Setting up RAID?

d-rawlingsd-rawlings Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
edited April 2004 in Hardware
I am an ICT technician
in a school in west Yorkshire and I have a spare server I
want to set up as a file server. BUT! I want to set up the
server from scratch with Win 2000 Server, it has 5 100gb hard
drives which I want to set up with raid, the thing is ive
never had to set raid up before so i dont have a clue about
setting it up.

I understand there are different types of raid 1,2,3,4,5 which one
would you recommend for me and how do i go about setting it
up?

Would appreciate it if you could help

Comments

  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited April 2004
    Welcome to Short-Media buddy. :) Thanks for posting. Nice to have another UK'er around. The first question I might ask is, what do you want out of RAID? Do you want performance or data life guarding? Or both?

    On a side note, please don't post questions or queries in the RAID FAQ's thread, it is only for posts of an informative nature regarding RAID. All RAID based queries should be posted directly as a new thread in this current forum 'Storage and Controllers'. Thanks. :)
    Spinner wrote:
    So in this thread post, to the point and well explained FAQ's, TIPS and INFORMATION about RAID. Whether it's to do with performance, setting up or whatever, here is the place to put it.
  • d-rawlingsd-rawlings Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
    edited April 2004
    Thank you,

    Well, I would like both really, it is importaint that the data is going to be safe but also a high level of performance needs to be met.

    Pupils user area's will be mapped to the file server, and also there will be a read-only area for them as resourses to there lessons and work. But this is not final yet, might just set it up to take strain off the main server and have large Administrators files on there.

    P.S your website is pretty cool!

    I need to get mine sorted and put it up

    Thanks

    Deano
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Hi Deano :)

    We can give you plenty of help with your RAID (and help you with suggestions for website design & implementation) ;)

    You have five drives, so your best start is to calculate how much storage space you can afford to lose in redundancy.

    For example, if you were to RAID5 (allows the lose of one "member" from the array) them together, you would lose 100gb of the total 500gb space available but there is a performance overhead because of the way bit striping works. :)

    If you were to RAID1+0 (two disks as one array then mirrored on an additional set of two disks as one), you would be down to 200gb of storage with a "hot swap" 100gb drive spare. However, it will have much more performance than a RAID-5 :)
  • d-rawlingsd-rawlings Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
    edited April 2004
    Hey Shorty,

    Thanks for that, you did'nt mention what raid4 does though?

    What you recommend I used?

    I think im favouring raid5 at the mo

    Thanks for your help so far

    Deano
  • floppybootstompfloppybootstomp Greenwich New
    edited April 2004
    Were It me, I'd go for RAID 0 + 1, giving permanent backup and good performance.

    And it would leave a 100Gb Disk spare for storage or 'hot swap' as Shorty mentioned.

    But RAID 5 is probably the safest.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    I'm with shorty on going with 0+1 over RAID5. It will run much better.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited April 2004
    Yep, RAID 0+1 gets the stamp of approval with me as well. But obviously it is what ever you feel suits you best.
  • d-rawlingsd-rawlings Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
    edited April 2004
    Cheers guys thanks for your responses I think im gunna go for raid 0+1 then, ill just run it past my work colleague first.

    So the decision has been made which raid I should go for but how do I go about setting up the raid from scratch with server 2000?.

    Thanks for your help so far greatly appreciated.

    Deano
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    What controller card does the server have :)
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