Htpc needs more storage. Possible raid ?

[mrfog]

Hi

I currently have 1x500Gb and 1x1Tb hdds in my htpc. That space is now pretty much all taken up with TV and films. What I want to do now is add more space but as I am also getting nervous about a hdd failure I want to look into a possible raid array. I only have 3 bays in my case and wanted to avoid an external solution if possible but it if it needs it then so be it. My motherboard supports 6 sata hdd and is raid 5 compatible. I have no experience with raid at all but I just need a little advice on which direction I should take for the best results and not too much cost. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[alvine]

hello im including my raid notes from class, hopefuly this will clear some things for you. you could do raid 5 ,but your terabyte hd will be cut in half because with raid your drives have to be the same size



RAID 0 Striping means we take data that’s being written to the hard disk drive and split it in two such that it’s written to two different hard drives at the same time. Speed, no redundancy

RAID 1 Mirroring means there are two hard disk drives, one hard drive keeps a constant backup of another in case of a failure. Redundancy, no speed increase

Duplexing have two hard disk drives. As striping and mirroring BUT there are two RAID controllers instead of ONE RAID controller like in Striping and Mirroring.

RAID 5 Parity uses a third drive on top of the two hard drives holding the parity data, or the data that can reconstruct is one of the two striped hard drives fails, 3 or more drives striped together with parity information for redundancy

 

[Alabalcho]

When talking about RAID, in most cases talk is about identical drives - same manufacturer, same model, same capacity.

I would get three 2tb drives, install them in the box, make them RAID 5 (givingg you a total of 4tb space), allocate volumes (e.g.100gb for OS, rest for media/storage), and start fresh.

 

[mrfog]

When talking about RAID, in most cases talk is about identical drives - same manufacturer, same model, same capacity.

I would get three 2tb drives, install them in the box, make them RAID 5 (givingg you a total of 4tb space), allocate volumes (e.g.100gb for OS, rest for media/storage), and start fresh.

Thats the kinda info I was unsure of, thanks. Basically I need to get the drives, make the array then copy across all my tv and films once it's setup. I use win7, whats this I hear about raid 5 not working on the os ?

 

[dingo07]

I would definitely not install the OS on part of the RAIDed drive Array - get a seperate drive for the OS, perhaps a 60GB SSD (or 120GB if all your progs will fit on it)
but 2TB drives are an excellent idea - I would also suggest a min of 4 drives so that you can implement a Hot Spare - which means if one of the drives fails, you don't lose the array and have to source another drive, it immediately starts writing data to the Hot Swap drive and gives you time to replace the dead drive with a fresh one

 

[tripledouce]

I would just install some type of network storage. easiest way to upgrade your storage and if you have a GB LAN you should have very good performance from it. and some higher end NAS cases will let you do raid.

 

[mrfog]

I would definitely not install the OS on part of the RAIDed drive Array - get a seperate drive for the OS, perhaps a 60GB SSD (or 120GB if all your progs will fit on it)
but 2TB drives are an excellent idea - I would also suggest a min of 4 drives so that you can implement a Hot Spare - which means if one of the drives fails, you don't lose the array and have to source another drive, it immediately starts writing data to the Hot Swap drive and gives you time to replace the dead drive with a fresh one

Yes that makes sense but what I was getting at about win7 is that I've read it does not support raid 5, the option is greyed out or something ?

 

[dingo07]

probably because you dont have enough available drives to implement a RAID5 - you need a minium of 3, which was explained in a previous post

---

can you point me to where you read RAID 5 was not compatible with Win7

 

[Alabalcho]

Windows7 Home Premium does not support **software** RAID5. Probably that's what was meant.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/windows-7-software-raid-5-is-grayed-out/4861ca0a-8ceb-4c09-91e7-53781a183ffd

 

[mrfog]

Windows7 Home Premium does not support **software** RAID5. Probably that's what was meant.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/windows-7-software-raid-5-is-grayed-out/4861ca0a-8ceb-4c09-91e7-53781a183ffd

Thats correct, thank you. So will a controller card take care of this problem ?

 

[dingo07]

Thats correct, thank you. So will a controller card take care of this problem ?

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