My home file storage - What do you think?

[brianm8000]

Please let me know what you think...

I am ordering the adaptec card to run raid 5 with 4 hdd (ordered 5 in case one dies)

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I would be VERY cautious with that controller and those HDD's.... 3TB and larger drives have shown exponentially higher failure rates over 2TB drives, and a LOT of controllers can not recognize 3TB drives. Also, you would want another HDD in the PC for the OS, you don't exactly want it on the RAID array when you can only install the OS once in it's entire life, with a single drive in non-raid you can at least make an image of the drive and restore it in the event of a failure.

 

[brianm8000]

I was going to install the OS on the raid 5 and use the partitioner within windows to split it up and make a larger data partition....

would this work??

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

That wouldn't work, at all. Like I said, you might want to consider installing windows to its own 250/500GB drive, and image that drive to the RAID5 array. I dislike the OS it self being in RAID unless the array is 100% proven to work with out it failing entirely at random. Especially if you are using a single install only version of windows. (That ultra cheap OEM you picked out can only be installed and activated once in its entire life)

If you REALLY desire a multi-partition raid5, use the raid controller to create the separate partitions. Just remember, if you loose enough drives, you loose ALL your partitions.

 

[kmote]

Don't forget that you'll need a SAS fanout cable to connect those drives to that controller.

EDIT: my mistake; looks like it comes with one.

 

[carnageX]

Especially if you are using a single install only version of windows. (That ultra cheap OEM you picked out can only be installed and activated once in its entire life)

You can reinstall it as many times as you want as long as its on the same motherboard/CPU, technically. You just have to call it in if it fails internet activation. Even then, I've replaced my motherboard a couple of times, and just had to call in to reactivate.

 

[kmote]

You can reinstall it as many times as you want as long as its on the same motherboard/CPU, technically. You just have to call it in if it fails internet activation. Even then, I've replaced my motherboard a couple of times, and just had to call in to reactivate.

It has to be said though, he could use linux and save $140.

 

[carnageX]

It has to be said though, he could use linux and save $140.

True, especially since it's just a file server.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Yea, plenty of 100% free alternatives and server grade equipment tends to be well supported, or has support for linux. If this is just a file server, FreeNAS on a USB drive would work good I would assume.

 

[brianm8000]

so what you guys are telling me is that I cannot run a raid 5 array and then use the partitioner within windows to partition that raid 5 into "2 discs" (one for OS and one much larger for storage)