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Home server storage questions

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Hi,

I'm building a home server to do these things:
- sharing video and audio around the house
- general backup storage
- general work tasks that don't require the horsepower of my main PC
- be on 24/7

I have the following:
- MSI 785G-E65 motherboard
- AMD Athlon II x2 235e
- Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
- 2x WD20EARS 2TB HDD

My first question is what would be a good system drive? I want something that is cheap, low power, and will have the required speed to do everything i want. I have a preference for WD so what do you guys think about the following?

A couple of options are:
- Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVT 8MB 250GB (2.5inch)
- Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 32MB 500GB
- Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 16MB 500GB

All cost about the same for each. The laptop drive uses half the power of the Caviar Green. The list basically goes from least power/least speed to most power/most speed.


My second question is about the bulk storage. I have two 2TB drives and want them to mirror each other for backup reasons. Should I be looking at a motherboard implimentation of RAID1 or is there some software that would be easier to do this with, or some other solution?

Thanks,

Tim

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theFan said:
Hi,

I'm building a home server to do these things:
- sharing video and audio around the house
- general backup storage
- general work tasks that don't require the horsepower of my main PC
- be on 24/7

I have the following:
- MSI 785G-E65 motherboard
- AMD Athlon II x2 235e
- Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
- 2x WD20EARS 2TB HDD

My first question is what would be a good system drive? I want something that is cheap, low power, and will have the required speed to do everything i want. I have a preference for WD so what do you guys think about the following?

A couple of options are:
- Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVT 8MB 250GB (2.5inch)
- Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 32MB 500GB
- Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 16MB 500GB

All cost about the same for each. The laptop drive uses half the power of the Caviar Green. The list basically goes from least power/least speed to most power/most speed.


My second question is about the bulk storage. I have two 2TB drives and want them to mirror each other for backup reasons. Should I be looking at a motherboard implimentation of RAID1 or is there some software that would be easier to do this with, or some other solution?

Thanks,

Tim


I have that exact Caviar Green drive in my desktop PC and use it as my OS boot drive. It seems reasonably fast for the amount of power it uses and it is the quietest drive i have ever owned. I am not sure about the other 2 drives and don't really have any data to support anything...but I have had great luck with a WD Caviar Green Drive. Just my 2 cents, hope this helps. good luck!

im not to sure about the software raid option i personally prefer HW raid :) 

and about the drives, why such low power + low space? just grab a spinpoint F3, even if it is a bit over kill its only $20 more then the 250gb for 3x time space

Well, it'll be on 24/7 so low power will save me money. The system drive really only needs to be about 100GB anyway.

It's also going to be in a cabinet in the garage so low power also means cooler operating and hopefully longer lifetime.

You've now made me wonder if it's worth going for low power, so out comes the calculator..

If i get the 2.5 inch drive over the green desktop drive i'll save $4.30 a year on my power bill. Really not worth the hassle.

If i get the 2.5 inch drive over the blue desktop drive then i'll save $24.50 a year.

These figures are assuming the drive is idle (rather than R/W or standby). Maybe system drives when not in use are in standby in which case the savings are completely negligable.
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Well, for me in New Zealand I pay 37cents per kilo-Watt hour. That is 37 cents for 1 kilo-Watt for 1 hour.

So, 8 Watts for 24 hours x 365 days = 70080 Watt hours, which is 70.08 kilo-Watt hours. Multiply that by the cost per KWh and you get $25.93 to run that drive.

ah :)  it is a bit more expensive there then here but still, not to drastic and most likely nothing you should worry about :)  its about 10c per hr here.

just grab a drive that makes you happy and has good reviews, i personally would still grab the 1tb so i dont have to do all that transferring, yuck.
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