Advice for a RAID upgrade

giyadgiyad
edited October 2009 in Hardware
This is my setup...
<dl class="list_no_decoration profilefield_list"><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_6">CPU: Intel E6600 (2.4GHZ)</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_7">Motherboard: EVGA nForce 680i SLI</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_8">Memory: OCZ 2GB (2x1024GB) DDR2-800</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_10">Videocard: XFX GeForce 7950GT
</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_9">Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_12">Hard Disk(s): Western Digital Raptor X 150GB (Running the OS), 2 x 1TB WD Caviar Blacks (in a RAID 1)
</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_14">Case: Antec P18 (3 built in fans)</dt><dt class="shade" id="profilefield_title_14">OS: Windows Vista Home Premium</dt></dl>I'm running out of space in my RAID and I want to upgrade it by adding another 2TB's to the array. So the end result should be 2TB's mirrored, instead of the current 1TB mirror. I have a couple of questions.

First, should i purchase the new 2TB WD Caviar Green and add it to the array making it a total of 3 disks, or would it be better to purchase 2 x 1TB WD Caviar Greens (I want the greens instead of the black because of power consumption) making a total of 4 disks?

Second, should I create a RAID 0+1 or a RAID 5 that I've been hearing so much about? I want the best bang for my buck, but the redundancy is important to me. I already backed up my data to an external drive, but the external drive is somewhere else which means it won't be continuously updated. The mirror is just to assure that incase one of the drives fail, my up-to-date data is still safe.

Any advice is appreciated!

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited April 2009
    If you are running raid 1 you can't just add a drive to the raid. Raid 1 must be mirrored so all the drives have to be in pairs. Your easiest path is to pick up 2 x 2tb drives and add another raid 1 into the mix. I actually don't think you have any other options since you are using different sized drives.
  • giyadgiyad
    edited April 2009
    kryyst wrote:
    If you are running raid 1 you can't just add a drive to the raid. Raid 1 must be mirrored so all the drives have to be in pairs. Your easiest path is to pick up 2 x 2tb drives and add another raid 1 into the mix. I actually don't think you have any other options since you are using different sized drives.

    Sorry I don't think I made myself clear. I haven't purchased the drives yet so I want to know whether it would be better to just buy another 2 x 1TB drives, or buy the new 2TB WD Caviar and add it into the mix?

    Since I already have 2x 1TB drives that are set up in a RAID 1, I'm thinking of buying another 2, mirroring those, and then setting them up in a RAID 0, so that I will have a RAID 0+1 making a single 2TB mirrored drive. Does that make sense?
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited April 2009
    Personally, I would break the RAID array into 2 separate drives and get an external enclosure and a drive or 2 and do regular backups with the external drive setup. Just my $.02. The advantage is that you don't have to worry about something happening to the array or the motherboard.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited April 2009
    External drive for backup. Unplug it from power and the computer when not in use. That's very good data security. You also remarked on selecting a model of drive over another for power savings. The external drive solution is a plus for power savings as well, as it can off when not being accessed.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited April 2009
    If you don't have a lot of experience with Raid, I'd suggest you stay away from Raid 5. With Raid 1, if you corrupt the array, you can always just plug in a drive and read your data off of it, as it's just a mirror copy of another drive. If you lose a Raid 5 controller, you need another one of the same model, or some very expensive software (data recovery) to get your stuff back. This doesn't include time to read the data. Also, Raid 5 is slow for writes, but decent for reads.

    Using a WD 2TB with your 2 1TB drives in Raid 5, would result in 3TB of space, with a 1TB loss.

    Remember, Raid is not a backup, and it punishes all who think it is.
  • giyadgiyad
    edited April 2009
    foolkiller wrote:
    If you don't have a lot of experience with Raid, I'd suggest you stay away from Raid 5. With Raid 1, if you corrupt the array, you can always just plug in a drive and read your data off of it, as it's just a mirror copy of another drive. If you lose a Raid 5 controller, you need another one of the same model, or some very expensive software (data recovery) to get your stuff back. This doesn't include time to read the data. Also, Raid 5 is slow for writes, but decent for reads.

    Using a WD 2TB with your 2 1TB drives in Raid 5, would result in 3TB of space, with a 1TB loss.

    Remember, Raid is not a backup, and it punishes all who think it is.

    Well the thing that I love about my RAID mirror is that I never have to remember what has already been backed up and what is new... With an external drive that I consistenly back up to, I would have to back up the new files, and know which files those are. Maybe if you could propose a solution to that, I would definitely get rid of my RAID, but right now I love having the assurance that if one of my drives fails I have the other one.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited April 2009
    But you aren't actually backing anything up with raid. You are just mirroring things. So if you delete a file it's gone. If your system gets messed up it's messed up, if a virus takes out all your mp3's, all your mp3's are taken out. If you have a seperate backup the backups aren't affected. You can use simple backup software to do scheduled backups and then you don't have to worry about remembering what to backup.

    Even Windows built in backup software is sufficient to do that.
  • giyadgiyad
    edited April 2009
    kryyst wrote:
    But you aren't actually backing anything up with raid. You are just mirroring things. So if you delete a file it's gone. If your system gets messed up it's messed up, if a virus takes out all your mp3's, all your mp3's are taken out. If you have a seperate backup the backups aren't affected. You can use simple backup software to do scheduled backups and then you don't have to worry about remembering what to backup.

    Even Windows built in backup software is sufficient to do that.

    Thats the thing though, what I'm looking for is a mirror. When I delete something, I want it gone, and when I change something I want it to change on all my copies. If I'm not sure I want to change something I'll save a different copy of it.

    I'll look into backup software though, I think I might do what you guys are saying and break the RAID...
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited April 2009
    Right - but with raid if you even accidentally delete something, or accidentally save in error you have no backup. That's more the scenario we are getting at.
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited April 2009
    Well, I've been bitten by the RAID bug before. I still use Raid, I just don't consider a single array all that great. It just takes one power surge to ruin your day and both of your drives.

    Just about all backup solutions will do an incremental backup, which only backs up files that have changed since you last backed up.

    Raid is still nice, it's very handy to not have your system go down for a drive failure, but raid doesn't protect against bad sectors either. Having a seperate 1TB drive to backup onto with a 1TB mirror array gives you the option of deleting stuff without having to think a week later, "Oh shit! I need that file now."
  • giyadgiyad
    edited May 2009
    Hey, so I think I've decided to keep a RAID setup. I'm going to break the RAID 1 that I have right now, and instead turn that into a RAID 0 (since I have 2 x 1TB drives) to create a single 2TB partition. First though, I'm gonna buy an external 2 TB drive and back up all my info, and then use that to continuously backup the RAID. How does that sound? I figure I might as well make use of the 2TB's I already have and this is probably the best way... no?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2009
    First though, I'm gonna buy an external 2 TB drive and back up all my info
    As to whether you find RAID of any stripe (pardon the pun) to be of value for the intended use is your call. Running an external backup regularly is smart. It will pay off.
  • jonfleck88jonfleck88 Columbia, PA
    edited October 2009
    If you're willing to take a little time you could try and use Linux to manage your storage. I just started using OpenSUSE 11.1 as a network attached storage device and it's working great so far. There are a lot of cool features when it comes to RAID on Linux. My favorite is LVM, which allows users to mix different types of arrays into one one big drive. For example, I have an array with three 500GB drives in a RAID 5 and an array with two 250GB drives in a RAID 1. With LVM I can combine my two arrays to make them appear and function as one large array. Another cool feature about Linux software RAID is that you can grow an already existing RAID 5 or 6 array. Also, with SAMBA you can access your files from Windows or Mac OS X.
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