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Best way for a large array

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  • Hard Drives
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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February 1, 2005 2:19:35 PM

All the DVDs we purchase I rip to my 2nd computers hard drive so that I can stream the movies to my HDTV set on-demand. I also store a copy of all my home videos and photography as a backup to my main system on the 2nd computer. Since photos can be broken up I store them on DVD and a copy goes off site. Here is where it gets interesting, to date no DVD recorder can hold a 13 gig 1 hour DV tape, so storing it on another computer as a backup is the only way to go besides a big expensive tape drive. I will probably end up with a tape drive since my only way to store a movie backup off site is to compress it down to a mpeg2 file on a DVD.

So now to my real question, my 2nd computer has a O/S C: drive and then 3 Western Digital 200 gig hard drives spanned together by XP as one big 600gb disk – drive D: . I'm down to 24 gigs free and needing more space on the D: drive. I cant seem to find a IDE or Serial raid card with 6-8 channels that is not PCI-X. Is there a card out there with more than 4 channels that can do raid 5 that is not PCI-X? I want to go with raid now so I don’t lose the all the data should 1 drive fail. If not does anyone know what desktop system motherboards support PCI-X.? Lastly does anyone have any ideas for people like me needing larger storage space?

I thoguth all this stuff was getting cheaper, boy technology has a price to pay! :) 

Thanks for your time.





Dave KOone

More about : large array

February 1, 2005 7:08:58 PM

You can use a PCI-X card in a regular PCI slot. There are notches in it that make it fit and just hang over a bit :)  It will only run at 33mhz but it will work.
If you have the bucks get a 3ware controller. They are all true hardware controllers. If you need IDE get the 3ware Escalade 7506-8. If you need SATA get the 3ware Escalade 8506-8.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>
February 1, 2005 7:28:02 PM

If you really want a regular pci raid card w/ more than 4 ports one just came to mind. The Promise SuperTrak SX6000 is a 6 port ide raid card that has a regular 32bit pci interface.

I just thought of something for your last question too. For storing huge amounts of data like that I highly recomend setting aside a computer to hold it. Just put together a little file server thats only purpose is to hold your data. Somethin you can just put off to the side somewhere and never mess with. That drastically reduces your chance of data loss. I did that for my house and I don't know how I lived without it. Secure network storage is definatly the way to go for multi computer houses. The best OS to put on a file server would be something other than windows (linux, unix, etc) but if you don't have experience with any of those I wouldn't do it. The next best would be a server version of windows but that is a little pricy if you don't already have access to a copy. Win2k/xp would be fine on it if that is what you have. I know I made it sound bad by puttin it at the bottom of the list but it will work fine :)  Just make sure you turn on remote management.
I'd be happy to answer any more Qs you have on the subject of a standalone file server.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>
February 2, 2005 3:45:57 PM

The Promise TX4200 will allow two cards per system. (The older promise SATA cards don't support multiple cards per system which is why I switched from them.)

The LSI Logic MegaRaid 150 SATA-4 will allow up to four cards per system. (I am pretty sure it is four, I've only put two in though myself.) The LSI Logic MegaRaid has a six port variation and a newer one that has 8 ports.

I actually have a couple of Promise SX6000 that are "retired". They worked when I pulled them and I have not reason to think they don't work now. If a method of "prepaid shipping" can be arranged I am willing to send them out without any additionaly charge. Let me know if you are interested in them.

NOTE: The SX6000's are standard IDE based, and have six single drive IDE connections on board. They do support multiple cards per system as well, but I never ran them that way.
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