Cheapest raid 5 set up

omega42

Hopy you good folks can help

I'm looking to build / buy the cheapest possible raid 5 set up as im paronoid about loosing my stuff (1TB and growing)

I will need something that can connect to a network and can be accessed on a few PC's

It will only be used for storage so it wont need fancy graphics card etc and it will be hidden away so doesnt need to be pretty

Im a complete novice at self builds but am willing to give it a go

All help appricateated

Omega

Solitaire

What amount of storage do you already have? And what drives, if any, do you already have that will be going into this RAIDNAS?

Off the top of my head the one thing that'll cost a bit is the mobo - cheap chipsets don't have software RAID5 capability. The other thing is storage. And you'll need a suitably large unirail PSU as well to power all those HDDs In comparison CPU and RAM aren't so critical in a RAIDNAS.

omega42

Solitaire wrote: »

What amount of storage do you already have? And what drives, if any, do you already have that will be going into this RAIDNAS?

Off the top of my head the one thing that'll cost a bit is the mobo - cheap chipsets don't have software RAID5 capability. The other thing is storage. And you'll need a suitably large unirail PSU as well to power all those HDDs In comparison CPU and RAM aren't so critical in a RAIDNAS.

At the momrnt Most of my stuff is on a single TB external WD drive, with more just on my internal HD on my main PC and then my music is backed up on 2 DVD's (all very messy)

Ideally I like to start off with 3 or 4 drives with the option to add another couple down the road. Is there a max size a raid5 nas can be?

BaconZombie

Here is a GREAT write up on a system that may work for you:

Petabytes on a budget:
How to build cheap cloud storage

At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

Edit:

Also a PSU with a CLEAN 12V is essential for keeping for drives safe, I got a Corsair HX 850W for this very reason.

omega42

Thanks BOFH_139 but 7K is slighty over my budget

Solitaire

Err... omega42 wants a NAS with RAID5 redundancy, not a €6000 cloud storage server :P

PSU? Basically: No Sirtecs, no FSPs at any cost, and preferably unirail to avoid having all the HDDs bunching up on just the one 12V rail and tripping the too-low OCP with the simultaneous spindle motor spin-up surges Corsair and Seasonic fit the bill nicely.

As for HDDs... Seagate Barracuda 7200.12s are optimal as the 500GB version is cheap, reliable... and has just a single platter. Although standard performance is average overall and a mixed bag in general they make up for it by being quiet, using minimal power and will prove more reliable, all thanks to the single-platter approach. They're also supposed to be extremely efective RAID drives; they like working together, and this mitigates their weak areas as single drives.

PogMoThoin

Why not just buy a NAS box with raid 1, loads of options here
http://www.komplett.ie/k/search.aspx?q=nas

omega42

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Why not just buy a NAS box with raid 1, loads of options here
http://www.komplett.ie/k/search.aspx?q=nas

The reason for the Raid 5 option is I already have 1TB of data and thats growing at about 100 GB a month

If I go for a NAS with 2 bays running Raid 1 and have 1TB drives in each bay its full straight away, If I run a NAS with 4 1TB drives on Raid1 then I'm only getting 2TB of storage, where as if I do the same on Raid 5 I get 3TB's plus the option to increase storage at a later date by adding additional drives

godskitchen

Take this from someone who has learned the hard way, building a RAID5 set up on the cheap will, I repeat will, come back to bit you in the ass!

I got myself a dedicated RAID card, paid around £250 for it, I was told at the time I would have problems with it. I didnt listen and have just lost around 7Tb of data, three years of stuff just gone.

The reason for this......cheap raid card, it would report a failed drive around once a week and then rebuild itself, taking a day to do so. There was nothing wrong with the drives, the card was just utter rubbish. It is not just me either, plenty of people have the same problem with the same card.

As it stands my next card will cost me aprox £900, will have 24 SATA ports, 512Mb of on board memory and comes highly reccomended. i am going to go down the dedicated server road this time, running Windows Server. I will then have extenders around the house, PC's as extenders. I plan to use 2Tb drives in Raid5 and add drives as I need to.

How much cash do you have to spend? If you cant afford the kit to do the job right then save some more.

Dont even bother with built in RAID on a motherboard, it is fine for a couple of drives in RAID0 or whatever but useless for RAID5.

Solitaire

Of course you could use the software RAID5 on a mobo with a decent chipset (eg P45, 790X), generally a lot faster and more reliable than a €50-300 software RAID card... Hardware RAID5 is the best option but I didn't think you wanted to burn through two PC's worth of money on just a single component!