this one HD204UI which happens to be on offer this week for £100, I could order three more of those and have two sets of RAID 1 which would work well I think. And save wasting a relatively new 2TB drive (got in January).

The only issue then is amount of SATA slots as my blu ray drive is using one, I'd need 8 in total (3 SSd 4 HDD 1 bluRay) and the mobo only has 6; would a card like this be suitable for hooking up one pair of the Data drives?

Startech 2 Port PCI Express Internal SATA II Controller Card

And this should do for holding them, I guess 5.25" fitting is standard across makes? Xigmatek 4in3 HDD Cage

 

[Hagar]

The current 2TB drive is this one HD204UI which happens to be on offer this week for £100, I could order three more of those and have two sets of RAID 1 which would work well I think. And save wasting a relatively new 2TB drive (got in January).

The only issue then is amount of SATA slots as my blu ray drive is using one, I'd need 8 in total (3 SSd 4 HDD 1 bluRay) and the mobo only has 6; would a card like this be suitable for hooking up one pair of the Data drives?

Startech 2 Port PCI Express Internal SATA II Controller Card

And this should do for holding them, I guess 5.25" fitting is standard across makes? Xigmatek 4in3 HDD Cage

The SATA card you have shown is not a raid card and has just two additional connectors. This would be fine for just adding two drives but if you want a raid 1 set you need a more advanced solution.

I am not sure if the motherboard supports multiple raid sets.

The two 6GB/s and the four 3GB/s can support a raid set between them.

The 4 in 3 is a good solution for fitting the drives.

Have you thought of having a 2 x 2TB (4TB) raid 0 data drive and using an esata 4Tb drive in a caddy for nighttime backup.

You could then use
2 x 6GB/s for the SSD simple volumes not raided.
2 x 3GB/s for the raid 0 striped disk array
1 x 3GB/s for the Bluray
1 x 3GB/s for the OS SSD
1 x esata card (or internal sata card) for the backup disk.

Alternatively raid the SSD for maximum speeds and have non raided data volumes.

This all gets very complex

andy

 

[Fanaticjam]

Would taking a current drive with Data on it and putting it in Raid 0 destroy the data?

I don't know anything about eSata, that's external right? I've never used any sort of backup service, would this need special software or does windows have the functionality? That's one of the reasons I was thinking of using RAID 1, as it should just work with no user action required or extra software.

I guess for eSata I would need something like this : eSATA Controller Card

And what sort of caddy should I be looking at? I can't see anything that uses eSata and caters for a minimum of 2 drives!? Also, starting to think about trying to keep costs down a bit(current basket is at £700+), although I think I'm set on those samsung 256GB SSD's, as I noticed I can sell the SSD's I have on a 'popular auction site' for up to £70 a piece which would cover most of the difference I think.

I suppose if I got this RaidCard then I wouldn't need that eSata card too, and could have the internal Data drives running of the card(since it's Sata II) and the SSD in raid using the 6gb/s?


Do you know of any mobo's that support multiple RAID?

I was thinking of upgrading the existing to allow for a 2nd graphics card and upgrading my graphics later in the year, as the current doesn't support SLI. I saw that there are some as cheap as £100 that have 2x eSata and 4 6gb/s internal Sata and 4 3gb/s internal, which would be fine and take out two birds with one stone, and I could house the backup inside the pc which would save cash on buying esata cards and external caddies, which means that it's probably a cheaper option!

Thanks for your help andy!

 

[Fanaticjam]

So this is what I'm thinking of getting(RAM I had been meaning to get since the start of summer), just need to confirm the mobo will do what I want it to.

http://gyazo.com/766e555a432c1a1da4243440afcb8612.png

If the image is larger than 1280 pixels wide please either resize, put in spoiler tags or link only. Thank you.

I'm considering just getting 1 HDD now and get an additional 2 at a later date when I actually need the extra 2TB capacity (with programs on SDD's 2TB should last a few months). I'm curious about two things:

1. Can you take a drive with data on it and add another of the same drive(new) to make it RAID 1 without data loss?
2. Can you then take this RAID 1 set up and add two more drives to make it RAID 10 without data loss?

 

[Fanaticjam]

Can anyone answer these two questions?

 

[ChileanLlama]

So this is what I'm thinking of getting(RAM I had been meaning to get since the start of summer), just need to confirm the mobo will do what I want it to.

http://gyazo.com/766e555a432c1a1da4243440afcb8612.png

If the image is larger than 1280 pixels wide please either resize, put in spoiler tags or link only. Thank you.

I'm considering just getting 1 HDD now and get an additional 2 at a later date when I actually need the extra 2TB capacity (with programs on SDD's 2TB should last a few months). I'm curious about two things:

1. Can you take a drive with data on it and add another of the same drive(new) to make it RAID 1 without data loss?
2. Can you then take this RAID 1 set up and add two more drives to make it RAID 10 without data loss?

Can anyone answer these two questions?

Usually yes in both cases, but check the details for the controller/controller card you will be using to make sure.

But in either case you should have a backup anyway. If it's a choice, you should spend on a decent backup solution before spending on RAID1 and certainly RAID10. RAID should be seen purely to prevent downtime and not as a backup solution.

 

[Hagar]

I would not rely on the data not being wiped by the controller when you create the new mirror raid volume. It depends on the raid controller. You should really have a disk image made so that you can reinstall your data onto the raid if it is wiped.

The image could be stored on DVD, Bluray, spare hard disk or web or a combination of these. My choice would be to always have a spare hard disk so you would get two disks to build the raid and have the image on the existing as a backup.

Seems over the top with mirroring but if you have a lot of irreplaceable images it is more secure to start this way. Also you will have two new disks of the same age in your array.

 

[Fanaticjam]

But in either case you should have a backup anyway. If it's a choice, you should spend on a decent backup solution before spending on RAID1 and certainly RAID10. RAID should be seen purely to prevent downtime and not as a backup solution.

What would you be recommending instead? I was looking at RAID for data as I thought it would be a relatively cheap way to gain both performance and a decent backup. Don't think I have the cash to splash for a decent external backup; would rather get a decent gpu; what sort of price am I looking at?

I would not rely on the data not being wiped by the controller when you create the new mirror raid volume. It depends on the raid controller. You should really have a disk image made so that you can reinstall your data onto the raid if it is wiped.

Hmm yeah; it sounded risky to begin with, just wondered if there was perhaps some software or the such!


Oh and, should I be looking at exactly same model HDD or will it not matter hugely, can see the WD green is now £30 cheaper than my current...

 

[ChileanLlama]

What would you be recommending instead? I was looking at RAID for data as I thought it would be a relatively cheap way to gain both performance and a decent backup. Don't think I have the cash to splash for a decent external backup; would rather get a decent gpu; what sort of price am I looking at?





Hmm yeah; it sounded risky to begin with, just wondered if there was perhaps some software or the such!


Oh and, should I be looking at exactly same model HDD or will it not matter hugely, can see the WD green is now £30 cheaper than my current...

RAID doesn't stop you making a mistake, which will be reflected on all the disks you've mirrored. It's also all in the same machine, any malware or if it's nicked, burnt, flooded - all your data is potentially gone.

An external backup drive shouldn't be costing you significantly more than an internal drive for the same capacity, back up your data regularly, and if possible then give the external disk to friends/relatives elsewhere for safe keeping.

 

[Fanaticjam]

RAID doesn't stop you making a mistake, which will be reflected on all the disks you've mirrored. It's also all in the same machine, any malware or if it's nicked, burnt, flooded - all your data is potentially gone.

An external backup drive shouldn't be costing you significantly more than an internal drive for the same capacity, back up your data regularly, and if possible then give the external disk to friends/relatives elsewhere for safe keeping.

The main reason I wanted disk back up was because of disk failure, rather than thievery/disasters as disk failure is inevitable; the others however are extremely unlikely.

For now I think I will get a 2TB drive and stick it in a caddy I have spare for back ups and get those two 256GB SSD's. Should have more than enough storage after I move my programs folder, just checked at it 370GB and noticed fraps folder was hogging 240GB from one nights recording haha.

What I'm thinking of doing is getting one of these eSata/1xSATA6gb/s card and connecting the OS SSD to it then using the two Mobo Sata 6gb/s for raid ssd's. Will that work or will I have issues running the OS SSD from a PCI card?