Building a personal file server and some Raid questions

Thorbar

I'm currently looking at setting up a raid rack that will act as a personal file server. Previously I've used external usb cases for extra disk space but I've found it a painful experience, they're noisy take up an extra plug space and you have to switch them on everytime you want to use them.

So I decided to put together the cheapest components I could find a computer that would act as a personal repository for all our media files. The most important thing was motherboard that could support 4 sata harddrives and a case with plenty of space.

I was planning on building a linux based system and using samba to share the files to my windows box and HTPC. My plan is once I've set it up to have no moniter/keyboard/mice attached just stick a wireless card in it export the x server to cygwin running on my other computers to control it. Might stick it in a closet or somewhere to hide it.

Anyway my post is two fold I want to post up the parts I'm looking at putting together and see if anyone has any suggestions for cheaper alternatives or if they think its not up to the job and ask a few raid questions.

Here's the system:

CA-001-RB   	OcUK Value Rainbow Series Case Dark Blue With 350W PSU (CA-001-RB)  	
	£19.95 	£19.95 	
MB-120-AS 	Asus A8N5X nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-120-AS) 	
	£49.95 	£49.95 	
CP-140-AM 	AMD Sempron 64 2600+ 1.6GHz (Socket 754) CPU - OEM (CP-140-AM) 	
	£37.95 	£37.95 	
MY-002-OK 	OcUK Value 512MB PC3200 184pin DDR Memory (MY-002-OK) 	
	£22.95 	£22.95 	
HS-029-AK 	Akasa AK-860 Low Noise CPU Cooler (Socket 754 & 939) (HS-029-AK) 	
	£3.95 	£3.95 	
HD-089-MD 	Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 300GB 6V300F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-089-MD) 	
	£64.95 	£64.95 	
GX-016-HT 	HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 7000 64MB DDR TV-Out (PCI) - Retail (R7000-PTW64D) (GX-016-HT) 	
	£19.95 	£19.95 	

Those prices are from overclockers.co.uk, comes to just over 400 euro, I know komplett are doing external 300 usb drives but I'm just sick of having so many small noisy boxes with flashing lights hanging off my desk. Also I want a solution that can grow as my files(cough linux isos) collection grows.

So I've read a few articles on raid, I've never set up a system before so I'm not altogether sure about it. I was planning on using Raid 0, and going for no redundancy is this a bad idea? Don't really want to sacrifice a disk to just doing parity checks but would be crushing blow to lose everything at once.

Should I not bother with Raid and create a separate file system for each harddrive as I add it to the server?

Seeing as I'm starting out with one hard drive and plan to add more as I need them am I even able to use Raid? Do you need to reformat each drive when you create a Raid or is it possible to add additional ones later?

Anyone have any experience with trying to do something similar or know of any obvious pitfalls that I'm missing?

B00MSTICK

Thorbar wrote:

Anyone have any experience with trying to do something similar or know of any obvious pitfalls that I'm missing?

For a start your mobo is socket 939 and your proc. is socket 754

Apart from that I know nothing about Samba or cygwin

MunsterCycling

Thorbar wrote:

So I've read a few articles on raid, I've never set up a system before so I'm not altogether sure about it. I was planning on using Raid 0, and going for no redundancy is this a bad idea? Don't really want to sacrifice a disk to just doing parity checks but would be crushing blow to lose everything at once.

Should I not bother with Raid and create a separate file system for each harddrive as I add it to the server?

Seeing as I'm starting out with one hard drive and plan to add more as I need them am I even able to use Raid? Do you need to reformat each drive when you create a Raid or is it possible to add additional ones later?

Anyone have any experience with trying to do something similar or know of any obvious pitfalls that I'm missing?

You be better adding a hardware raid controller to the machine if you do go that route, takes the strain off the processor

andy1249

To answer some of your questions ,

No you cannot use raid with just one hard drive , you must have at least 2 drives installed and the drives should be identical for best results. ( They dont have to be , but its better if they are ! )

Raid 0 is an access time performance booster and is typically seen ( in my case anyway ) on gaming machines where the boost in access times is a benefit. It is very volatile and is not recommended for a file server.

Ideally you want two hard-drives , ( buy another of those maxtors ) and install them in a mirror configuration , this means the same data is on both drives , for a file server that means back up in case of a hard drive failure , thats the way you should be thinking for a basic file server.

For most raid 0 setups using Standard PC motherboards like the one you have listed , breaking the raid configuration means losing all the data , so no , you cannot add more drives later , for mirror setups you should be able to add drives ,


Hope this helps.