RAID setup?

[JET]

Alright, after losing 2+TB of data due to a 6 week old Seagate drive puking, I am going to be doing backup of some sort. I tried to research RAID's a bit, but there are like 50 different kinds.

This is for my media server, the computer runs 24/7. I run a 1TB Samsung F3 drive for the boot and program drive. I will be running two 3TB WB Red's for the main storage drives, I will use the 2TB and 3TB seagates I have right now for backup drives. I am only back up to 2.5TB of data now, but adding on fast. I will probably be around 4TB at the end of the month. I will add more Red's as needed if I am happy with them.

I am fine with backing up once a week and I would prefer the seagates to only run when backups are being performed. My 6 month old 2TB is now starting to make a little noise when worked hard.

So, what do you guys think will be the best option for backing up for me?

[Super Bleeder!!]

Why dont you go with some solid state drives?

[Trogdor]

SSD isn't really unnecessary for mass storage. The primary benefit is access speed, on a media server, that's not all that important.

[Super Bleeder!!]

I'd say the primary benefit is zero moving parts!

[JET]

I don't have $4k sitting around to spend on SSD's when I can get 3TB Red's for $150 each.

[A//// Guy]

SSD can still fail as well, just get a nice 2TB NAS device which utilizes multiple hard drives and is stand alone.

Otherwise just get 2 or more drives and use windows built in Raid to manage the drives.

[19TsiAwd90]

ssd are nice, really fast.. but they are very exspensive.. i say pick up a couple 2tb hd's and run them in raid 10(i think thats where both drives are clones or eachother) that way if one fails the other one has the same stuff on it

[JET]

Yeah, I run a 128GB SSD in the HTPC upstairs and it took about 15 sec of boot time off. It boots in 21 seconds now. I have been checking out Peter's suggestion of using Windows to run a RAID 1, which just mirrors the drives. I didn't even know Win7 would do that. Thanks Peter!

[tehehodi]

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e230/hart704/retro-week/MK2_Raiden-wins.jpg

[scheides]

First off it'll be best to get your terminology straight....there's no such thing as RAIDs...RAID is a set of methods for setting up redundant disk.

Here's what I have run for the last several years:

Hardware:
4U cheapo rackmount case with room for like 10x 3.5" disks and a variety of ATX-sized motherboards
450W power supply (replaced this several times in the last 8 years)
2x 1TB Seagate disks
1x old computer guts...currently running:
-Basic ABIT motherboard
-AMD semperon 2200+
-768MB RAM
-few extra fans for good measure

So I ran mandriva linux on it forever but I swapped that out for Centos6 a while back. Disks are configured in Raid1 (mirror) with linux software raid, supported out of the box. I have samba configured to share out a directory and just copy files to/from that directory as I choose.

I have a 2TB exernal seagate disk that I wrote a simple script to mount and do full backups to once per month.

Upstairs I have a Western Digital WDTV. $99 and it does more than my appleTV ever did right out of the box.

The whole setup is super easy to maintain and cheap as hell....if I ever need more space I'll just convert to a striped RAID5 setup or multiple RAID1 mirrors. 1TB has proven to be plenty for me, I don't need to keep old copies of 80% of the movies that land on it, I'll just re-download them if I really want them again.

You could skip the USB drive thing and just run backups to an internal disk but that adds a little risk I guess.

What services do you need for your setup? Does it have to run windows? The biggest thing is to just keep it dust free and not let the hardware get *too* old as that just is asking for problems with data corruption. And once you get a setup that works, don't mess with it too much. I touch mine about once every two years but I think I'm on like year 4 of this setup.