Need more storage

Sebzy

My workstation has about 1TB of SATA storage here and I ran out of space just a few days ago. Been trying to delete old unwanted shots but the only helps a bit still have a further 6GB on cards to process. So I took the plunge and will creating a small raid system to store all my RAW.

What I got so far
1x Sunsway/ST Lab PCI SATA RAID 4P, SiL3114
4x Serial ATA1/2 cable 100 cm
4x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
1x 400Watt ATX PSU (Hot wired)

Now here's where I may need some help.
Going to have to make up some sort of housing/cooling for the little block of disks anyone tried this before ????

What raid do you think would suit beat if it's only going to be 10-20MB raw files. Raid 0+1/4/5

Like the looks of 0+1 so I would have 1TB+Mirror hmmm cant decide.

=== Edit ===
Oh forgot to say the whole rig is costing me 560Euro.

rymus

If I was going to do that, I'd go for raid 5. For cooling, what about those slim hard drive coolers you can get? Other than that, I'd be looking at a small server case. Normally a decent server case will have at least one fan housing right next to the hard drive caddy... Or of course you could invest in a few of those hard drive coolers...

That is of course presuming you'd want to keep the storage as a seperate unit from your working PC... which again, is what I'd be doing.

Shiny

I assume rymus that the server setup would be for storate only?

What whould happen if you were editing in CS or browsing in LR.

Wouldn't there be an annoying latency even if the connection
was 1Gbit/10Gbit.

CraggyIslander

Still looking at my own nas options...... no $$ at moment as have a trip to Canada coming up and want a new laptop too (the ol P III is struggling!)

But this looks good, you'd just need the HD's nothing else

Sebzy

Yep might go with this

Clear plexiglass housing kinda cube like. 18cm deep 12cm Wide and 15cm high
4 Drives stacked on top of eachother with a 12 cm 12v fan mounted at one end leaving the PSU to be mounted on top now just run the cables and hey presto a little block of raid.

Or if anyone has any better ideas???

JMcL

Shiny wrote:

I assume rymus that the server setup would be for storate only?

What whould happen if you were editing in CS or browsing in LR.

Wouldn't there be an annoying latency even if the connection
was 1Gbit/10Gbit.

Before I got my current setup with a reasonablly decent amount of storage onboard, I connected my old Win2K box up to an oldish Linux server with striped RAID via a PC-PC 1Gbit connection (didn't even have to feck around with crossover cables - the joys of gigabit ethernet).

I found performance to be OK - I was using it with Rawshooter at the time. Editting was fine, though building a bunch of thumbnails could be a bit slow. That said, doing anything with LR can be slow, so throwing a network connection into the mix as well probably wouldn't help!

BostonB

I wouldn't bother with RAID. I'd have an external SATA/FW HD box, and then a incremental backup of it to another system. RAID IMO is for redundancy. You should fund the capacity first, then backup then RAID. RAID won't help with accidental deletion, a virus, or theft of the computer and disk array. Maybe you've this all sorted though. If so these bays might still be useful for ideas.

http://www.lexusbay.com/quadbay_firewire800_lcd.html
http://www.macpower.com/SVAQ4XS22A_15.html
http://www.meritline.com/multui-bay-sata-ide-enclosure.html

I think I'd just use an old Server Tower myself.
http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?product=21921&cat=8

rymus

I'd rather have a redundant system and take backups off that... if your external hard drive dies in the morning it's goodbye data, or goodbye at least to the data you've put on the drive since it was last backed up. It'd take more than one drive dying at a time to kill a raid system. Raid is cheap these days; I picked up a 1tb external hard drive on Monday that I've setup in raid 1 for €350.

PaulieC

nerds

BostonB

rymus wrote:

I'd rather have a redundant system and take backups off that... if your external hard drive dies in the morning it's goodbye data, or goodbye at least to the data you've put on the drive since it was last backed up. It'd take more than one drive dying at a time to kill a raid system. Raid is cheap these days; I picked up a 1tb external hard drive on Monday that I've setup in raid 1 for €350.

In my experience a drive dying is quite rare. We don't even see it that much on our data servers in disk clusters at work, and they are hit very hard. The other things I've mentioned are are more likely, and RAID is no protection for those things. But if you've got backup sorted then it doesn't really matter if a disk dies.

rymus

it may be quite rare, but it does happen. I'd say anyone with common sense would be able to protect against the majority of the rest of the problems you've listed above. Dont accidentally delete photos, keep your drive safely stored away from the prying eyes of thieves and as for protecting against virii, get a mac..

BostonB

So protect against the rare problems and rely on "common sense" for everything else. I guess if works for you why change. Like when the guy falling down the outside of the empire state building was asked "how's it goin" he shouted back "...so far so good!". Unfortunately I can't claim never to have deleted something, or overwritten something by accident.

rymus

great argument.. well done on that

5uspect

Also look at ccleaner to clear up some HDD space, may get you a few spare gigs until you get upgraded.

BostonB

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/23/raid_boxes_run_riot_uk/index.html
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/04/18/bye_bye_tape_uk/index.html

I think you could build a quieter box yourself though.