Hi All,
Thanks for taking a moment to look at this post and provide some feedback.
I was planning on buying a prebuilt NAS/Storage system. I basically use my storage to feed my HTPC and iTunes collection to iPads/Macs around my house. I had 3 external drives handling this, but over the past month they have all died.
When planning a new strategy I thought it might be wise to have a little bit of failure protection, since I was only able to recover my iTunes materials and all my ripped DVDs are now going to need to be reripped (not looking forward to that).
At first I thought about a Drobo or equivalent etc., but after reading through many posts in these forums I thought this type of solution might be best. I have an old PC with the following in it:
Asus Striker Extrmeme mobo
Intel Core 2 Extreme processor
8GB Ram
800watt PS
a couple 150GB Raptor hard drives (not planning to run anything but the NAS once my new gear arrives, so these drives are basically irrelevant I suppose)
The board support 6 sata connections and has a few pcie slots available. I removed one of my video cards.
What I plan on adding (either has been ordered or will be):
5 X 3TB WD red Nas drives (already ordered)
some backplane bays AMS DS-346TL to turn the front 5.25s into multiple 3.5s (about to order)
Some misc cables/adapters so I can hopefully connect it all (already ordered)
1 pcie expansion card Vantec UGT-ST644R so I can connect all 8 drives since the board only has 6 slots (about to order)
After all that here is the question:
I want to use RaidZ3, so I can have some protection against drive failure. Then I got to thinking I have several more open bays available, and I was going to order some additional 2TB WD Red drives, I was thinking 3. That would essentially give me 21TB of Raw storage. What is the best way to set this up? Should I use the 3 X 2TB drives and 1 X 3TB drive as the (mirrors?), or does the system simply select which disks it wants to use. Is there a better way to configure this aside from RaidZ3? Do any of you experts have some advice for someone new to this? I am also wondering how big these "snapshots" of the array are. Are they the same size as the actual data on the drives? If they are smaller does it make sense to use the smaller capacity drives to house only the snapshots? All my important files/pictures/family videos are going to be stored not only on this array but also in the cloud, so I am not nervous about my "sentimental" items. I would however love to not have to rip my movie collection once every few years.
I really appreciate any advice/suggestions you can offer.
Thanks for taking a moment to look at this post and provide some feedback.
I was planning on buying a prebuilt NAS/Storage system. I basically use my storage to feed my HTPC and iTunes collection to iPads/Macs around my house. I had 3 external drives handling this, but over the past month they have all died.
When planning a new strategy I thought it might be wise to have a little bit of failure protection, since I was only able to recover my iTunes materials and all my ripped DVDs are now going to need to be reripped (not looking forward to that).
At first I thought about a Drobo or equivalent etc., but after reading through many posts in these forums I thought this type of solution might be best. I have an old PC with the following in it:
Asus Striker Extrmeme mobo
Intel Core 2 Extreme processor
8GB Ram
800watt PS
a couple 150GB Raptor hard drives (not planning to run anything but the NAS once my new gear arrives, so these drives are basically irrelevant I suppose)
The board support 6 sata connections and has a few pcie slots available. I removed one of my video cards.
What I plan on adding (either has been ordered or will be):
5 X 3TB WD red Nas drives (already ordered)
some backplane bays AMS DS-346TL to turn the front 5.25s into multiple 3.5s (about to order)
Some misc cables/adapters so I can hopefully connect it all (already ordered)
1 pcie expansion card Vantec UGT-ST644R so I can connect all 8 drives since the board only has 6 slots (about to order)
After all that here is the question:
I want to use RaidZ3, so I can have some protection against drive failure. Then I got to thinking I have several more open bays available, and I was going to order some additional 2TB WD Red drives, I was thinking 3. That would essentially give me 21TB of Raw storage. What is the best way to set this up? Should I use the 3 X 2TB drives and 1 X 3TB drive as the (mirrors?), or does the system simply select which disks it wants to use. Is there a better way to configure this aside from RaidZ3? Do any of you experts have some advice for someone new to this? I am also wondering how big these "snapshots" of the array are. Are they the same size as the actual data on the drives? If they are smaller does it make sense to use the smaller capacity drives to house only the snapshots? All my important files/pictures/family videos are going to be stored not only on this array but also in the cloud, so I am not nervous about my "sentimental" items. I would however love to not have to rip my movie collection once every few years.
I really appreciate any advice/suggestions you can offer.