Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with RAID

Whats the best Media Center setup for a lot of data?

schindyguy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:14:17 -0800

Whats the best Media Center setup for a lot of data? I have music (mp3, wav); videos (divx, wmv, mp4, mkv, etc); photos that I would like to aggregate into one place: a vista media center. A major chunk of data will be in the form of unedited hd videos downloaded from a sony hdr camera. I have a home theatre with components and networking stored in a closet. I have a couple other locations (on my network) that I possibly would like to serve the content to around my house (which could be done using extenders like xboxs or dlink/netgear extenders).

I am looking for a storage capacity of around 5-8 TB

I have thought about a few setups:

1. Use a frontend computer like a dell studio hybrid (via hdmi) to connect to my main home theatre screen. Storage would come in the form of a RAID WHS (windows home server). I dont know how to configure RAID or the WHS so I would have to be very motivated to take this route (unless there is an out of the box solution). This is probably the cheapest option I think.

2. Use a frontend computer like a dell studio hybrid (via hdmi) to connect to my main home theatre screen. Storage would come in the form of a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. The largest version they have is $2400 and will only give me 3tb of storage after RAID. I would need 2 of them.

3. Use a top of line XPS studio desktop loaded with a 2 tb without RAID (configured one for $2100) and have storage in the form of Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (once again though I would be spending $4800 for 6tb of storage capacity).

I would also like backing up the 5-8tb of data to something (I was thinking mozy unlimited at $6/mo but thought it might be slow to transfer all that data). Are there any other options?

Which option 1, 2, 3, or something I havent thought about would be the best option?

Sata RAID controller in V64?

notsnot — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:23:14 -0800

SATA card for Vista 64? I've recently gone to the dark side and upgraded to Vista 64 (from xp64...ugh!). My current mother board has the usual bank of SATA ports, and I've been RAIDing pairs of drives (mirrored) from those ports.

The motherboard is wonky - arrays break apart, the LAN ports wake up and die randomly, and identical BIOS settings have different results. I'm replacing it.

I'd like to get a dedicated hardware RAID controller. Mostly, for scratch space - I do a lot of photoshop, and would like to make a striped array for scratch. (the other drives will be boot, and storage that will be synctoy-backed up offsite.) However, I'm having a hell of a time finding cards (mostly looking at Newegg) at a reasonable price that are specifically Vista 64 compatible. Vista has been out for what, 1.5 years, so you'd think they got around to it by now.

My other thing is price. As evidenced by my use of existing SATA drives, it should be obvious that I'm kinda tight right now.

In short, I need a four-port, SATA, hardware raid controller that is *sure* to work in Vista 64, and won't break the bank.

Tell me about current NAS manufacturers and technology?

loquacious — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:53:34 -0800

Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations. Deployment is for a mixed platform small office - about 8 seats. Platforms are XP, Vista and OS X.

I'm assuming SAMBA protocol for shares. Usage is low to medium - the office needs a data/file server for storing and reliably sharing typical office documents.

They emphatically do not need an actual server. There's no forseeable upgrade path to an in-office Exchange server or domain controller or the like - this is handled by a remote office through VPN. I could build them a PC-based solution using something like FreeNAS but that would be overkill, and I don't want to introduce a possibly flaky desktop/server into their office.

What NAS models or manufacturers are considered the most reliable? Best support? Best value?

Much thanks in advance!

Ew. This is not the type of roach I thought you'd be passing.

numinous — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:58:26 -0800

Joe's-Apartment-Filter: Advice and anecdotes on how to best roach-bomb our place? I'm moving and want to obliterate these monsters!

We’re moving! After two years of terrible management, university take-over, neighbors predisposed to frat parties, and a slew of other issues, I have finally reached the end of my lease. Praise be! Very recently, I’ve discovered yet another reason why this move is so opportune: roaches. I’ve had the good fortune to have never before lived in a place with roaches. So, when I tell you that one recently crawled over my foot while I was in the bathroom (shudder), you’ll understand that I'm absolutely horrified. Horrified and disgusted and just EW YUCK WTF GROSS GET THE HELL OUTTA MY HOUSE OMG.

As I’m so totally new to this (horrifying) game, I don’t know where to start when it comes to extermination and prevention. I’ve already bought roach traps, and set them up in various places, and have already reduced the number of roaches encountered to maybe one every two weeks. BUT! I really, really, really, really, reaaaaaaaaaaally don’t want to transport any of these beast during the move and inadvertently introduce them into our shiny new abode.

Based on advice culled from previous AskMe’s (one, two), I’ve decided that roach bombing our apartment is our best bet for complete roach annihilation. I’m inclined to go with the Raid Fogger, as it’s widely available and not too pricey. I have already purchased a big box of Borax, and have sprinkled it in various spots throughout our current apartment. But this is not enough to soothe my mind and quell my fears that they are still lingering just behind the bookcase, or in the couch, or wherever. I want not to live in fear. I want peace of mind. But most of all, I want to kill with extreme prejudice. So here’s the part where you offer all of your anecdotes and sagely advice!

Do these bombs/foggers actually work?

If I use these foggers, do I need to activate one in each room of our apartment?

How toxic is this stuff? Is it dangerous to humans? (e.g. if there is residue left from it, and it gets on my hands and I rub my eye or pick my teeth, is there a potential for harm?)

What stuff should I move before initiating the fogging mechanism? (Flatware? Kitchen utensils? Sealed food? Electronic equipment? Specific textiles?)

Will food left in the fridge be safe for consumption after the fogging?

How long should we wait after activation to return into the apartment? (Raid suggests 3 hours, but that seems rather short. Is it?)

Is there anything that I've overlooked? If so, please feel free to supply me with that advice, too. Thank you (seriously).

Software RAID Dies: Which disk is dead?

SlyBevel — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:06:22 -0800

A disk in your Server2003 software RAID fails: How do you know which physical disk to pull? I'm adding another RAID5 array to my server, and I'm thinking ahead about disaster management.

The whole point of having a RAID is that if a disk fails, I pop in a new one, the RAID gets rebuilt, and it's no big deal. But which disk to remove?

If they're all identical, and they're all on a PCI SATA card, then you can't just pop into the BIOS and see which port has a dead drive, because the BIOS won't be aware of the SATA card.

And the BIOS probably wouldn't be aware of a partial failure anyway. If the drive registers on the port but doesn't handle data anymore, the BIOS won't know.

Is this something that should be thought of as the drives are added to the system. Maybe add each drive one at a time and mark each with its ID as reported by the Disk Management snap in? (There doesn't seem to actually be an ID for each drive here, other than the label, ie: Disc 0, Disc 1, CD-ROM 0).

New SCSI card is hiding the old SCSI card-thus hiding the RAIDed system drives. Help!

bartleby — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:31:42 -0800

RAID HBA help sought: Server has its internal drives RAID'ed by an internal RAID card. I am trying to add another SCSI HBA card so I can hook up a nifty external SCSI-to-SATA RAID DAS tower. Problem is, however I install the new HBA, it "hides" the existing internal RAID card, meaning that the server doesn't find its own internal drives and can't boot. What to do? Very technical question, and I'm posting it elsewhere, but I often get my best andswer from MeFi.

I have a few ideas, but unfortunately this is a production machine with no failover/parallel device; so taking it down to experiment is a problem. (I also don't want to end up rebuilding the internal RAID.) Hoping to get some ideas to eliminate trials/errors.

IBM Xseries tower server, with an Adaptec/IBM serveRAID 6i handing the RAIDing of its internal drives.

Trying to add a PCI-to-SCSI HBA made by LSI, the 22320-R, to use ONLY as a pass-through to get a SCSI hookup outside the server itself to an external SCSI-to-SATA tower that has its own RAID controller. All I need the LSI card to do is get me an external SCSI port.

Problem is, when installed in any of the PCI slots, the new LSI card takes over and is the only visible SCSI controller; it's somehow taking priority or disabling the internal SCSI RAID controller that handles the internal system and data drives.

Tried already:
1) Disable boot in the LSI card's BIOS, for one or both channels;
still doesn't see any other controllers or drives - "no system disk"
2) SCSI adapters will come up in order of their ID;
making the internal ID 0 and the external ID 1 does nothing niether does doing it the other way.
3) SCSI adapters will come up in order of their ID;
I've tried it in every PCI slot on the mobo; not only does that not fix it, but it never reports being in the slot it's actually in - put it in slot 5, it says it's in 4; put in 2 and it says it's in #3.
4) tried it in dual-channel, single-channel A, and single-channel B; all behave the same.
5) tried swapping slots with the internal card (slot#4) and mixing and matching various slot permutations: same behavior every time.

Remove the LSI card, and everything behaves as it should.
Insert the LSI card anywhere, and it obscures any other RAID controllers, regardless if I've disabled booting in the LSI

Am I missing something, or do I just have a bad card?

What's a good external, roughly 1TB usable storage device that does its own RAID-1?

adipocere — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:18:41 -0800

What's a good external, roughly 1TB usable storage device that does its own RAID-1? Given the deep bashing I noted for the MyBook (and specifically the Western Digitals within), I was wondering if anyone had a recommended, similar external drive with RAID-1 capabilities, in the same price range. Is the LaCie 2big worth a damn? Are there others on the market? Or is the MyBook as good as it gets?

I'm looking for:
* Hardware RAID-1
* USB 2.0 connection (Firewire would be okay, eSATA would not)
* 1 Terabyte usable space post-RAID
* Can be formatted for NTFS

Let's eliminate early on the "thinking outside of the box" suggestions that do not fit:
* Two SATA disks and a special card doing RAID-1, inside a big ole case (that's the "solution" I tried and did not like)
* Amazon's storage service
* Pico-ITX and your favorite distro of Linux encased in a project box doing software RAID
* NAS
* Two disks and software RAID from Windows
* The Drobo

Yes, I am aware that RAID is for availability. Yes, there is a separate backup plan.

How can I mount WD Worldbook drives in Linux?

jackofsaxons — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:00:36 -0800

I have two hard drives out of a Western Digital Worldbook (WD10000D033) that both show up as a Linux RAID partition in cfdisk. How can I mount these drives to pull the data off?

Help me clear up some conflicting info.

Ceci n'est pas une marionnette de chaussette — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:46:27 -0800

Two quick computer hardware questions before I try setting up a new drive. Ok, so I'm going to be buying some new hardware soon and I just want to clear up any confusion before I buy something I don't really want.

I'll looking to buy a PCI-X RAID controller card but I only have open basic PCI slots on my motherboard. Are PCI-X cards backwards compatible by default? My local computer store rep says no, but a geeky friend claimed yes, and the rep must have been thinking of PCI-E.

Also, I'll be putting together a 3.75TB array, but it won't be my boot disk. Will I have any problems with that under windows XP SP2? Again some folks have told me XP can't handle anything above 2TB at all, when others have said it'll be fine as long as it's not the boot disk.

So I guess both of these questions come down to the fact that I trust you, dear hive mind, more then random sales reps or computer dudes I know.

Thanks!

Why, oh why, RAID5 doest thou split and die?

Jezztek — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:25:44 -0800

Help me make sense of my wonky RAID-5 failure. Ok, so I have a RAID-5 array composed of six 320GB disks (so a total space of about 1.5TB) on a AEC-6897 controller (which is a controller I've always thought felt a bit squirrelly).

Today I discovered that the array has failed. I figured a drive must have failed, and I'd need to replace it. Not a huge a deal I assumed (and I thought I heard a drive do that *click* *click* noise a few times last night so I figured this might be coming).

Well, the strange thing is that when I pulled up my RAID utility to see which drive needed replaced instead of showing my 6 disk array with one failed disk, it is showing two separate arrays. One array with the first four disks, and one with the other two (both of which, naturally, are failed). But none of the individual drives appear to be failed.

I'm not sure how well I described my problem so here are some screen grabs of what I'm dealing with.

Any ideas how I should proceed? Is this a controller failure? If so can I just buy a duplicate controller, plug everything back in in the same order and expect it to work? Or is it a lost cause? Any other ideas?

Thanks much,
Jeremy

Network RAID using Windows 2003 Server?

Ziggy Zaga — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:26:50 -0800

I have two workstations running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise that function as a PDC/BDC, with the PDC also functioning as a file server. Is there any way I can set up a sort of "network RAID" where the BDC will also act as a file server that continually mirrors the files on the PDC? The goal here is redundancy and availability; I realize synchronization over ethernet will not be anywhere near as fast as any hardware/software RAID implementation...I cannot do RAID at all on either because the workstations will not accommodate more than one drive apiece.

Yes, I am aware:
- hardware NAS solutions exist,
- Windows Storage Server 2003 exists,
- and many Linux software NAS options exist,

...but since this is not an enterprise-level endeavor I'm trying to make do with what I have-- two Win2K3 servers and an ethernet infrastructure.

Can this be done?

Thanks

IDE RAID Enclosure

chunking express — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:02:16 -0800

Does anyone know good IDE Raid enclosures? I currently own two 250 gig IDE hard drives and want to set them up in a single RAID enclosure. I have been looking around for a while but can only find SATA raid enclosures. I'm asking for my brother. He currently owns the Netgear SC101 and says it didn't really work that great.

Upgrade RAID 5

deadparrot — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:23:57 -0800

What is the best way to upgrade a RAID 5 Array to bigger size hard drives? I have a Powervault 725n..with 4 120 GB HDD's in a RAID 5 configuration. I want to upgrade to 4 500GB HDD's..Can I just replace one drive at a time..rebuilding the array each time? Or does anyone know the best way to approach this? Thanks in advance.

Partition soup!

gjc — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:11:10 -0800

Linux filter: I have a Fedora8 machine set up acting as a file server. I want to boot to software RAID5. More inside. I have it all set up and running now, but in a sub-optimal (to me) way. It has three disks. On two, a 1gb /boot partition mirrored. On the third, a 1gb swap partition. Then the rest of the three drives are RAID5 mounted as root, containing everything else.

I know enough *nix to have done all that successfully.

What I'd like to be able to do is create a boot cd that does the job of that /boot partition, so that the three drives can be fully devoted to RAID5. The CD boots, gets the kernel loaded, mounts the RAID and the machine takes off like normal. In my mind, this would be a more "elegant" setup than the current partition soup.

In theory, I just create a cd with ISOLINUX and copy the boot partition to it. I just can't work out the step-by-step of it. My google-fu has failed me; all searches I can think of lead to livecds and rescue cds that have their own filesystems and tools installed on them.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

(swap would become a swap file rather than a partition- the system has enough memory that it really doesn't use swap at all, and I'm not using it as a workstation, so I don't anticipate that becoming a bottleneck. Worst case, I'd put in another drive just for swap)

Help get data from a raid partition

KirTakat — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:43:24 -0800

I would like to recover data from two SATA hard drives that were once part of a single logical partition under Linux A year ago I got a Thecus N2100 that I was using to store a bunch of miscellaneous data on. I was having some speed issues with it (video files streamed VERY slowly), so I decided to try updating the bios. During the middle of the process the system locked up, and it never recovered. So now I have two hard drives that were configured as a single logical drive that I would like to get some data from. Vista detects the drives fine, but obviously can't access the data. SpinRite says that each drive is actually separated into two partitions, one is a Linux partition, the other is a "Raid Autodetect." The drives themselves are SATA drives and, other than not being able to access the data, are seemingly fine.

So how can I get this data off the drives so I can reformat them? I'm using a Vista system primarily, and I've connected the drives using a SATA to USB connector. If there is a good Linux live disc that can do this, I'm perfectly willing to do that. Suggestions?

Growable Linux hardware RAID?

Kadin2048 — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:36:39 -0800

How can I make a growable hardware RAID-5 Linux system? Is LVM the right choice, or am I setting myself up for trouble? Lots of geeky details follow. I'm setting up a home file server / project box. Consistent with my budget, I'm using only the finest, most sophisticated hardware … from 1998.

What I have is a Dell PowerEdge 2300. It has a PCI hardware SCSI RAID card, called the "PERC2/SC" (known to people outside Dell as the "AMI MegaRAID 466"), attached to a six-slot SCAII drive bay. Right now I have 4 74GB SCSI disks in the bay set up as a RAID-5. I want to have the option of adding more drives later on, bringing it up to 6x74GB in a RAID-5.

The card's BIOS configuration utility supports expanding the array volume by adding disks later on -- that's not a problem. But what I'm concerned about is the filesystem that I might build on top of that volume. Obviously I don't want to hose all my data when I install an additional drive and expand the array.

I've been doing some reading and it seems like LVM might be part of the answer, so to that end I installed Ubuntu-server, creating a small ext3 /boot partition and giving the rest of the free space to LVM as a physical volume. In fdisk, this looks basically like: (cutting block numbers)

Disk /dev/sda: 219.8 GB 26724 cylinders

/dev/sda1   1   26274   Extended

/dev/sda5* 1      31    Linux

/dev/sda6   32 26724 Linux LVM

I have this gut feeling that this won't work when I expand the array, and the "disk" that the LVM PV is sitting on (/dev/sda) suddenly increases in size. The fact that I can't find much information on growing a LVM physical volume isn't reassuring, either.

So, is this really the way to go? And if not, what's the best option? Should I forget LVM and just put the filesystem right down on the RAID volume directly? (I'm planning on using JFS for low CPU usage and easy online resizing, but I'm open to other suggestions.) Should I eliminate the /boot partition and turn the whole RAID volume into an LVM PV somehow?

External, wireless, RAID-capable storage (and a partridge in a pear tree)

fusinski — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:07:27 -0800

I am trying to find external storage that is accessible via wireless networking. One important caveat is that it has to be RAID-capable. Mirrored RAID is important to me for the data security, so I can't budge on this requirement. So far I have found Apple's Time Capsule that doesn't have RAID (and probably doesn't allow you to swap out drives yourself anyway) and this product by LaCie that satisfies all the requirements except wireless networking (and it's expensive). Optimally I would just like to buy an enclosure and stick in my own drives, but beggars can't be choosers and such. Anyone know of any product out there that does all this?

A->B instead of B->A?!?!?

notsnot — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:39:13 -0800

How to recover from sync-ing a RAID 1 the wrong way? So I bought a couple 300G drives a while back, put 'em in RAID 1, and one of them died. Ijust now finally got around to RMAing the defective drive back to Seagate. Mind you, for the last nine months I've been using this single drive as a repository for all my photoshop work (all the RAW files are on another RAID pair).

So last night, I hooked up the fresh drive, turned on RAID in the bios, designated the two drives as a RAID group in the POST ("hit F10...") doohickey, and went to Windows. There, I ran the Nvidia media manager, saw both drives, and told it to sychronize the drives. This morning, I woke up and looked at the drive letter represented by these drives....and it's empty. In fact, Windows sees an unformatted drive. Best I can tell, the Nvidia program synced the drive with all my beautiful data to the empty drive, instead of the other way around.

WTF do I do now? First thing, I shut the machine down, and turned off RAID in the bios, so I can see both drives, both looking to Windows like unformatted drives. I'm unsure what I can do now to save my data! (Yes, I know I should have backed the fuck up. I didn't.)

Other information: ASUS M2n-SLI, Seagate 300G drives, Phenom/8G RAM. I'm not near the computer until this evening, but wanted to get y'alls thoughts.

RAID-5 Array on a new motherboard?

cameradv — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:09:39 -0800

Can a RAID-5 array created on one computer transfer to another computer, data intact? The kicker: different SATA controllers. OK: I had a 3 drive RAID-5 setup working fine all SATA drives connected to an MSI K8N motherboard (AMD CPU, with nVidia chipset). I think the SATA driver controller is by SIL. Something fried that computer, though the drives were still in a healthy array.

I built a new computer, new Intel chipset motherboard (Abit IP35 PRO), but when i turned it all on, the three drives are recognized, but the Intel MAtrix Storage Manager ROM says their type/status is "Non-RAID Disk"

If I create a RAID volume with these disks, I'm sure to lose all the existing data, right? Is there any path to recovering the data from this new computer? Or do I have to re-construct the old computer with the old motherboard to recover the data?

RAIDers of the nVidia Board

maxwelton — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:27:38 -0800

nvidia RAID: Can I just turn it off? I got tired of the inevitable failure of the onboard nVidia RAID in my desktop, and a few months ago rather than futzing around with "fixing" it every time it happened I just started ignoring the RAID warning on startup. Instead of having one mirrored drive, I have had two separate drives as a result--it's been fine.

Can I just go into the RAID setup on startup and turn it off? Or will that take my broken-but-working c: and i: drives and turn them into soup?

I was going to ghost the current c: to a new drive and then use that new drive after turning off the RAID, but if I don't have to go through the hassle I'd rather not.

scsi pci raid server died, urgent data recovery?

tslugmo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:46:12 -0800

Got a 2000 server with PCI SCSI RAID card (Mirror) and the mobo seems to have died. I just want to recover the data and host it on another machine. How do I do that? I've installed the PCI card in another computer running XP, and in Disk Mgmt I saw "Import Foreign Disk" which I did, and now I see both volumes. Then I click on Reactivate Disk, but it does not change anything. The volume reads Failed (Active).

Any ideas? Super time-sensitive!

What will happen if I set up Windows Home Server with all of my existing external drives?

jbiz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:51:36 -0800

What will happen if I set up Windows Home Server with all of my existing external drives? I currently have several external USB drives. Over the past couple of years, I've been using two of them as the primary drives, holding different kinds of data. Then I have another 2 that serve as backups of the primaries that I would manually populate on a regular basis using robocopy.

If I were to install Windows Home Server and plug all of these drives in, what would happen? Would it create the big "storage cloud" I've been hearing about automatically, essentially creating one huge file share with software RAID? Or would the drives have to be reformatted in the process?

What would be the best way to go about setting this up? I want to use WHS to create my home network storage/backup solution but I don't want to lose any of the data that's already on my existing drives.

Thanks!

I do this for a living, really...you'd think I could fix it.

geckoinpdx — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:03:45 -0800

I know it's early in the morning, but hopefully someone who can help is out there. My RAID-5 array just went titsup...while attempting to add a disk. Please tell me I didn't lose a terrabyte of mostly irreplaceable data... MeFi tech support, help! This is a little long, sorry.

I had a three-disk raid-5 array on a windows server 2003 box (three 500GB WD drives), giving me just under 1TB of space. I recently (last night) tried to add a fourth disk to add space. Used the mediashield utility application (which is how I built it in the first place, as well as successfully replace a previous failed drive) to add the disk. Everything started well.

Right at 5%, it choked (it may be relevant (or not) that right about this time something tried to access data on the array). The application (and O/S) froze (yes I'm sure it wasn't just grinding away in the background). Had to reboot.

After rebooting, both the BIOS RAID utility and the windows-based application recognised what I was trying to do and attempted to continue building the new 1.5TB array. Right at 5% again, the app threw up a "raid access failure"...on one of the original three disks.

click. click. click.

One of the original three drives was what was clicking. Went out and picked up a shiny new drive to replace it.

I decided to hell with it and wanted to just go back to where I was with three disks, but the RAID manager is having none of it, it keeps trying to rebuild the new four-disk array.

If it helps, the current configuration is this:

drive 1: good original 1TB-array disk
drive 2: good original 1TB-array disk
drive 3: bad clicky original 1TB-array disk
drive 4: good new 1.5TB-array disk (only built to 5%)

The short version of the question is this: can I get two new drives and successfully rebuild the array that it's trying to build (1.5TB), or is everything lost?

I apologise for the rambling but this data represents eight years of media collecting, a significant portion of which is irreplaceable. Upset is a mild term.

(Yes, I know the mantra "RAID does not replace backups" but I haven't been able to find a cost-effective (or affordable) 1TB+ backup solution)

Four hard drives. One problem.

ImJustRick — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:40:52 -0800

What can I do with 4 big IDE drives? I have four biggish IDE drives (is that what they're called?).

I had planned to buy a Firewire 4-bay enclosure and make a RAID out of them, but 4-bay enclosures are spendy and noisy.

I keep seeing deals on 1-bay enclosures ($22 on DealMac! Yeah!); if I pick up four of thoise is there some way I can turn them all into one big drive? Specifically what I want to do is store all my movies and MP3s on one huge server that I can access throughout my house.

Or is there some other way I can use them?

External RAID 5

tumult — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:29:37 -0800

The amount of data I now have makes it impractical to continue backing up to DVD. I was planning on building a RAID 5 array, but I'm in over my head. The computer doing the hosting would be an older PowerMac G5, which means PCI-X. It would be sharing over my network (gigabit). I have over a terabyte of data to store, so I was planning on buying 4 500gb drives. In case you've never looked inside a PowerMac G5, there are only two drive bays, so the drives would have to be external.

So how the hell do I do this? I've already seen the Drobo and I'm not too interested – it's $500 and butt slow. I'm totally willing to spend $500, but not on something that slow. I don't need the array to be super high performance, but 11mb/sec isn't going to cut it. Also, their marketing gets on my nerves ("data robot"? come on.)

I've looked into some cards, but I'm not sure what to get. External SATAII connectors and an enclosure? Most of the manufacturers I've seen so far (areca, high point, etc) have really sketchy websites and vague compatibility information.

To sum up:
Need RAID 5 solution, drives must be external.
Must be compatible with PCI-X, Mac OS X.
Everything would be plugged into a UPS.