Modernizing Media Server?

[benwood]

I have a old media server to hold my DVD rips and TV recordings that I built back in 2005 using a CoolerMaster CM Stacker case and five 3-into-2 drive cages. It has a 2.6 ghz P4 with 1.5 Gb of memory running XP Pro SP2. It has a 3Ware 7506-12 PATA RAID controller with 12 PATA drives partitioned into two RAID 5 units (one 2 TB the other 1.5 TB) connected to it. I also have 4 external fanless two disk ESata RAID 1 cases connected to it as well as two 4 bay Sans Digital USB 2.0 external cases. I'm starting to have trouble with the drives connected to the 3Ware controller. Since PATA drives are hard to come by these days I was thinking about replacing the motherboard with a newer up to date one and retiring at least the 3ware controller and 12 PATA drives.

I understand that there are some AMD motherboards that offer up to 10 SATA ports. Is there a way to use one of these boards to update my setup. I don't want a Norco type case because they are too noisy and expensive. I also can't afford a server motherboard. I'd very much like RAID redundancy on the drives holding my DVD rips because it's a royal pain to rerip them. I have them separated into different categories (Movie DVD rips TV Show DVD Rips, etc so I don't want them all in one big pool). I'd also like to have the drives be formatted in NTFS instead of Linux so I can just pop them into another machine to read them. Any ideas on how to go about this? Thanks.

 

[Zxian]

For cheap, reliable storage drives, go with the Western Digital Red series drives. I've got eight of the 3TB versions them in my server at home. Good performance, quiet, low power. 3 year support with an excellent RMA service (which I've only had to make use of twice in the past 10 years).

For your controller, you've got a couple of options. Depending on how much space you need, you can continue with the method of using a dedicated hardware controller, but unless you need the performance or the ability to migrate raid levels, that shouldn't be necessary. If you can swing it, just get four of the 3TB drives and run them in RAID1 pairs. That should give you enough space for a while and keep the number of drives down. RAID1 will also give you quick rebuild times when needed.

I would recommend a simple Intel-based motherboard with 4GB of RAM and an Intel G540 or G550 CPU. If you can swing it, grab a small SSD (64GB is fine) for the operating system (get Win7 at this point - XP won't run as well on modern hardware). The reason why I'd shy away from AMD is that their onboard controllers can be finicky - especially with RAID setups.


I also have the CM Stacker for my server. Obligatory picture: Link

 

[LurchFrinky]

1. I think you have a good candidate for updating.
2. I hope your RAID is not your backup solution and that you actually have a backup solution.
3. You can do RAID5 with 3 drives, so you can have 2 of these setup for a total of 6 drives.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't get the "just pop them into another machine to read them" bit. If you don't like linux, that's fine, but you shouldn't be taking drives out of an array to get the data off - that's what the backups are for.
Of course I do use linux (FreeNAS for DLNA and Mint with PS3 Media Server), and I would recommend software RAID. I know most linux distros will handle pretty much all RAID levels, but I haven't tried it with Win7 (I know they do 0 and 1, I don't know about 5 or 6).
In any case, once you reduce the number of drives, you will have a larger selection of motherboards to choose from.

 

[LurchFrinky]

Apparently, only RAID 0/1 is available in Win7 (without hacks anyway). Windows server supports RAID 5

*sorry - meant to edit previous post

 

[Zap]

How much storage space do you need now? How much do you envision needing in the next 1/2/3/4/5 years? If your 1.5TB and 2TB volumes are representative of what you need now, you can do that with a single drive.

Does the server have to do anything besides sit there and allow other devices to play videos from it?

What is your budget?

Here's one possibility for you.

This $80 motherboard/CPU combo has six SATA ports and is super power efficient.

This $90 case is tiny and can hold six drives.

4TB drives $205, can have 24TB in that little case.

 

[Goros]

Look in to a Rocket 640L.

 

[Zxian]

I wouldn't trust my data on a Highpoint card. Too many issues, not enough support. If you're going to bother with a third party HBA, get something from LSI or Areca.

 

[smitbret]

www.flexraid.com

It runs on top of whatever OS you happen to be using, in your case you could just keep WinXP and format everything in NTFS. If you stay with a 32-bit OS, I think you'll be linited to 3GB of RAM and 2 TB HDDs. If you want bigger numbers, drop $50 on WHS 2011.

FlexRAID takes care of storage pooling and RAID features similar to RAID 5 or 6 depending on your level of caution. It'll also let you mix and match drives of different sizes without losing space like traditional RAID. You can up the size of the pool by just dropping in a new drive and not have to rebuild the array. You can also pull any drive out of the pool at any time and just plug it back into a PC running the same OS and access all data on the drive.

If you just want robust security, safety and as much read speed as possible, you'd be crazy not to go with FreeNAS and a RAIDz setup.

I wouldn't give hardware RAID a second thought at this point.

 

[Goros]

I wouldn't trust my data on a Highpoint card. Too many issues, not enough support. If you're going to bother with a third party HBA, get something from LSI or Areca.

Rockets aren't for raid, they are just sata 3 cards to add ports as opposed to buying a whole new mobo. Flexraid works with them perfectly and for $65, is way less than an LSI or Areca HBA with features he doesn't need and isn't asking for.

 

[smitbret]

Hardware wise, I'm using an ASUS AMD AM3+ board that supports ECC memory. You can get one with 6 SATA ports for less than $60. You could install 4-5 2 or 3TB HDDs with a 5th smaller 200+ GB HDD to use as a boot drive. If you need more you can just add a decent expansion board to the PCI Express x16 or x8 slot at any point.

Boom 6+ TB of space with parity, ECC correction, NTFS file system and the ability to pull or add HDDs at anytime.

 

[Zxian]

Rockets aren't for raid, they are just sata 3 cards to add ports as opposed to buying a whole new mobo. Flexraid works with them perfectly and for $65, is way less than an LSI or Areca HBA with features he doesn't need and isn't asking for.

I never said they were for raid. The model you specified is an HBA, and I wouldn't trust it with my data. There are a lot of negative reviews about HighPoint in general. They've never been a reliable option in my books. If you need additional SATA ports, I'd suggest a company with a better track record.

There's cheap, and then there's too cheap. How much is your data worth to you?


WHS2011 is another good option for an OS as smitbret suggested.

 

[blastingcap]

Count me as another vote against hardware RAID.

 

[TigCobra]

Count me as another vote against hardware RAID.

I am curious as to why? Isn't there better stability with hardware Raid then software?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I am curious as to why? Isn't there better stability with hardware Raid then software?

Stability & performance is sometimes a tad better, but software RAID is very mature. It really depends on the RAID controller. A hardware RAID card is, worst case, another point of failure. And they're expensive.

Disaster recovery is easier with software RAID though. (you just install the array in another machine running the same OS and it will usually pick it right up. You might have to reassemble or scan the drives, but... whatever.)

RAID in general guarantees availability, not data integrity, but availability isn't really such a huge issue for a home media server. Nobody gets sued if you can't watch the Star Wars Christmas Special tonight because you're waiting on a replacement HDD.

Since OP didn't say what his long-term storage needs were going to be, I'm making assumptions about his storage requirements, but I'd probably go with a pair of >=2TB drives for file storage, and another pair rsyncing the first for automatic backup. (4 drives total.) No spanning, no RAID, no tricks. A single drive in a home environment will provide all the MB/Sec he can use.

One of those integrated mITX Atom mainboards will run that fine.

 

[Zxian]

Stability & performance is sometimes a tad better, but software RAID is very mature. It really depends on the RAID controller. A hardware RAID card is, worst case, another point of failure. And they're expensive.

Performance for any sort of parity based raid will be better on a dedicated hardware controller if the system is put under heavy load. It's still another point of failure though, and if the controller fails you generally need to replace it with one of the same model/family.

Disaster recovery is easier with software RAID though. (you just install the array in another machine running the same OS and it will usually pick it right up. You might have to reassemble or scan the drives, but... whatever.)

RAID in general guarantees availability, not data integrity, but availability isn't really such a huge issue for a home media server. Nobody gets sued if you can't watch the Star Wars Christmas Special tonight because you're waiting on a replacement HDD.

This is probably one of the more important things to take home - RAID helps ensure uptime. That's all you should be relying on it for. Backups are still needed with a RAID-based setup - just like any other storage option.

Since OP didn't say what his long-term storage needs were going to be, I'm making assumptions about his storage requirements, but I'd probably go with a pair of >=2TB drives for file storage, and another pair rsyncing the first for automatic backup. (4 drives total.) No spanning, no RAID, no tricks. A single drive in a home environment will provide all the MB/Sec he can use.

One of those integrated mITX Atom mainboards will run that fine.

This is another very good, straightforward suggestion.

 

[greenhawk]

OP, your power supply is not dieing is it? it would not be uncommon with large raid arrays accessing several drives at the same time to over load a power supply that is at it's limit.