Someone talk some sense into me.

I'm building myself a new server.

Do I want 2x1TB RAID 1 or 2x1.5TB RAID 1 for the data storage?

My current server has a RAID 1 of 750GB drives and it currently has ~160GB free.

-Other consideration-
3x1TB RAID 5, but then I don't get to do a RAID 1 for my OS drives (normally 2x80GB RAID 1). I could use acronis to do OS backups which wouldn't be so bad.


DECISIONS DECISIONS.


I just need to talk it through, and what better place than a tech forum? Posted this in off topic though because this is not really about notebooks.

 

Easy.....get 2 x 2 TB drives and put them in Raid 1.....

Anyways, seriously, it just depends on the price difference between 2 x 1TB and 2 x 1.5TB and how fast you think you'll be able to fill up the space.

 

Get a Windows Home Server (WHS) and never worry about data corruption, data loss, or hardware failures again! Sounds like you already have a hardware server, you can get WHS for $99.

To me RAID 1 is silly. It protects against hardware failure. If one drive gets a virus infection, they both do. If one file is corrupt, they both are. There are issues more pressing than worrying about the very unlikely hard drive failure scenario. Backup is the key with multiple history backups.

WHS is a remarkable system, and wish Microsoft actually marketed it. And don't think that because you have 3TB of stuff now that it will take up 3TB of storage on WHS, it usually takes up less. It uses a great cluster marking system so that identical clusters are marked for use instead of stored repeatedly.

So in your case I would get 3 x 1TB drives, buy WHS and use it in your current server hardware.

 

WHS & 1.5TB drives is my plan. 2TB drives are not priced correctly so unless you absolutely needed the 500GB more space for some reason and cant just add another drive I would stay away.

If I got a 1TB drive right now instead of using it for a server it would probably get hooked to my Wii to play games on I am using that 400gb WD Elements that we posted here as a staples.com special a few months back (was like $60) and its working great but filling up fast as I have almost XXX games on the drive now.

WHS does a "shadow copy" and its basically the same as Raid1 but less problematic and you only have to have duplicates of the files you think are important.

So say you have 500gb of stuff, 100GB of it is super important that you know you want in Raid1 for protection and the other 400gb is like movies and stuff that your holding onto but you can live without it.

You can take your 2x1TB drives in WHS and mirror the 100GB and only use up 600GB out of your 2TB, while being in Raid1 means you would be using 500GB out of 1TB, you can see how that makes a big difference when it comes to maximizing your space.

Plus there are so many other things we are not getting into that a WHS can do that make it worth having, file server, file streaming, image backup, etc.

 

Yeah, 1.5TB's are quickly becoming the $/GB king. When 2TB drives are under $120 I'll start swapping out my 1TB drives then.

 

Ehhh I have a lot of options for the OS, I'm trying to decide on that too, but since I already have extra copies of a few OSes, I'm just going to use one of them (probably will be using Vista Business X64).

Since my server is primary used for backups anyway, I am not worried about data corruption, viruses, etc. ESPECIALLY since it's going to be all storage and the OS will be off the RAID, easily reloaded in case of emergency. I currently run a similar setup (XP Pro, 3GB RAM, 2x80GB RAID 1, 2x750GB RAID 1) and I've been running setups like this for ages... I quite like it, so I'll be sticking to it.

I think I will be doing the 3x1TB RAID 5 - it'll get me data redundancy on a single drive failure, and it'll give me the best $/GB ratio.

Now... onto the drives.

I was planning on getting some Barracuda LP's (the Seagate 5900RPM drives) but read some comments on newegg about them not working in RAIDs. I know that the WD Caviar Green is not a good choice for a RAID, so can anyone confirm/deny that the Barracuda LPs are also not good in a RAID?

Thanks for all the comments so far.

 

Hep! I don't want to dissuade you, but I was skeptical about WHS until I finally decided to do it. It is more than worth the effort. You already have the hardware, so why not just buy WHS OS and let it do ALL the work for you. Your 3x1TB woudl be 3TB of storage, not 2 with RAID 5. WHS even easily sets up remote access to your files as well as remote access to your PC's as well.

WHS uses redundancy in a different way, but still there's redundancy, plus a history of backups in case you need to recover something from a couple months ago.

Something to investigate, really.

 

Well, I can handle setting things up in a corporate manner. I have remote access to all of my files already since all computers in my house backup to my server. I can easily RDP into my server then RDP into one of my other computers, but I almost never need to do this.
I don't see how anything could take 3x1TB drives and give me 3TB of space with tolerance on a single drive failure. Maybe if you can explain how that works I'll jive with it, but since I don't believe that is possible, I'm just going to stick to my RAID 5. 2TB will be plenty - it will take me forever to fill all of that.

Also, @Vicious - Since I can get 2TB of space with drive failure tolerance, I don't really see the point in prioritizing files anymore. I've got triple redundancy on everything important, double on everything "unimportant." Drives are so cheap anymore that I'd rather pay an extra 80 bucks than suffer an even slight inconvenience.

As for the rest of the specs of the server, I've got an Antec Titan, Intel S3000AH, Pentium D 945 (in case anyone was curious).


EDIT: You guys seem to really like WHS. Does it come in a 64 bit flavor, and if it does, is there a place I can get a 120 day trial like most other Microsoft Server OSes have available?
EDIT2: Can't find any documentation of a 64 bit version... I'll probably just stick to Vista X64. If I do buy a server OS, it'll be Windows Server 2008 R2

 

I would get a Hitachi 7K2000 and call it a day

If you go to an enterprise solution, you will need a decent hardware SAS or SCSI controller

K-TRON

 

A single 7200? I'm looking for redundancy for one...
...and I'm not very fond of Hitachi for two.

Though the fact that I can pick up four Hitachi 0A38016 for $65 each does help push me towards that decision. I just was kind of looking for lower power drives, since there's going to be 3 of them running 24/7.

 

No WHS is based on Server 2003 32-bit. However, there is a 120-day trial. You need to register on Microsoft Connect to get it and must activate it to get the 120 days.

 

How about...

60GB Vertex or so for OS. 2x1.5TB Disks? or 4x1.5TB? RAID 0 + 1

 

No reason for SSD on a backup server. It has nothing to do that is performance based.

 

There is no 64-bit version. No need for it. Most you'll need is 2GB RAM, 1GB will actually suffice. I also highly recommend getting some cool and quiet WD green drives. I stupidly bought black drives consuming more power, creating more heat and noise.

There is a 120 day trial of WHS. If you want I can mail you a CD, install and trial it and see what you think. Not exactly sure of activation procedure for it though.

I don't want to mislead you, I guess where I was going with the fact that you get 3TB of use from 3 x 1TB drives is mainly referring to the cluster backup technology employed. You can set up redundancy which requires more than one hard drive, but you don't "waste" one drive as a parity drive. It evenly distributes the data among the other drives, and again, using the cluster backup minimizes used space greatly.

With a traditional server and using a third party backup like Acronis, if you do full backup of three PC's you are writing a lot of the same data three times, compressed or not. With WHS, if you are using the same OS on these three PC's (i.e. Vista) then the backup won't consume much more than the full size of a Vista install on one PC to backup all three. Basically it doesn't duplicate data, it only puts a pointer to where the data exists.

This also means holding six months of weekly backups and a month of daily backups your storage space won't be used up very quickly. That is unless you download and store TONS of huge files.

For years I did like you Hep! and thought I was satisfied. But now it's just a no-brainer. Everything is automated, you can do manual backups on demand, and it even streams multimedia to any multimedia center enabled device including Xbox 360.

Plug in an external drive for extra redundancy and off-site storage and you're in great shape.

It's based on Server 2003, but if you check out the guts of it a lot has been stripped or disabled. It's really meant to streamline and automate the process as best as possible. Once set up and running, the included control panel that can be launched from any PC it's configured on, is where you can manage 99% of your tasks. If you're a control freak though, then maybe avoid it, because you won't be doing a whole lot of customization, except using the host of add-ons available.

 

htwingnut, thank you very much for all of your input.
I think I will not be going with WHS for a few reasons.
1- You misunderstand what my backups are. I use a program called Vice Versa Pro to backup files only to my server. It's easy as heck to reload an OS, and I'm not a fan of imaging a regularly used computer. So the data that backed up is almost all different. So while the features you have described sound really innovative and cool, they're not going to be put to use by me really.
2- I want to go 64 bit. Maybe as a data server 1GB of RAM is plenty, but that's not the only purpose of this box. It's also a 24/7 seedbox as well as a game server (has been COD2, COD4, TF2, CSS, GMod, Zombie Panic! Source, and probably others...). I'm putting 4GB of RAM in this box, I am 100% set on that. So I am putting 64 bit. Also 100% set.
3- Even if I used WHS, I think I'd still be putting in a RAID 5. A parity drive isn't a waste... what you've described is a storage center with no fault tolerance. I'm too OCD to have to worry about my drive failing.

Also the last part about the control freak is totally true. That's me. I tend to hate built in software. I find the best software for a task and customize it to my needs.

@yuio - it would be a waste to put that SSD into the server, as Vicious said. Plus why would I do a raid 0+1 or 10 for data warehousing? Doesn't make sense, that's what RAID 5 was made for.

 

you should still go whs.

it's awesome. at least TRY it for a month, and then say no.

vice versa, bah, whs delivers all that and much more.

64bit is overrated.

no, on whs you don't raid5, you just won't. it kills all the gains of the flexibility of not thinking about it anymore, ever, again, by doing it.

with whs, you can get a new drive of any size, put it in, and it works, automatically, with dataredundancy as you set it. you can take old ones out when you get bigger new ones, etc. it all manages that automacially.

you really have to play with it for a while to understand it's benefits. it's awesome

and btw, my whs uses 3.93gb ram, of it's 4gb the only reason, 32bit os' can't use full 4gb is because of the gpu, and other hw, mapping some memory. but the server has no gpu => no memory gets stolen away.


forget raid. forget vice versa pro. forget 64bit. get whs, and be happy like never before

 

and if it doesn't work out for what ever crazy reason, you can still go the other way.
but be aware that you're the coolest guy at the lan party if you can talk about your real server at home, unlike the others who just mess around with it in some ways.


and check out my sig for pics of my server

 

i smell what that sense-answer is

go whs

 

Hep, have you considered Western Digital's Caviar Green? Their drives are supposed to be very energy efficient; the cost savings alone would pay you back after a few years. In any case, I think focusing on energy-efficient components would save you money. Just a thought.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576

EDIT: Here in Canada, the 1.5TB model seems reasonably priced at $133. I don't know what you Americans are paying, but electronics do cost more up here.

 

Wow, that server is awesome. Such clean implementation.
I'll download the WHS trial and play with it in a virtual machine, but I have my doubts. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I mean, a real server is not WHS, and I do have the hardware all here for a real server. I can get a free copy of SBS 2003 from work, so if I really don't care about 64 bit (which I do) and I really want a real server (which is whatever, I modify the OS enough that it doesn't really matter - as long as it's functioning as intended), then I should just do Server 2003 perhaps, no?

I actually did look at these, but I heard they have problems when in a RAID configuration. I was also looking at the Barracuda LP (I'm more of a Seagate guy) which is one of the best performing low power drives available, but I'm also weary that they may have the same sort of issue. Do you know anything about this? Fluke? Myth? Etc? Thanks much.






Quick question for the WHS guys. Can you access individual files in a backup?
I backup computer A and B, I remote into my server, can view all of the files by going into folders "Computer A" and "Computer B"? If no, I'll stick to my method of backup.
Another question:
If I backup to a 2x1TB spanned volume, and one drive dies, how does it cope with that loss? Will I have to re-backup my computers? If yes, I'll stick to a RAID.

 

whs IS a real server. it's a version of the windows 2003 server, used all over the world on tons of companies big and small.

yes, you can access individual files. it opens as a virtual disk on your machine when accessing (z:\ ) so you can copy back even complex file structures.

or the full restore, obviously.


by default, backups are not mirrored, so yes, you might lose them when a hdd dies. but you can reconfigure it to even mirror the backups so you won't lose them.

and btw, i only use the green drives. they are quite silent (much better than any other that we have used) and perform great. i yesterday restored my laptop to vista, full 70MB/s (that's what my ssd delivers on write). on my pc (200MB/s readwrite ssd) i have full 100MB/s access to the server, a.k.a. the gbit-lan max.



and to restate as you talk about small business server:

windows home server and small business server are IDENTICAL. just with different feature set. one for small businesses, one for home environments. guess which one is more useful to you?

 

So I can mirror my backups, what would be wrong with doing a RAID? I don't understand. RAID 5 gives an excellent performance/space/redundancy ratio. Pretty good performance, can handle a single drive failure which should be plenty for a home user like myself, and I'm okay with (smallest drive * number of drives) - smallest drive. It's cool that WHS simplifies everything so much, but I really want to be in control of everything at as low of a level as possible. I really doubt I'll be using WHS.





However, you said you use green drives - what model, and have you run them in a RAID? If so, have you had troubles? I was just reading this and it looks like the Barracuda LPs are the way for me to go.

 

You can configure WHS however you like. Files only, full system, whatever. Also, once I did a fresh install of my Windows 7, I just did a manual backup in WHS and flagged it to keep it forever (or when I say to delete it), so I just pop in the WHS system restore DVD into my PC, and BLAMO it restores is back to factory fresh state. Again, you could do one backup fresh before activation, one after activation, one after you install updates, one after you add all your apps, and guess what, the total file space used will only increase about 5-10% max. With Acronis it'd be 8GB every backup. Now you really don't have to think about drive space as much and can just backup whenever you feel the need.

Yeah, I'm not sure how well it would fare as a game server, but as a seedbox, it'll work fine. Game server should work though. Right now I'm using mine as a TeamSpeak Server. You could always dual boot for running as a game server.

For WHS, no RAID required, it has its own form of backup redundancy. You can specify specific folders or everything to be duplicated that can be 100% recovered in case of a drive failure.

And yes you can do specific file recoveries or a full system recovery.

I'm currently studying for my MCSA Server 2003 and while at first I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't have better control, now I'm glad I can't. It does what it does so well.

And you can use Caviar Green without worrying about RAID hiccups because it doesn't use RAID, but has the convenience and redundancy of RAID 5 available but done differently.

Obviously the choice is yours. Like I said, I always wanted control at every level like you. Since I got my TechNet Plus subscription I figured I'd give it a try and put it on an older box I had, using some 1TB drives I garnered over time because I was going to do SOME sort of file server. Well, I realize that the automation and simplicity of it relieves a lot of headaches and worries about data integrity and just the act of backing up when I *WANT* to and now it's a no-brainer.

Your only caveat would be as a gaming server though, but like I said, dual boot would fix that. Best of luck in your decision.