8x WD Caviar Black 1tb?

[Cutless009]

Trying to go for massive storage/speed in that order, anyone have experience with these drives? Computer will be used for mass media distribution over a gigabit network.

[Baleful]

In the words of Marne:

Holy tits on a chicken that's gonna be nice :obama: :kfc:

:rofl:


Ok, in all seriousness, what RAID level are you going for if any? RAID 0 will offer the most speed, but will offer 0 redundancy, if 1 drive dies you lose everything.

RAID 10 (1+0) would probably be your best bet, and to take true advantage of the setup, you would probably benefit from a RAID card, a true hardware RAID card, not one of the cheap software based ones.

[Marne]

lol must you steal my phrase :)

[Baleful]

Found you a nice RAID controller (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131004) as well. It's on the expensive side, but is completely worth it for what you're trying to do. Read the first review as well ;)

[slpdLoad]

+1 for needing a hardware raid controller for that.

[Floyd]

My personal favorite JBOD arrays :)
Just hook them up and let them roll as is. You get the most space that way. If you are looking for redundancy though then I guess a 1+0

[Cutless009]

I was thinking raid 10, my motherboard support raid 10 with the onboard controller, is this not a good idea, and hence the recommendations for a hardware raid controller?

[Baleful]

I was thinking raid 10, my motherboard support raid 10 with the onboard controller, is this not a good idea, and hence the recommendations for a hardware raid controller?

Onboard controllers are fine for simple RAID setups, but when you step into the realm of 8 HDD's and streaming HD video, that's a little more than the onboard controller can handle.

[Marne]

You get most potential from drives with a dedicated hardware solution.

[cyriene]

Look into a Dell PERC5 or PERC6 raid card. Good hardware raid, and can be had off ebay or some other internet sites for a lot less than retail.
Here's a thread about it. (http://www.overclock.net/raid-controllers-software/359025-perc-5-i-raid-card-tips.html)
I actually just bought a PERC5 but I don't have any HDs to setup my RAID 5 yet.

I'm going to RAID5 and use it for my home server once I get some hard drives.

[ablatman]

I was thinking raid 10, my motherboard support raid 10 with the onboard controller, is this not a good idea, and hence the recommendations for a hardware raid controller?

I'd say get 4-6 2TB drives and RAID 0+1 them together (Or whatever they're calling striping across mirrored pairs) on an add-in dedicated RAID card.

Then get 1-2 fast disks and hook those up to the motherboard in either 0 or 1 and run them as the OS disk. This is because you need to have your megadisk formatted as a GPT disk to be able to get a partition larger than 2TB (which is the limit for MBR-formatted disks). Last I had looked into running Windows off a GPT disk larger than 2TB I couldn't really find a definite answer, but it looked like no. If you find a way to do it, PLEASE enlighten us.

[Floyd]

Why anyone would want to raid a pair of drives for just the OS is just beyond me. Such a waste of space.

[ablatman]

Why anyone would want to raid a pair of drives for just the OS is just beyond me. Such a waste of space.

Perhaps they would rather have more speed, or more redundancy. Personally, I like a combination of the two. I've had enough OS drive failures in the past to warrant running at least a partially mirrored array....

[ND40oz]

What's this for, business or just some home grown setup?

[Cutless009]

What's this for, business or just some home grown setup?

It's business. Customer want's a "do everything perfectly" rig, so it will be a gaming rig, media server, web server, and god only knows what else. Eh, its his money *shrug*.

[Floyd]

Perhaps they would rather have more speed, or more redundancy. Personally, I like a combination of the two. I've had enough OS drive failures in the past to warrant running at least a partially mirrored array....

I guess it just depends on the person. Personally ive only had like 2 HDDs fail on me and they were not even the OS drives.
Right now I have everything on a 150gig and I have a 750 for storage for backups music video and that sort of thing.
In my other machines I have just one drive for everything.

[ablatman]

I guess it just depends on the person. Personally ive only had like 2 HDDs fail on me and they were not even the OS drives.
Right now I have everything on a 150gig and I have a 750 for storage for backups music video and that sort of thing.
In my other machines I have just one drive for everything.

Personally, I've only ever had laptop drives fail on me (I've only ever had one 3.5 incher before this rig, and I haven't used it or this rig enough to kill a drive). I've had easily two dozen 2.5" drives fail on me. HDD's in my laptops had a 100% failure rate.

[ND40oz]

It's business. Customer want's a "do everything perfectly" rig, so it will be a gaming rig, media server, web server, and god only knows what else. Eh, its his money *shrug*.

Then go SAS, get a good controller and some 300 or 450 GB 15k drives. If he doesn't want to spend that much, at least get some enterprise Sata drives, like some RE3s or RE4s and use that with a decent raid controller.

[Greedseed]

thats a hell of a lot of storage there xD

[ILikeCosmosS]

I wonder what is he going to use that for ? I would use it to store every single bollywood movie :D
But is there big difference in speed from SAS to SATA ? 15k rpm to 7500 rpm ?

[Cutless009]

Then go SAS, get a good controller and some 300 or 450 GB 15k drives. If he doesn't want to spend that much, at least get some enterprise Sata drives, like some RE3s or RE4s and use that with a decent raid controller.

Yah, this is a startup business, I don't have that money to invest for that.

[ND40oz]

But is there big difference in speed from SAS to SATA ? 15k rpm to 7500 rpm ?

SSD vs Enterprise SAS and SATA:

http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3532&p=1

[ND40oz]

Yah, this is a startup business, I don't have that money to invest for that.

Well, if you can't afford SAS, at least get Enterprise Sata drives, their firmware is optimized for RAID and array recovery.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=503

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15588