I'm currently managing about 15 TB of data on a Mediasonic 8-bay RAID Enclosure with 8x 3 TB Seagate Barracudas in a RAID 50 configuration.
This solution has served well but I'm running into two issues:
1. Nervous about potential failure and crippling loss of data.
2. Since the RAID configuration has 18 TB space utilization, I am near capacity.
I am looking to build another array that is larger, and then transfer this data to the new array.
I'm just not sure what the best route to go is. I don't want to spend a ton of money. I spent approximately $1500 on the first solution which was fine. ($150 * 8 drives + $300 for the enclosure)
The options I currently see are:
A. Buy another Mediasonic enclosure and get 8x 4 TB drives.
B. Try to build my own NAS enclosure, using a NAS case, buying a RAID card, and buying the drives.
Problems I see with A are that it only expands my space by 33%. And in doing so it uses larger drives which are more prone to failure.
Problem with B is that there are so many options out there for all the pieces that I don't even know where to begin.
Also the RAID controllers are so expensive.
With option B I'd like to go for something big like a 24-drive setup. Then get my hands on 24 * 3-4 TB drives. And put it all in a RAID 50 or RAID 60 config. Maybe 3 * 8-drive layers, yielding a 75% space utilization in the case of RAID 60 and 87.5% utilization in the case of RAID 50, good enough read/write rates in both cases to stream 1080p media and various disk images over a network, and decent (in the case of 50) to excellent (in the case of 60) fault tolerance.
So I'm pretty much swimming in all this and am not sure how to proceed.
Priorities, from most to least important:
1. fault tolerance
2. sufficient read/write to write a few gigs per day and stream 1080p media and disk ISO's over a network, which I'm able to do now just fine.
3. significantly higher than 18 TB usable capacity
4. cost being reasonable. ideally i want the drives to account for around 75% of the cost.
This solution has served well but I'm running into two issues:
1. Nervous about potential failure and crippling loss of data.
2. Since the RAID configuration has 18 TB space utilization, I am near capacity.
I am looking to build another array that is larger, and then transfer this data to the new array.
I'm just not sure what the best route to go is. I don't want to spend a ton of money. I spent approximately $1500 on the first solution which was fine. ($150 * 8 drives + $300 for the enclosure)
The options I currently see are:
A. Buy another Mediasonic enclosure and get 8x 4 TB drives.
B. Try to build my own NAS enclosure, using a NAS case, buying a RAID card, and buying the drives.
Problems I see with A are that it only expands my space by 33%. And in doing so it uses larger drives which are more prone to failure.
Problem with B is that there are so many options out there for all the pieces that I don't even know where to begin.
Also the RAID controllers are so expensive.
With option B I'd like to go for something big like a 24-drive setup. Then get my hands on 24 * 3-4 TB drives. And put it all in a RAID 50 or RAID 60 config. Maybe 3 * 8-drive layers, yielding a 75% space utilization in the case of RAID 60 and 87.5% utilization in the case of RAID 50, good enough read/write rates in both cases to stream 1080p media and various disk images over a network, and decent (in the case of 50) to excellent (in the case of 60) fault tolerance.
So I'm pretty much swimming in all this and am not sure how to proceed.
Priorities, from most to least important:
1. fault tolerance
2. sufficient read/write to write a few gigs per day and stream 1080p media and disk ISO's over a network, which I'm able to do now just fine.
3. significantly higher than 18 TB usable capacity
4. cost being reasonable. ideally i want the drives to account for around 75% of the cost.
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