Here's my situation. I have a VISTA server with 1 system drive and 4x1TB data drives. The data drives are used to store multimedia for my home entertainment system (DV, DVD, HD movies, photos, music, etc). As of now, none of the drives are setup in any kind of RAID or spanned or stripped configuration - they are setup as standalone drives with its own drive letter. I started with 1 data drive and when it filled up I added a 2nd one, then 3rd and 4th. I use software called TVERSITY for DLNA media sharing for whole house media distribution. This software is able to look at all 4 drives and make them look as one as long as their folder structure matches and file names are unique. For example, if HDD1 has a folder movies and HDD2 has a folder movies, TVERSITY will make it look as if there is just one folder movies with files from HDD1/movies and HDD2/movies. This works fairly well for the end result where devices that connect to TVERSITY, eg. PlayStation3, XBOX, etc. see a unified folder structure. Another advantage is that if one of the drives fails, the other drives are not affected. It is however becoming a headache for me to figure out what file sits on which HDD when I'm updating/adding files to one of the many HDDs through Windows. I now need to add another HDD or two and am getting a little bit worried that it will become unmanageable. My current backup solution is having 4x1TB drives in the closet with exact replica of the data in the file server. I have eSATA 1-bay IcyDock enclosure that allows HDDs to be easily swapped. So what I do is that as I add files to one of the main drives, I stick a backup drive into the external enclosure and use a tool called BeyondCompare2 to copy/update any files that have been added or modified on the main drive. This has worked fairly well, since I only add files and therefore backup files only once a week. If a drive fails, I have an exact replica of the same drive as a backup. I'm dealing with multimedia files, not file system backups or document/email backups. As I add another drive to the main file server, I also buy same size backup drive. I also have a third physical backup for most of the files, e.g. DV tapes, DVD, CD, etc.
If I was to summarize the current setup:
PROS:
Fault Tolerant - 1 drive fails, other drives are not affected, can restore from backup
Easy to Expand - simply add another drive
Easy to switch HDDs - copy data from older smaller drive onto bigger new drive and disconnect the old drive.
Cons:
File Management - If I'm looking for a file, I have to know which HDD it sits on. Manageable now, but what happens when I have 8 drives.
Question for you:
Do you have any suggestion on how to improve on my setup. I've looked at the following solutions, but am not sure if it would just give me more problems. I may also have the facts wrong.
RAID 0 - all drives appear as one, but inability to add/remove HDD in the future without complete rebuild from backups.
RAID 1,5,6 - all drives appear as one, but now I need double or more drives in the system enclosure for redundancy - this means that in RAID 1, I would need 8 drives in the system, vs 4 drives and therefore I would need expensive controller to connect all the drives, What happens when I need 8x1TB drives for data and then 8x1TB drives for backup, I would need 16 port SATA adapter or multiple 4port adapters.
Windows Spanned Volume - similiar to RAID 1, without the need of RAID adapter, all drives appear as one, can add HDD in the future to expand the volume. I assume I would also need to setup my backup drives into an external enclosure as a spanned volume for backups, which means buying an enclosure or multiple enclosures. I again would have problem with having enough SATA ports.
I'm really lost at this point, should I just stick to what I have? All of this would be simple if I didn't have this much data. I envision that by end of next year I will need 8TB of storage. Maybe it would be easier/cheaper to just start swapping 1TB drives for 1.5TB drives or 2TB drives (when they come out).
Thank you for any help.
Pavel.
If I was to summarize the current setup:
PROS:
Fault Tolerant - 1 drive fails, other drives are not affected, can restore from backup
Easy to Expand - simply add another drive
Easy to switch HDDs - copy data from older smaller drive onto bigger new drive and disconnect the old drive.
Cons:
File Management - If I'm looking for a file, I have to know which HDD it sits on. Manageable now, but what happens when I have 8 drives.
Question for you:
Do you have any suggestion on how to improve on my setup. I've looked at the following solutions, but am not sure if it would just give me more problems. I may also have the facts wrong.
RAID 0 - all drives appear as one, but inability to add/remove HDD in the future without complete rebuild from backups.
RAID 1,5,6 - all drives appear as one, but now I need double or more drives in the system enclosure for redundancy - this means that in RAID 1, I would need 8 drives in the system, vs 4 drives and therefore I would need expensive controller to connect all the drives, What happens when I need 8x1TB drives for data and then 8x1TB drives for backup, I would need 16 port SATA adapter or multiple 4port adapters.
Windows Spanned Volume - similiar to RAID 1, without the need of RAID adapter, all drives appear as one, can add HDD in the future to expand the volume. I assume I would also need to setup my backup drives into an external enclosure as a spanned volume for backups, which means buying an enclosure or multiple enclosures. I again would have problem with having enough SATA ports.
I'm really lost at this point, should I just stick to what I have? All of this would be simple if I didn't have this much data. I envision that by end of next year I will need 8TB of storage. Maybe it would be easier/cheaper to just start swapping 1TB drives for 1.5TB drives or 2TB drives (when they come out).
Thank you for any help.
Pavel.