1 Terabyte Storage RAID Server - How?

[dgr]

Rubbish.

Take a look at any enterprise level solution offering NAS (network attached storage). For example...

http://www.overlandstorage.com/

RAID-5 or 10 is the expected and industry standard. For sure, Raid-1 the OS but the data array..? Please, you are kidding me.

Raid is completely relevant. He wants continously expanding storage while not giving 50% of his storage space every time. How do you expect anyone to have 2TB of storage with 50% in redundancy..? Are you out of your widget..?

Nothing I said was rubbish. I doubt disagree that enterprise will use raid5, if not raid50 (to alleviate the performance issues). *However* RAID will not provide in itself a backup solution. Anyone who thinks that it will is barmy. Unless you want to mess around with tapes or dvd writables (which would require you to categorise 250+ disks, and have some way of doing incremental backups - something a little too complex for the average home user), twin systems seems to be the way forwards. RAID *is* irrelevant here.

You may be a techie but for me (and the average guy), time===money. Easier to spend a few hundred (and we really are talking south of £500) for a redunant system than to spend a similar amount on a RAID5 controller, then many hours setting it up, maintaining it, ...

[arthurleung]

Low End use RAID1+0 (2-4 Disks usually)
Medium End use RAID5 (3-6 Disks)
High End use RAID6(6+ Disks)

I personally think that
Start with RAID1+0 with 4 Disks, when you fill it up, migrate it to 5-6 Disks RAID5 (Hence giving you more space), when it is almost full, migrate it to 8 Disks RAID5, then *finally* if you need even more, migrate to 12 Disks RAID6.

1+0 -> 5 for more space
5 -> 6 for security (since the risk of dying one disk after another is way higher when there are a lot of disks)

[Shorty]

*However* RAID will not provide in itself a backup solution. Anyone who thinks that it will is barmy.

Where in my post did I ever suggest RAID as a backup solution..??!! Id never suggest RAID as a backup solution anymore than I would suggest two PCs mirroring each other. That's double trouble. RAID is redundancy, NOT backup.

Unless you want to mess around with tapes or dvd writables (which would require you to categorise 250+ disks, and have some way of doing incremental backups - something a little too complex for the average home user), twin systems seems to be the way forwards. RAID *is* irrelevant here.

For £500, a shrewd ebayer can pick up a perfectly good LTO2 ultrium device. To be honest, the "average home user" wouldn't ask for advice on building a 1TB+ storage system, so where is your argument again..?

The bottom line is that the poster has asked for a solution to his storage problems NOT his backup problems. Several of us have provided different ideas based on experience and knowledge (including yourself). Just because some of us don't find your idea very good, does mean not anyone elses is better unless they have the technical know how to back it up (please do pardon the pun). Architect a sensible solution not an ideal.

RAID is relevant here from a storage point of view. The poster wants to know how to get as much GB per £ as possible but have redundancy in reserve. That is provided in several examples in this thread. Seems clear enough to me.