The best disk config

[Steve]

Hi guys,

1TB worth of storage just landed at Kez central... 4x 250GB Seagate drives, and I'm working out the best way to set them up.

My NVIDIA SATA chipset is on NF4 AMD, not Intel, so no RAID 5

However I do have RAID 1, 0 and 0 + 1 to play with. I see myself as having four options...

1. Four disk RAID 0 - flies like something off a stick, but I'll need damn good backups!
2. Three disk RAID 0, one disk backup drive - backup drive to boot from in emergencies and to make scheduled backups easy.
3. Four disk RAID 0 + 1 - Safe and fast, but only 500GB of storage
4. Two disk RAID 0, two disk RAID 1 - RAID 1 for OS, apps and docs, RAID 0 for downloads and games (things I can easily get back if I lose them).

Currently I'm leaning towards the fourth option as I can set it up and forget about it, only having to do external backups weekly. If anyone else has better suggestions however, please hurl them in my direction!

[mike_w]

Apologies for the slight thread hijacking, what is the difference between RAID 0+1 and 10?

Out of those options, number four looks best. (Mmmm, RAID 1!)

[Steve]

Apologies for the slight thread hijacking, what is the difference between RAID 0+1 and 10?

Out of those options, number four looks best. (Mmmm, RAID 1!)

One mirrors then stripes, the other stripes then mirrors. As far as space available they're the same, although technically one is better than the other... can't remember which.

[RavenNight]

I'd stripe then mirror Raid 0+1, its what the servers I use run and its fantastic

[GDVS]

RAID 5 if available.

[EDIT]Ok re-read and I see it's not an option. Apologies for being a muppet.[/EDIT]

[atrull]

raid 10 for performance+high safety levels, raid 5 for maximum use of available disks with a degree of safety.. but it is more dangerous than raid10 or raid 1 or raid 0+1

[Steve]

Just to reiterate guys (I know one of you has realised ) but I don't have RAID 5.

Well, I do have RAID 5, but it's on the Silicon Image controller... and I really don't feel like getting 15MB/s from my array.

Incidentally I used to run RAID 5 when I had an addin card... loved it.

[RDL]

Just out of interest how much critical data will you have? I voted option 4, but if you don't have too much data needing backed up you could quite easily set up an automatic zip backup, or burn a DVD or two every night/week, thus enabling option 1 and an extra 250gbs of storage!

[Nox]

You forgot Option 5: JBOD

Really, though, it will depend exactly what you want to do with it, baring in mind you will see negligible real life performance gains if you play games from striping. Though mirroring certainly has its merits. I have a seperate 120GB partition on my setup, that is exactly the same size as my external USB drive - once a week, a complete backup - its where any important data goes.

Nox

[aidanjt]

I'd personally opt for RAID5 if you're talking real storage, RAID10 will clobber 2 disks and depending on implimentation the performance can be pants too.

If you don't want high CPU usage and low bandwidth on array writes then get your mittens on a 3ware RAID card, I know they ain't cheap, but they are hot fast and work with practically any computer with a PCI 2.2 bus regardless of operating system.

[kalniel]

3. Four disk RAID 0 + 1 - Safe and fast, but only 500GB of storage

Only??

[GDVS]

Only??

Only. My media storage is getting insane and I still have 5 series of West Wing and several Buffy series to get on there. I could do with a TeraStation or something but don't have £600 lying around.

500GB is easy to use if you store video on there. I can't wait until H264 is a usable standard (x264 is a long way from being ready yet).

[kalniel]

What's wrong with DVDs?

[shaithis]

Please consider RAID5

Might even be tempted to part with my 3Ware Escalade 8506

[kempez]

RAID 0 + 1 tbh

[schmunk]

I chose option 4, but could you not stretch the £70 or so for a 4-channel PCI SATA RAID controller?