Good morning!
Ok, so, back in late 2007, I built a RAID 5 out of an old Dell machine and 5x500 GB HDDs (2TB RAID). My buddy set up a linux build on it to serve as a home server for my personal movie and music collection so I could link it to set-top boxes and game consoles throughout the house. Long story short, it's 7 years old (no failures!) and slower than I want it to be, linked up to a slow tower with high power use. It has never had any issues with payback speeds, but the read/write speeds are slow, and it's a big power drain. I'm also running out of room.
I already have a 2 TB drive I'm COPYING everything over to (not offloading, a true 1:1 backup) for when I eventually build the new machine. My plan is to buy the least expensive, lowest-power solution, while still having drives that have the potential to last 7 years again. Preferably, I'd love to buy a backbone system that 5-6 years from now, if the RAID fills up, I could actually just use the same tower and upgrade my storage capacity without worrying about speed.
Anyway, basically, I have 2 questions: 1) What is the smallest form-factor, least power-hungry mobo/CPU/RAM combo that would allow me to continue on with a RAID 5, and 2) Are the WD Red drives worth it for this type of situation over the "Green" drives that are slightly cheaper? I was hoping to do 5x4TB for 16 useable TB in RAID 5.
Also, (I guess 3 questions) is a windows built-in OS inherently "worse" than doing linux again? I mean, linus would be a smaller footprint, run with less crap, and be less prone to a virus on the RAID, since it is internet-connected. Thoughts?
Ok, so, back in late 2007, I built a RAID 5 out of an old Dell machine and 5x500 GB HDDs (2TB RAID). My buddy set up a linux build on it to serve as a home server for my personal movie and music collection so I could link it to set-top boxes and game consoles throughout the house. Long story short, it's 7 years old (no failures!) and slower than I want it to be, linked up to a slow tower with high power use. It has never had any issues with payback speeds, but the read/write speeds are slow, and it's a big power drain. I'm also running out of room.
I already have a 2 TB drive I'm COPYING everything over to (not offloading, a true 1:1 backup) for when I eventually build the new machine. My plan is to buy the least expensive, lowest-power solution, while still having drives that have the potential to last 7 years again. Preferably, I'd love to buy a backbone system that 5-6 years from now, if the RAID fills up, I could actually just use the same tower and upgrade my storage capacity without worrying about speed.
Anyway, basically, I have 2 questions: 1) What is the smallest form-factor, least power-hungry mobo/CPU/RAM combo that would allow me to continue on with a RAID 5, and 2) Are the WD Red drives worth it for this type of situation over the "Green" drives that are slightly cheaper? I was hoping to do 5x4TB for 16 useable TB in RAID 5.
Also, (I guess 3 questions) is a windows built-in OS inherently "worse" than doing linux again? I mean, linus would be a smaller footprint, run with less crap, and be less prone to a virus on the RAID, since it is internet-connected. Thoughts?
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