Hi and thanks in advance for checking out this thread. I have a small home office where three people usually work. I have one 500GB WD EBook attached to one computer which used to be the backup solution and has since turned into our sole source for working files. Currently it is attached usb to one of the computers and mapped to the others. What is the best solution to get out of this situation? I fear one day coming into the office and the HD burns out with no backup and our business is gone. My thoughts (I'm no expert) were to build a basic modern computer, dual core, 1 or 2 bg ram, and put 3 500GB in Raid5 for 1TB of redundancy. Can anyone give me a handle if I'm on the right track or not? Thanks again.
Sounds like a plan, you could potentially use four 400GB drive instead to get a bit more storage. RAID5 is very good for redundancy, but do yourself a favour and run it off a proper hardware RAID card, not software RAID, or you will find it a pain.
Thanks for the reply. I have been digging around and finding one that is a legit hardware raid solution is harder than I imagined. So far I have two solutions: 1st Solution: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822102020 Which I found cheaper ($319) @ Lagoom: http://www.lagoom.com/THECUS_N3200_3-BAY_NAS_3.0TB_RAID/N3200/partinfo-id-579814.html 2nd Solution: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3986411&csid=_22 plus a raid card such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102062 which would bring me around the $250 range. Neither of these comes with the hd's I would need for the RAID but I am not sure which one to go with. I have read somewhere that RAID5 needs a bit of processing power, others say it doesn't, some say that a lot of NAS systems are really software based and not hardware, etc. Any suggestions??
Hardware RAID certainly isn't cheap, but worth bothering with. Your links haven't come out properly though, you'll need to repost them.
Just passing thru as i like researching RAID on PC's to see if it's any good (i use software and hardware RAID for a living, but not on PC's). Anyways, it looks like there are cards out there that support loads of drives i.e. http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=298158
I seem to recall someone saying the RocketRaid cards aren't as good as others because they still place load on the CPU, and I think he recommended these instead: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=417776 Clearly very expensive though...
Soz, that was purely the first example i came across, i was googling as i found the above link for a 3-bay RAID5 NAS (with no drives) to be incredibly expensive. I was thinking there would be RAID5 controller cards out there that would prove cheaper (and better value) than a NAS enclosure.
Have you guys followed the links from my post above? Confused as I'm not sure if you have just simply missed them or have dismissed them as going down the wrong path? Am I way off?
I've been looking at them, i did recognise the PROMISE TX4 card, a little while back i was pondering getting one of those (they seem very good cards) but in the end bought a cheapy equivalent as i had no more free slots left for extra hard drives anyway. i was reading this for the TX4 card - I'd have thought the TX4 had enough grunt for RAID5, it would appear not.
Sorry, didn't notice you'd corrected them. The Thecus box, and the PCI card in the barebone will work, but they will be slower than normal hard drives due to the lower bandwidth interfaces.
I'm just reading up some more on the 3-bay NAS, i might even consider one of these myself, though only 3 bays is a bit stingy, i would normally like to have a few spare drives available. I could maybe buy one to use as a JBOD, to serve out music and movies around the house from 3 separate drives... hmmm.. pondering.... edited for disgraceful spelling
3 should be fine for me because we are only currently using about 3-400GB for the business now and 3 500's in a RAID 5 should yield me 1TB. If you are thinking about getting something as a media server, I would definitely go with something expandable. I'm having a hard time picking between the build-your-own and the thecus. I think I'm leaning towards the thecus because the compatability portion of the b.y.o.s is basically already done for me.
So I think I am going to go with the Thecus http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822102020 This is for business only so 1tb is going to suit just fine. And, after searching for a quality raid 5 card it turns out they hard not cheap. In fact, the card alone was approaching the same price as the thecus. Thanks for your help. Much appreciated.
No worries. I noticed there's a 4-bay version of the Thecus but it's way more expensive. I will continue to ponder the 3-bay, for me it would be worth it to not constantly have a pc on just to serve out music/movies to the various xboxes around the house. All my backups live on loads of USB2.0 caddies so it would be nice to have something instead that's self-sufficient on the network (well it wouldn't be left running 24/7 but hey). edited for spelling
I've done loads more researching (and pondering) of the Thecus NAS's since my last post, and finally decided against them. The 3 and 4 bay offerings draw the same amount of power as a PC, and the only reason i wanted a NAS unit was to have some device that would draw (much) less power than a PC. Here's another recent thread on NAS discussions - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/698692
