Hello there , here follows a long Q
I have an Asus K8N4-E Deluxe motherboard. This board contains:
1) 4IDE + 4 SATA connections with 1 or more RAID configs (0,1,5,10,JBOD).
2) TI onboard controller (RAIDonly) with 4 SATA connections with 1 RAID configs (0,1,5,10)
I wish to install WHS as a reliable Back-up Server. Now I found out that the WHS disk pool system is not too bad.
It will reconfigure the D: (Data drive) by itself after a reinstallation of the system (or via an image restore of the system area).
Indeed I can obtain data redundancy in the WHS pool, however I don't want (complete) data-duplication in/on one system or place
(in case of complete system failure, virus attack, theft, fire, etc).
But I would like a quick restore in case of a disk failure and not having to figure out what files I have to restore or not on my WHS.
Elsewhere I have the DATA backed-up (actually I want my WHS to sync the data from all PC's to the WHS server)
That (a lot) said I'm thinking of the following setup
(my concern is with RAID 5 in view of some postings)
NVIDEA IDE/SATA/RAID:
a) 1IDE for CD/DVD (+ future spare disk/BR)
b) 1IDE RAID1 for 2x160GB for the WHS system(20GB) +inevitably D: Datapool
c) 3x250SATA in RAID5 config in the WHS DATA-pool; 1 connection free for future expansion
(as 1 MAXTOR 250GB just died on me after ~4 years (used very little in RAID 5)
ONBOARD TI RAIDcontroler:
d) 3x1TB SATA in RAID5 config 1 connection free for future expansion as back-up (not in the WHS DataPool).
In total
2660 GB net available with
1660 GB redundancy and
1250 GB spare expansion capacity available (or more when using bigger drives)
I have used RAID-5 with little problems but this was with a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 controller card
(although not real hardware RAID I did find it reasonable never really tested performance)
Q's: Are ASUS RAID and TI on board RAID;
1) Reliable?
2) Fast enough i.e. ~equivalent to standard Basis disk speeds?
3) Any drawback or concerns with this set-up
4) To migrate is quite a job; to make it easier; could I create a RAID1 with just 1 disk (in sort of a RAID failing state)
and later add the other disk to the RAID array?
5) Can I change the disk size of the RAID 5 when all disk are eventually upgraded to ones with higher capacity
(e.g. now I have 3x250SATA which probably in the next 2 years will be upgraded to 4x1.5TB SATA)
or do I have to copy RAID5, remove RAID5, create larger RAID5, copy the data back to the new RAID5?
6) I assume I can expand (on the fly / hotswap) an RAID 5 with 3 disks to 4 disks (or more for that matter) is that correct?
Thanks for any help or support
Paul
pjvanlit@yahoo.com
I have an Asus K8N4-E Deluxe motherboard. This board contains:
1) 4IDE + 4 SATA connections with 1 or more RAID configs (0,1,5,10,JBOD).
2) TI onboard controller (RAIDonly) with 4 SATA connections with 1 RAID configs (0,1,5,10)
I wish to install WHS as a reliable Back-up Server. Now I found out that the WHS disk pool system is not too bad.
It will reconfigure the D: (Data drive) by itself after a reinstallation of the system (or via an image restore of the system area).
Indeed I can obtain data redundancy in the WHS pool, however I don't want (complete) data-duplication in/on one system or place
(in case of complete system failure, virus attack, theft, fire, etc).
But I would like a quick restore in case of a disk failure and not having to figure out what files I have to restore or not on my WHS.
Elsewhere I have the DATA backed-up (actually I want my WHS to sync the data from all PC's to the WHS server)
That (a lot) said I'm thinking of the following setup
(my concern is with RAID 5 in view of some postings)
NVIDEA IDE/SATA/RAID:
a) 1IDE for CD/DVD (+ future spare disk/BR)
b) 1IDE RAID1 for 2x160GB for the WHS system(20GB) +inevitably D: Datapool
c) 3x250SATA in RAID5 config in the WHS DATA-pool; 1 connection free for future expansion
(as 1 MAXTOR 250GB just died on me after ~4 years (used very little in RAID 5)
ONBOARD TI RAIDcontroler:
d) 3x1TB SATA in RAID5 config 1 connection free for future expansion as back-up (not in the WHS DataPool).
In total
2660 GB net available with
1660 GB redundancy and
1250 GB spare expansion capacity available (or more when using bigger drives)
I have used RAID-5 with little problems but this was with a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 controller card
(although not real hardware RAID I did find it reasonable never really tested performance)
Q's: Are ASUS RAID and TI on board RAID;
1) Reliable?
2) Fast enough i.e. ~equivalent to standard Basis disk speeds?
3) Any drawback or concerns with this set-up
4) To migrate is quite a job; to make it easier; could I create a RAID1 with just 1 disk (in sort of a RAID failing state)
and later add the other disk to the RAID array?
5) Can I change the disk size of the RAID 5 when all disk are eventually upgraded to ones with higher capacity
(e.g. now I have 3x250SATA which probably in the next 2 years will be upgraded to 4x1.5TB SATA)
or do I have to copy RAID5, remove RAID5, create larger RAID5, copy the data back to the new RAID5?
6) I assume I can expand (on the fly / hotswap) an RAID 5 with 3 disks to 4 disks (or more for that matter) is that correct?
Thanks for any help or support
Paul
pjvanlit@yahoo.com
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