So let's say I have 24 identical 500gb SATA hdds...

what's the cheapest way with the good redundancy to RAID them?



ALSO, i'd like to start with 8 and have the ability to expand 4-8 at a time

[Edited on April 4, 2007 at 9:19 PM. Reason : ]

4/4/2007 9:17:18 PM

why?

4/4/2007 9:30:54 PM

because he can, of course.

4/4/2007 9:34:07 PM

damn that is a shit load of storage

4/4/2007 9:37:59 PM

This man is serious about his porn.




I like it.

4/4/2007 9:53:52 PM

I would use ZFS...

Some versions of linux and solaris 10 support it.

4/4/2007 10:01:18 PM

take a look at this Adaptec whitepaper on RAID levels, http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/_whitepapers/tech/raid/RAID_level_compar_wp.htm

we have a few enclosures at work with 14x 750GB SATA drives, or about 10TB per enclosure

(I work at Adaptec)

I'd go with RAID 50 or RAID 10 if you have enough drives, that will give you the most performance with the most protection.

What do you intend to do with said RAID array?

[Edited on April 4, 2007 at 10:12 PM. Reason : .]

4/4/2007 10:08:57 PM

My goal is to get 8TB... 16 drives in raid 0 would get that, but that's obviously not what i want

what configuration would be best to get 8TB?

[Edited on April 4, 2007 at 10:53 PM. Reason : ]

4/4/2007 10:39:40 PM

I think RAID 6 would give you plenty of redundancy unless you're really working the hell out of the drives. Of course, if the drives were going to work that hard you should use SCSI anyway.

4/4/2007 10:54:30 PM

def. won't have much work on them.


will i be able to add hdd sets to the array at later times w/ any options? start out w/ 8... add another 8... add another 8?

[Edited on April 4, 2007 at 10:58 PM. Reason : ]

4/4/2007 10:58:08 PM

I don't know of a "cheap" way to RAID 24 SATA disks. Anything of that nature should be on an external storage controller IMO. You don't want all the RAID overhead running on your system processor on an array set that large. Using a tool like ZFS to pool direct attached storage seems like it would be a big resource hog for your run-of-the-mill workstation or server.

While there may be a PCI based product out there that can support that many SATA disks (although I'm not aware of one off the top of my head), it would not be cheap and you'd still have to buy at least two JBOD enclosures to house the disks. Most SATA JBODs are really going to be SAS or Fibre JBODs that require the disks to have an interposer and hot-swap tray. Even if you were buying used equipment with no warranty it sounds like a "thousands of dollars" solution to me unless you want to start trying to hack together some backplanes off eBay.

[Edited on April 5, 2007 at 12:34 AM. Reason : l]

4/5/2007 12:31:02 AM

If I was getting that many HDDs, I would think that it would be in a dedicated server on the network...In which case the zfs overhead would be mitigated.

4/5/2007 1:46:53 AM

let me tell you, RAID 5, USB Hub, 2GB SanDisk Flash Drives, profit

4/5/2007 2:03:42 AM

^^ Troo. I was assuming this was just going to be a personal hobby/project though.

4/5/2007 10:54:59 AM

I agree, no "cheap" way to RAID 24 drives effectively. An 8 disk HBA is going to run you in the thousands of $$. I know our low low end NAS box is around $10k and doesn't support 24 disks. I see on eBay you can get one of our stripped down systems that will handle 8TB for about $35k, and that only includes 2TB of disks (but those are 10k fibre channel).

8TB should be easy enough to get out of RAID 6 if you can afford a controller that will handle it.

As far as a crazy idea, you could get a bunch of USB HDD enclosures and USB hubs and set up a big software RAID array on a dedicated box. It would be ugly as hell and pretty slow, but you could add drives at will and hot swap as well. If this is for nearline or archival stuff then it might be a cheap viable solution over buying expensive, dedicated hardware RAID adapters.

4/5/2007 1:46:41 PM

okay i have tons of home videos in the many terrabytes and want instant access to them without putting them all on dvds... there will not be heavy access times or anything of that nature... just minimal network access...

i'd like to start with 8 hdds and be able to add 8 at a time w/ a cheap solution up front and close to a linear scale in future cost... but have good redudancy...



1) get an 8 drive external case with 2 hookups for $250 and a RAID card ($?) that will allow those hookups... each time i upgrade get another case and another raid card to handle it...

2) ?

[Edited on April 5, 2007 at 3:30 PM. Reason : ]

4/5/2007 3:30:18 PM

http://www.firewire-1394.com/port-multiplier-sata-enclosure-sbox-x.htm

http://www.firewire-1394.com/esata-sata-ii-4-port-raid.htm

Something like this should suffice.

4/5/2007 4:46:22 PM

similar setups for $450 (hotswap) or $250 (screwed the fuck in).

I need to find the best RAID card where each will handle 8-12 and allow for eSATA (4 SATA drives per external plug, or i can do this with an adapter for $50)... and the card must allow to add other cards and utilize all the drives

4/5/2007 7:50:20 PM

Have you looked at the offerings from http://www.3ware.com? Looks like their 24 port SATA solution is around $1500 at newegg.

[Edited on April 5, 2007 at 9:33 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2007 9:33:04 PM

I think I'd rather get 2 16/12 ports or 3 8 ports that can daisy chain if it was around the same price total since I wouldn't have to do the $1500 investment up front.

4/9/2007 9:23:00 PM

That's a lot of home movies...

4/9/2007 11:46:43 PM

that bous is one home movie making champion

he always had that camera out



hey paul i was just thinking of something from back in the home movie days-- did you ever hang on to any of that *.mod music we used to use for our home movie soundtracks?

Ever since the green monster thread came up i remembered how some of it used to be pretty good... and i can't seem to remember saving any of that....

4/10/2007 12:59:22 AM

http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=24
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=573986

Has some of the points you are looking for, but not all. Also you mount each drive individually instead of seeing one really large drive.

4/10/2007 1:30:56 PM