Jbod Vs Raid0

[thermique]

Hi, im planning to order 2 500gb drives for storage only, with occasional access to the files, certainly not daily access, thus performance is not critical.

What is however, is that I want them to appear as 1 single large drive of 1000gb (930gb actual). Im am planning to store all my video editing projects on there, so high fault tolerance/ reliability of the system would be desired.

Should i choose JBOD or RAID0 in that case. Both my sata ports are full, thus i have 2 spair raid slots on the mobo, so if i went with JBOD id have to buy a PCI Sata Card which i dont mind doing if JBOD will be more reliable. So which should i choose?

Thanks

[Biscuit]

i think that using raid in this manor can be a little unreliable. For example if your system goes down and the files have been split between the drives you will have two drives with useable data on. I think anyway

No idea about jbod

[thermique]

^ I had heard that, with RAID0 striping as you said results in no data recovery, with JBOD you can get half back (or however much is on the surviving drive).

[badass]

Hi, im planning to order 2 500gb drives for storage only, with occasional access to the files, certainly not daily access, thus performance is not critical.

What is however, is that I want them to appear as 1 single large drive of 1000gb (930gb actual). Im am planning to store all my video editing projects on there, so high fault tolerance/ reliability of the system would be desired.

What you desire and what you propose is incompatible. For high fault tolerance neither JBOD nor RAID0 fit the bill.
If you buy another 500GB drive, then RAID5 will probably be ideal but you'll still only have 1TB for 3 500GB drives.

Potentially of the 2, JBOB is the slightly better since you will be able to recover up to half your data if one of the disks goes pop, however because of the the way disks fill you may end up losing the lot.

Option 2 is to RAID0 them and make sure you have a good backup strategy, though I to keep 1TB backed up you will need to spend about £2000 on backup hardware

[aidanjt]

JBOD (or Just a Bunch Of Disks) creates a larger volume by filling up 1 disk at a time, so performance is akin to doing I/O on one disk at a time. RAID0 on the other hand performs the same function but performs I/O sequentially on all disk in the array. Neither offer data security, JBOD is prone to failure if the first disk dies making it just about the most useless RAID MODE.

Of course for the purpose of video encoding/manipulation RAID0 is a no brainer, as long as you don't get a bad pair of disks (which is fairly likely) you shouldn't have any problems.

[Metier9]

RAID1 it or get more drives

[thermique]

JBOD (or Just a Bunch Of Disks) creates a larger volume by filling up 1 disk at a time, so performance is akin to doing I/O on one disk at a time. RAID0 on the other hand performs the same function but performs I/O sequentially on all disk in the array. Neither offer data security, JBOD is prone to failure if the first disk dies making it just about the most useless RAID MODE.

Of course for the purpose of video encoding/manipulation RAID0 is a no brainer, as long as you don't get a bad pair of disks (which is fairly likely) you shouldn't have any problems.

Re; the video editing, this drive will not be used for manipulation/projects im working on, rather just dumping the ones i have finished working on.

[Nox]

jbod is quieter too, if that metters

Nox

[thermique]

So if JBOD/RAID has higher failure rates than a single disc, perhaps i should just go for 1x 500gb and get a 1tb+ drive in 12-18months.

[badass]

So if JBOD/RAID has higher failure rates than a single disc, perhaps i should just go for 1x 500gb and get a 1tb+ drive in 12-18months.

Sounds like a better plan

Still remember that you can lose that 1 disk though!

[aidanjt]

I'd be inclined to go this route if it's just for long term storage.

[thermique]

I'd be inclined to go this route if it's just for long term storage.

The 1x 500gb disc you mean? Yea im certianly leaning towards this, drive will be a 3 platter T7k500 from Hitachi, ive got some 7k250's in 160gb and 250gb that have run stellar for years, so hopefully it will be reliable.

[Defenestration]

If you're not going to have any files/projects larger than 500GB, I would probably just use them as separate 500GB drives. If you want redundancy though, then I would probably go for RAID5 with a separate dedicated RAID card. This will mean you can move to a new system knowing the RAID array will still work. You should also see some of the speed benefits of RAID 0 with a good card.

[silentphoenix]

So if JBOD/RAID has higher failure rates than a single disc, perhaps i should just go for 1x 500gb and get a 1tb+ drive in 12-18months.

JBOD is just as reliable as reliable (per disk) and having a single disc. JBOD (just a bunch of disks) is just the technical name of the setup of most people who have multiple hard disks - they are not raided, and nothing but a bunch of disks). In all honesty, this would probably be your best option IMO (unless you don't mind splashing out the cash). IF having a 1 TB disk is important then go with a 500GB now, and 1 TB in future (as you suggested), or strike the balance with the largest HDD you can buy right now (750gb?) and just stick with it until you need a new one.

For performance you want raid 0 for sure, but this is at the expense of no redundancy (so no fault tolerance) and a slightly higher fail rate (although with a good controller you will hardly ever see a fail - my secondary school used a raid 0 array for student account and it hasn't failed in 5 years.

RAID1 essentially uses only 500GB for usage and 500GB for backup, so it almost 100% guarantees the safety of your data. Bad point is that you are unable to use half of your disks.

As badass said, getting an extra 500GB drive allows you to use raid 5 (im not sure if raid 5 controllers are much more expensive than normal raid controllers) - here you get 1TB for usages and 500GB for data redundancy (allows for fault tolerance). I believe this is faster that JBOD, but slower than RAID 0, but cant remember off the top of my head.

Getting 2 more drive allows you to use RAID 1+0 which has similar speed advantages to RAID 0, and the same redundancy as RAID 1 (for good fault tolerance), but also has the wastage of RAID 1 where you can only use 1 TB of 2TB.

[aidanjt]

The 1x 500gb disc you mean? Yea im certianly leaning towards this, drive will be a 3 platter T7k500 from Hitachi, ive got some 7k250's in 160gb and 250gb that have run stellar for years, so hopefully it will be reliable.

There is another option of course. Basic Network Attached storage devices are relatively cheap, you could stick 1 disk in it for now, and add another when it fills up. It would suit the job of archiving video files pretty well as you can switch it off when you have no use for the data, that will decrease the likelyhood of drive failure in the long run.

[Metier9]

What ever raid option you want mostly depends on your bank balance ^^.

e.g. my OS is on raid1 and the rest is on raid5