Windows Server 2008 R2 & RAID

NickM

NickM

NickM

Soldato
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12 Dec 2003
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I'm currently trying to work out if I need a separate SATA/hardware RAID card or not for my (as yet unbuilt) home server.
I plan on having 3 disks initially, appearing as one large drive, and then possibly adding a 4th disk if I need more space. Can Windows Server 2008 R2 do this without any hardware RAID? Or am I better off using a Ubuntu server?

Thanks
 
You can use either the motherboard's on-board RAID [slow and crap] or Windows software-RAID [even slower and crapper].

If you have the money spare I would get a dedicated RAID controller. I ran 2008 with on-board RAID [mobo] and it was dire.
 
If all I want to do is run 3 disks as 1 large drive (with the ability to add another disk in the future) is RAID 0 the best way to accomplish that or would I be better off using JBOD/SPAN?
 
If you are just wanting RAID0 or JBOD I wouldn't even bother unless you have an equal amount of storage elsewhere for backups. With RAID0, and possibly JBOD, if one disk goes, you lose everything. Not exactly ideal on a server.

Any particular reason you need one drive? You could just split your data over the three disks. Much simpler and probably better performance [and less prone to disaster].
 
Well all the server is just going to be used for storing backups, nothing else. Having it as 1 disk just seemed easier than pointing different backups to different disks.
Since its just backups, if they get lost its no big deal because I can replace the disk and re-backup again.

I need a PCI SATA card because the mini ITX motherboard I'm thinking of getting only has 2 SATA ports and I need 5 total.
 
If it is just for storage then a simple RAID0/JBOD/Span is probably OK. Though personally I hate the idea of using such a fragile setup for storing my backups.

How many backups do you have, and what of? I currently backup full OS disk images, user accounts and media from 4 computers to my server and so far the backups haven't exceeded the 1TB drive they're all on.

If I were to go over, and didn't want to pay for a dedicated RAID controller, I would just run a script to transfer older backups to a second disk. :)
 
Well currently I have
- 1x 1TB drive with critical stuff on it. Only backed up by RAID1.
- 2x 2TB media drives. No backups.

So I suppose instead of RAID0/SPAN I could just use 1 backup drive for each of these 3 data drives, I never really considered RAID0/SPAN to be a risky way of doing it but now you mention it I've reconsidered :p.

I would however need another 3 SATA ports as the motherboard only has 2. Would any old £10 PCI SATA card work for that or would I still need a more expensive one to get best performance?
 
Perc 5i cards can be had for around £50, superb they are too. Need to be patient and go hunting on a well known auction site though (or get lucky in the MM!)
 
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