chris-s

I'm trying to work out whats the best way forward to setup a large secure raid array in the region of 5tb+ of storage for my media server. Data integrity is more important than speed. It's to be used for the storage of movies, so not exactly going to get hammered with large numbers of read/writes in the same way a sql server database in constant use might.

I want to do this on a windows 7 box, obviously using a dedicate raid controller card. Windows homeserver with its built in data mirroring/backup features has gone thru my mind, but I'd like to explore the raid options as well.

I'd like to use my existing samsung 1.5tb sata drives if possible, if not 1TB minimum.

What raid configurations, if any, or cards allow for 'hot expansion', ie plugging in extra disc(s) to increase capacity without having to backup/rebuild the entire array.

Do I need to look for anything specific mobo wise?

Thanks in advance

Chris

Old Hippie

By far the easiest and what I use.

ComGuards

Hot expansion is usually a function of the controller card. Although of course, the common theory is that you should backup your data before attempting such an expansion anyways, lol. Generally, RAID-0, 5 and 6 are the common RAID levels that allow hot-expansion.

Anyways, it depends on how much redundancy you want. RAID-5 allows the loss of one disk, 3-disk minimum, with a total drive space of (n-1)x, where n is the number of disks, and x the size of the disks.


RAID-6 allows for the loss of 2., 4 disk-minimum, with a total drive space of (n-2)x.

RAID-10 allows for the loss of half of disks, assuming none of the drives are in the same mirrored set. 4-disk minimum, total drive space of (n/2)x. Most controllers I've come across don't allow for a hot-expansion of a RAID-10 array. You're not likely to choose this array anyways since the amount of space is halved.

It really depends on your total budget, how many hard-drives you're putting in, etc etc. You'll probably end up getting a hardware RAID card with support for 8 drives, either through standard SATA, or SAS connectors.

Motherboard-wise, probably look for a motherboard that as an x8 PCI-e connector at least, and one that's *not* allocated to graphics. This gives you the widest flexibility option in choosing a dedicated RAID controller.

You also have to double-check controller documentation to see what the maximum supported virtual disk size is. Some might not support VDs greater than 2 / 4 / 6TB disks. Also, in Windows Disk Management, you'll have to convert any disk that's greater than 2TB in size from an MBR disk to a GPT disk if you you want a single volume greater than 2TB.

Also, if I remember correctly you'll also need a separate disk formatted as MBR disk in order to install the operating system on. Windows 7 will not boot on a disk or array that's formatted / configured as GPT disk.

DuckieHo

For your purposes, RAID5 or RAID6 would probably be your best choice since performance is no a priority.

You don't need a dedicated card for RAID5, you could use an onboard ICH10R.... use 5 SATA ports for the RAID5 and then 1 port for a Windows drive. Write performance won't be great but good enough for your needs.

Otherwise, look at getting a PERC 6/i with support for 8 SATA drives, RAID5/6 support, and hotswap support.

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ComGuards

Does ICH9R or ICH10R support hot-expansion of the RAID-5 array? I haven't played with ICHxR since ICH5R, lol, and that MB only had 2 SATA ports.

All my current systems use 3rd-party RAID controllers...

hometoast

No.

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ComGuards

That's what I thought, but couldn't confirm. Bummer. Oh well.

the_beast

I wouldn't recommend onboard RAID5 if you actually plan to recover from a single drive failure. All the reports I have heard have been negative when people actually try and rebuild such arrays.

Linux software RAID would be a better choice though - check out Openfiler for an easy to use solution.

For media use something like FlexRAID or UnRAID might also be a good option - multi-disk failures only cost the data on the drives that fail, rather than the whole set dying as happens with RAID5/6 arrays. This is a poor choice for data that changes frequently however.

MADMAX22

I have not had any issue recovering from a lost drive in either raid 5 or 10 with the onboard ich10r. I actually at one point had a bad hdd that kept losing itself and I didnt realize that was the problem so had to rebuild it in windows like 3 times in one week lol. Other then that I have removed drives and installed new ones and rebuilt those as well without issue.

It did take some time though I must admit.

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chris-s

Thanks for all the replies, that pretty much covers everything to get be started.

Chris