2 TB drive Space setup

[tweeve2002]

So my next computer is going to have a min of 2 TB of drive space.
How would you set up 2 TB of drives?

I was thinking of doing RAID 5 with 500GB drives. But Im not sure if that would be the best.

Do this as if money was no problem. This will be in my main desktop used mainly as a gaming rig but also as mass storage. Game load times are not as important as storage.
My stystem right now is 1 TB of drive space in 3 diffrent RAID 0 setups. So running RAID isnt something new for me.

How would you do 2 TB of drive space?

 

[Arcanedeath]

Well if money is no object I would suggest getting an Areca / Tekram ARC-1230 12port Sata 2 raid card(around 1100 to 1200 w/ 128mb of cache (user upgradeable to 1gb) and doing raid 6 w/ 9 320gb WD drives you can get from the hot deals fourm for around $140ea, this will give you aprox 2.1TB of formated space and very good data protection as 2 drives can fail and you'll still not lose any data. You'll also need an SLI motherboard (or you can get the PCI-X version of the raid card (I belive its model 1130) as the raid card is PCI-E and some fairly heavy duty power supply to handle all 9 drives for the raid 6 array (raid 6 is just like raid 5 except it supports 2 drives for parity so up to 2 drives can fail and the system will still not lose any data) this will also leave you 3 open ports on the raid card so you can expand your array later if you like up to 3TB w/ 3 more drives. if you have any ?'s feel free to ask.

Edit: you could also you larger than the 320GB WD drives and only get an 8 port Areca / Tekram ARC-1220 card its only about 600-700 instead of the 1100 to 1200 for the 12 port one. but the drives will cost quite abit more as that 320GB WD drive seems to be the sweet spot in price per GB for sata atm., but I highly suggest some controler from the ARC-12XX series as they seem to be the best performing raid cards supporting enterprise features atm. (I just wish their prices would come down a bit so I could afford one ).

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Get a mobo that supports PCI-X, and get one or two 8-port SATA. I could do a 2TB RAID array with 8 250gb in RAID 0 with my BroadCom 4852. Or you could do a 2.8TB RAID 5 with 400gb hds. What is really crazy, is that this RAID controller supports card migration, so you could get two of these card, and do 16 drives in a RAID 0 config, and have a 4TB partition with 16 250gb hds. Yeehah.
Tas.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I like my solution better it has redunancy and performs almost as well as raid 0 plus if one of his drives fails in your setup he loses all his data, w/ 2TB I'd be worried about that.

 

[Mark R]

RAID 6 is probably overkill. How likely is it for 2 drives to die simultaneously? And if the array does die, how much of a problem is it going to be for you while you order in new drives and restore from backups? If it's just you, a day to restore would probably be acceptable - if this was a file server serving 50 people in an office - then a day to restore would not be acceptable, then RAID 6 would be an important consideration. Remember, RAID 5 has generally good reliability, the risk of hardware failure causing data loss in RAID 5 is considerably lower than human error, or malicious software.

In your case, it looks like you just want cheap storage of low-value data (I'm guessing publically available media) and a moderate cost if the data is lost - it would take a few days to rip the dvds, or install the games. So a lot depends on how you value your time. A 2TB RAID 0 array comprised of 320 GB drives would probably have a breakdown rate of about 1 in 15- 1 in 10 for each year. Is that acceptable? I'm guessing that it almost certainly isn't.

So RAID 5 is probably the only sensible option. If money is no object then a high-end 12 port SATA RAID card with hardware accelerator would be the best solution and leave room for expansion - The Areca/ Tekram card suggested by ArcaneDeath certainly looks like a respectable choice.
If you need a slightly lower budget, than an 8 Port card with hardware RAID5 and 8 320 GB drives will get you your 2 TB, but without any expansion space (unless you add another card), or swap out all the drives).

Budget around $1400 for the drives, and about $700 for an 8 port RAID card.

You can get bigger drives (e.g. 400 GB drives) but you will pay a significant premium for this - and you still won't be able to get a budget 4 port RAID card - as you will need 6 drives.
You also get reduced power consumption , heat production and noise, as well as leaving you additional expansion space on a single 8 port card.

If you aren't worried about the additional cost of the bigger drives (about $250) then I would definitely go for 400 GB over 320 GB. The price premium of 500 GB (another $500 on top of the 400GB) is probably too much for too little benefit over 400 GB.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Well, it was merely a point being made. He said he was familiar with RAID, so I didn't bother going into what he could possibly do. I would ofcourse do RAID 5, which is what I'm doing on mine. Oh, and newegg.com has the BroadCom RAIDCore BC4852 for $365.
Tas.

 

[imported_rod]

What do you need 2TB for???

 

[dnuggett]

How likely is it for 2 drives to die simultaneously?

Thats the point of RAID 6. It's very unlikely.

 

[Arcanedeath]

It depends on how important his data is. That broadcom raid card is good but the tekram / Arcera series of cards is better IMHO and the broadcom card takes a PCI-X slot to perfrom properly requiring an expensive server or workstation board where as w/ the ARC series its PCI-E and you can get away w/ a fairly inexpensive SLI board, when you have a 2 TB array raid 6 is not overkill, and with my suggestion you can expand up to a 3 TB array yes raid 5 would be adequite and then you could get away w/ an 8 port card but its nowhere near as safe, w/ that much data no matter how trival it is I just wouldn't want to ever have to go to the hastle of restoring it. Just my 2 cents... (also fyi raid 6 is a fairly unique feature of the ARC 11XX and 12XX series of cards but its prolly only worth using it over raid 5 if you have 8 or more drives as you lose the cap. of 2 drives in the array instead of one like raid 5 but have more redundancy)

 

[RedCOMET]

you should do what tomshardware did,
Text
well maybe not that extreme but still cool

 

[tweeve2002]

Right now this computer is still WAY in the planning phase. At the moment it is looking like an AMD 64 Duel core (not sure on speed yet), with 2 GB of RAM and atleast a 512MB single PCI-E video card, Thinking at the moment a single 512 MB 6800 Ultra(I know that 512 isnt need yet but I could be awhile before I get enough money to upgrade again.)

Though a RAID 6 might just be the way to go. I will be using PCI-E for the interface to the motherboard for sure. As for why I need 2 TB of drive space there is a few simple reasons. One I have 1 TB of drive space right now that is just about full (less than 150 GB left, maybe closser lesser than 100 GB), and when ever I upgrade I like to double the hard drive space. Two comming this fall I am going to be living in the dorm at college so I want to take advantage of the network Three I do LOTS of video editing, video capture, and video storage on my systems so I need lots of drive, and finally four, I am a virtual pack rat, I rarely delete anyting (bad habbit from using a 56K modem, easier and faster to keep the download than delete it and download it latter).

 

[PerfeK]

I'm building a 1TB RAID-5 array in a CM Stacker. All you need is a 12 port RAID card, some Supermicro Hot Swap Cages and 10 250gb drives for RAID-5 or RAID-6. Small change.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: tweeve2002
512MB single PCI-E video card, Thinking at the moment a single 512 MB 6800 Ultra(I know that 512 isnt need yet but I could be awhile before I get enough money to upgrade again.)

.

The 6800 Ultra can't make use of the 512mb, you goddamned moron. It's not that "it isn't need yet". That card, like the XL 512mb, is just a gimmick.

The 7800GTX will ALWAYS be faster than the 6800 Ultra, no matter how much RAM you stuff in the Ultra.

 

[ProviaFan]

Quick question for the gurus while we're on this topic. I have an A8N-E motherboard, which has the 16X PCI-E for graphics, and another "4X" PCI-E slot that is open-ended so it can theoretically be used for any width of PCI-E (they call it a "universal" slot). Would the 8X PCI-E RAID controllers being discussed here work in that kind of slot?

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan
Quick question for the gurus while we're on this topic. I have an A8N-E motherboard, which has the 16X PCI-E for graphics, and another "4X" PCI-E slot that is open-ended so it can theoretically be used for any width of PCI-E (they call it a "universal" slot). Would the 8X PCI-E RAID controllers being discussed here work in that kind of slot?

Yes, but at 4x.