RAID 5 On a Budget?

Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
edited March 2011 in Hardware
Hi All!

Wondering if anyone has any experience building/assembling/purchasing hardware for a raid5 array on a budget.

I recently saw this on Newegg: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111139&cm_re=raid_tower-_-16-111-139-_-Product

Unfortunately it sold out.

It got me thinking how cheap a basic raid 5 setup can be had these days. I'm looking for a 5x2TB setup using 2TB WD Green Drives (yea yea I know about the issues with the error recovery timeouts).

This is merely for storage with redundancy and nothing else.

I'm wondering if anyone know of other products similar to this or maybe someone has a different idea for me.

I need something that will provide me with preferably 8TB of usable storage (I think I could live with 6TB for now.. maybe) (and yes I realize it wont be 8TB after formatting)

Does anyone have any suggestions or good solutions? A NAS would probably be OK too but I can't imagine that would be the most economical solution for cheap mass storage.

Also any suggestions on a different type of RAID to use would be great too - I don't know a lot about the different types - from what I understand RAID 5 is my ideal choice for what I'm looking to do which is just be protected from failed drives and store as much as possible. Performance is a non-issue.

Thanks!!!

Comments

  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited February 2011
  • pragtasticpragtastic Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    This is intriguing, might look into one of these to expand the media center a bit.
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    Hmm not bad - similar to what I was looking at but 4-bay.

    Really hoping for a 5bay solution. Anyone else have good product suggestions? Rosewill seems to be a bit cheaper than the Sans Digital I posted.
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    My 2 pennies:

    I wouldn't buy the Sans Digital. Friend of mine had this unit: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111037&cm_re=Sans_Digital-_-16-111-037-_-Product and it failed. Getting it replaced/fixed under warranty took 2 months.
    Not everyone will have that experience, but it steered me away from the brand.
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited February 2011
    Ah thanks for the input - I was a little bit skeptical of the brand in the first place, I can tell just from the photos that the build quality is pretty cheap'ish.

    I wouldn't be opposed to building my own case and buying my own card. I'm just not too sure about the electrical side of it - Is there anything complicated involved in splitting eSATA 5 ways?
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited March 2011
    Ah, port multipliers. The biggest issue you need to worry about is getting a card that works with the port multiplier you choose. The cheap Silicon image multis don't work with a lot of hardware, even though they support FIS and Command Based Queuing. A couple of highpoint cards will work with them, and Silicon Image controllers generally work with them as well.

    There is a more expensive Silicon image multiplier with built in Raid you can purchase, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't do RAID5.

    Be very careful, there's a lot of false information out there on these, they aren't well supported, drivers are flakey, and if things go wrong, you're going to at the very least, drop drives off the array, or lose the entire thing.
    Jammin1911 wrote:
    Ah thanks for the input - I was a little bit skeptical of the brand in the first place, I can tell just from the photos that the build quality is pretty cheap'ish.

    I wouldn't be opposed to building my own case and buying my own card. I'm just not too sure about the electrical side of it - Is there anything complicated involved in splitting eSATA 5 ways?
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Thanks for the info, I've been vaguely picking up these facts as I research - the internet is so diluted with information and half of it is conflicting.

    My latest train of thought is that it might be best to move my hardware to a new case and PSU that has 7 internal 3.5" bays and just buy a respectable second hand pcie raid controller. Does that sound logical?
  • foolkillerfoolkiller Ontario
    edited March 2011
    That's exactly what I ended up doing actually. Works much more reliably than the multi ever did, and nice and speedy.
    Jammin1911 wrote:
    Thanks for the info, I've been vaguely picking up these facts as I research - the internet is so diluted with information and half of it is conflicting.

    My latest train of thought is that it might be best to move my hardware to a new case and PSU that has 7 internal 3.5" bays and just buy a respectable second hand pcie raid controller. Does that sound logical?
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Awesome, thats the plan, then.

    Thanks a lot for the input!
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Just bought this case, it's pretty sweet - plenty of internal bays and space.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146051&Tpk=nzxt%20whisper
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    Here's a question for you guys.. if I bought a case like that and then put 7 SATA drives in it... is it going to be uber noisy? :) I have two choices, it either goes beside my television and replaces my HTPC box or it goes beside my bed. In both cases I'd prefer to not have a crazy amount of noise....
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    I have a system with ten hard drives connected to it. Those drives are not the primary source of noise, even when under heavy usage. Don't get me wrong, they do make noise. It's just not the loudest thing.

    It wouldn't wake me up in the middle of the night, but it could prevent getting to sleep right away if there were a lot of data transfers going on. Guess it depends on how easily you fall asleep and how light of a sleeper you are. Should be fine next to the TV though.

    The NZXT Whisper that shwaip linked is supposed to be a very nice case for noise reduction.
  • Jammin1911Jammin1911 Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    OK I will probably give that case a shot, then.

    Thanks again for the input everyone.

    Once I start actually putting this together I might bring this thread back from the dead for a little bit more input.
  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited March 2011
    I use my Raid_5 as backup, and therefor want it as far away from my PC as possible.

    Really would prefer an online solution, but getting 4TB of space is hella expensive
Sign In or Register to comment.