Raid 5 at home

[fr8o]

I have two desktops and a laptop at home that I share data between right now I have 7 1tb SATA drives in a USB enclosure (since the laptop does not have eSATA) that I move between systems with data. I really want to setup a raid 5 solution to keep my data safe, but as I move it between systems it would either need to be a NAS or hardware raid as software would not work when I moved it? Is there a way to do this without spending to much? I thought about building a third computer and using it as a raid box but I am afraid of the OS crashing and taking the array data with it if I do a shared software raid array.

 

[LoneEagle]

What is your enclosure for your 7 drives? Or each of them are currently in their own enclosure?
Does your enclosure support RAID?
What are the connections possible to your enclosure?

RAID-5 is a basic setup for safety.

Your choice:
* RAID-5: All 7 drives [6TB]
* RAID-5: 6 drives (one spare) [5TB]
* RAID-6: All 7 drives [5TB] Safe even one HDD crash, Array not compromised

Info OS Crash: Even your OS crash, this does not destroy a RAID. A RAID is like one drive, you can format it, delete files, ... BUT if your Mobo or enclosure break, you must replace it with same thing to rebuild.

 

[fr8o]

I have an 8 SATA bay enclosure which has raid 0 and 1 support. I do not want to lose 4 gigs of space when I fill it thus raid 5, but it would have to be software raid and if I move it to a different computer I do not think software raid will be able to be rebuilt there right? So I need to find something that is either network or USB connected with hardware raid 5 support so I can move it between computers.

 

[sub mesa]

I really want to setup a raid 5 solution to keep my data safe

For consumers, the only thing that keeps your data safe is a backup; not onboard RAID5. This may even be more dangerous than not using RAID at all but plain drives. I would say most consumers using RAID lose data more to failures of the RAID itself than due to disk failures.

I do not feel comfortable with the idea consumers who have too little knowledge about RAID thinking their data is safe and coming back in a year with tears in their eyes that all their data is gone while they thought it was safe. USE A BACKUP!

Just my 2 cents.

If you would like to invest in a good RAID solution, maybe you should checkout this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-252890_14_0.html#t1781243

 

[gamemaster000]

+1 sub mesa.

Use a RAID5 setup for the occasional disk failure that could kill a single disk or RAID0 solution. Use a backup to keep the data safe. You consider building a 6-7TB RAID NAS system for your data (freenas?), then use your enclosure for a nice offline backup solution.

 

[fr8o]

I was thinking about something like this http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=210657615 except that it is more than I want to spend by about $200 and if it fails it is not just replacing a controller card to rebuild the array I would have to replace the whole enclosure I am sure since they probably can not send me just an easily replaced controller.