Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
anotherengineer wrote:Hi people. I am currently in the research phase of this project
I have some parts already, an old 780G gigabyte mobo, X2 3.1 Ghz (65nm), 4 gigs ddr2-800, probably use the onboard video and give away the HD3850 or sell it for 30 bucks and put it towards a psu, and I have 2 WD 640GB blacks. (I may add 2 more for 4 disks)
What I would like to do is basically have it set up for file storage. I was thinking of getting a decent NAS, but it's cheaper for me to just get a few parts and make a PC instead. Also I may setup an FTP on it in the future, so the relatives all over the world can access it.
anotherengineer wrote:So here is my list of questions.
What would be a good OS - I have a spare copy of Windows 7 Professional x64 - good enough?
anotherengineer wrote:What is an inexpensive raid card that is fairly reliable??
anotherengineer wrote:Should I raid 0 the 2 drives or get 2 more drives and raid 5 them?
anotherengineer wrote:Is there any issue with having a boot drive on the mobo chipset and having a raid 0 and/or raid 5 card with file storage for the network/future ftp?
Jim552 wrote:The 'RAID-5 Write Hole' shouldn't be the deciding factor on whether to use 'RAID-5' or not. It should be 'your requirements and needs' that determine that.
just brew it! wrote:Jim552 wrote:The 'RAID-5 Write Hole' shouldn't be the deciding factor on whether to use 'RAID-5' or not. It should be 'your requirements and needs' that determine that.
I agree that it shouldn't be the *deciding* factor... but if data security is a requirement, and a UPS is not in the budget, I'd say the "write hole" is a non-trivial negative factor for RAID-5. All it really buys you over the RAID-1+0 arrangement is some extra storage capacity (you effectively get 75% of the raw capacity of your 4 drives instead of only 50%).
anotherengineer wrote:What is an inexpensive raid card that is fairly reliable??
anotherengineer wrote:Ok so it I raid 1 the 2 drives on the 780G mobo chipset, if I use windows as my OS then would I be correct in assuming that the OS would be on the Raid 1 drives?
anotherengineer wrote:Second - If I use FreeNAS I put that on a usb drive and boot from the drive and the raid 1 will have 100% disk space for backing up/storing files?
anotherengineer wrote:Main reason for doing this. Both hard drives are currently in my PC (JOBD). I want to move them to an always on server/storage so anyone can save or access the files from any pc.
I also want them out of my pc to cut back on noise (future ssd 1st time purchase)
anotherengineer wrote:I would also like to set up FTP on it so the relatives from all over the can look at my pics or upload some of their pics.
Bensam123 wrote:I would suggest doing Raid 5 as well, as it offers performance as well as redundancy, despite having a write hole. The same could be said about Windows being a terrible operating system, everything has it's pitfalls... some are worse then others.
just brew it!"]Background scrubbing does not completely solve the "write hole" issue.
The "write hole" results when the parity stripe is inconsistent with the data, due to an interrupted write (e.g. power failure).
While a scrub pass could indeed *identify* these inconsistencies, there's no way to reliably repair it, since you don't know which stripe(s) are the "bad" ones -- it's a data error, not a sector that physically fails to read.
Jim552 wrote:The 'RAID-5 Write Hole' specifically refers to the situation where 'RAID-5 Parity is incorrect for the data contents'. By definition 'scrubbing' would fix any 'RAID-5 Write Hole' damage.
Second - If I use FreeNAS I put that on a usb drive and boot from the drive and the raid 1 will have 100% disk space for backing up/storing files?
I would also like to set up FTP on it so the relatives from all over the can look at my pics or upload some of their pics.
I want to move them to an always on server/storage so anyone can save or access the files from any pc.
thegleek"]I'm surprised no one brought out the Netgear ReadyNAS DUO card yet... There is NOT a better NAS system in the world for the price you pay for one of these babys!
We're talking $175 for the shell (add 2x 2tb sata hdd's to it to save $ for pre-installed).
just brew it! wrote:If doing software RAID, the performance advantage of RAID-5 is mainly on reads; the overhead of calculating the parity stripe tends to partially (or even completely) negate the higher raw I/O throughput depending on the speed of the CPU.
Jim552 wrote:I have not ever used 'Dynamic DNS', so I do not know if FreeNAS would work with that.
The more things you add to what you want to do, the more likely it becomes that a 'General Purpose OS' would be a better choice for you.
Flatland_Spider wrote:... It really comes down to if the OP wants a pet or an appliance.
anotherengineer wrote:I have heard of ZFS file system, but can it be accessed by windows? Say the server PC dies, if the file system is fat32 or ntfs I could drop the drives in my docking station and backup/access them from windows.
Also with FreeNAS, what file types does it support? (Fat32, ntfs?) I have zero experience with it and Linux, but it would allow me to save my win7x64 pro for something else.
cheesyking wrote:If you did go down the *nix route you won't want to mess around with the raid on the motherboard as it won't be properly supported.
cheesyking wrote:freenas has it's own software raid management built in. I'm a little out of date on this subject but getting the actual OS to boot from a raid volume is a bit tricky, it's more about "protecting" data.
Flatland_Spider wrote:FreeNAS is FreeBSD rather then Linux.
Flatland_Spider wrote:FreeNAS supports all of the filesystems FreeBSD does. UFS and ZFS are the recommended filesystems for a running system, but it can read/write to anything that's fairly common.
just brew it! wrote:Yeah, I knew that...
Flatland_Spider wrote:FreeNAS supports all of the filesystems FreeBSD does. UFS and ZFS are the recommended filesystems for a running system, but it can read/write to anything that's fairly common.
I haven't personally kept up with FreeNAS so I can't comment directly on its RAID boot capabities
I have zero experience with it and Linux...