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big RAID that supports IDE & Sata


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big RAID that supports IDE & Sata
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intlplby
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Join Date: Dec 2004
 
2006-10-30, 13:18

At the moment I have tons of drives in various enclosures

4 500GB Sata (currently in an Infrant ReadyNAS NV)
3 500GB IDE
1 400GB IDE
3 250GB IDE
1 300GB IDE


Is there any sort of large rack mount enclosure that supports 8+ 3.5" drives that can take IDE and SATA discs?

I want something that I can use over firewire and gigabit ethernet.

i'm probably asking for some sort of mystery device that doesn't exist, but does anyone have any ideas?

i don't think you can make a RAID with mixed size drives, but can you make a RAID with mixed interfaces (SATA, IDE)?

i just want one big enclosure that will consolidate everything for the next couple of years

preferably something quiet too.

is it possible to by an XServe RAID with no drives?

Last edited by intlplby : 2006-10-30 at 13:32.
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alcimedes
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2006-10-30, 13:44

Well, in 10.4 you can format into a striped RAID with drives of different sizes and it will take them for what they're worth. However, I don't know of a single rackmount type solution that would cut it.

The thing is that any rackmount type solution would be falling into the pro category, at which point they want to have every drive be as close to the same thing as possible.

What you could do is get some cheap FW800 drive enclosures and format the drives with Disk Utility and turn it into a big striped RAID, but make sure to back up the data somewhere else. One drive on the raid fails and you're a sad boy.

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Yonzie
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2006-10-30, 14:16

Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby View Post
Is there any sort of large rack mount enclosure that supports 8+ 3.5" drives that can take IDE and SATA discs?
Yes, just not mixed, only either-or.

Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby View Post
i don't think you can make a RAID with mixed size drives, but can you make a RAID with mixed interfaces (SATA, IDE)?
Yes, if it's software-RAID, which is what you should use anyway. Real hardware RAID almost necessitates a spare controller (if it should die) to guard against data loss. Software RAID has this feature "built-in" in the OS.

Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby View Post
i just want one big enclosure that will consolidate everything for the next couple of years

preferably something quiet too.
Lots of drives, quiet, ready-made. Pick 2.

Lots of drives and ready-made = rack stuff = LOUD.
Lots of drives and quiet = Home made.
Quiet and ready-made = What you already got.

My choice whould be a BIG case like the Cooler Master Stacker with 3x 5" fans running on 8v instead of the front panels. Should be reasonably quiet and completely silent if placed in a closet or something. You obviously need a bunch of 3.5" adaptors too.

Quote:
Originally Posted by alcimedes View Post
[...] turn it into a big striped RAID [...]
No.
Just No.
This would be equivalent to shooting oneself in the foot.
RAID 5 is the absolute minimum, even with backups (onto what?).

Converted 07/2005.
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alcimedes
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2006-10-30, 14:30

Wuss.
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intlplby
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2006-10-30, 14:38

RAID 5 is what i was looking for......

how much could i expect to get for each of the 500GB drives used?

is it possible to have something with firewire and gigabit ethernet

i got the Infrant ReadyNAS NV, but overall i have been disappointed with the speed over gigabit ethernet..... firewire 400 gives me much better performance
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Ebby
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2006-10-30, 15:10

Hold on a second. you run into serious performance issues if you mix drives of different sizes in almost all RAID setups. If I recall, if you make a RAID 5 out of the drives you have, it will format each to mimic your smallest hard drive. This would be the 250GB drive. You would have wasted space on all the other larger drives.

Your options are RAID0 (not a good idea) or wait until 10.5 comes out and pray for XFS.

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alcimedes
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2006-10-30, 15:18

yeah, if you want a safe RAID you should only use the 500GB drives.

You'd lose 700GB including the 400GB drive, and 1.5TB of space if you included the 300GB drive.

The 250's should just be tossed, or put into a small RAID with the 300.

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Yonzie
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2006-10-30, 16:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by alcimedes View Post
Wuss.
Naw, just been burned. Twice even. 600 gigs the first time, 750 the second (not striping, LVM (AKA JBOD))

On economy, I've found that the cheapest possible route is not a dedicated NAS/FW box, but some ultra-cheap case with cheap but decent MB (with enough SATA/IDE channels) and RAM and the cheapest CPU available.
Compared to your NAS box, it will have oodles of horsepower for RAID so it should be plenty fast. All this for less than $150, less drives. You are however limited to ~5 drives due to the PSU.
You can also buy flash drives to boot on making it extremely similar to ready-made NAS solutions.

Converted 07/2005.
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intlplby
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2006-10-31, 17:37

what's the verdict on software RAID vs hardware RAID?
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alcimedes
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2006-10-31, 17:41

With differing drive connectors you're not going to find a hardware RAID. Software is your only bet.
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Ebby
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2006-10-31, 18:11

There is also a performance hit if your RAID setup needs to calculate a parity. (Everything except RAID 0 and 1)
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Yonzie
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2006-11-01, 02:02

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ebby View Post
There is also a performance hit if your RAID setup needs to calculate a parity. (Everything except RAID 0 and 1)
Depends. If using a soft-RAID controller and expecting HW-RAID, yes. If using software-RAID on a dedicated storage box, then no.

Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby View Post
what's the verdict on software RAID vs hardware RAID?
What do you do if you run HW-RAID and your controller dies?
Right, you probably want a backup controller, but I'm cheap so I'd skip all that and go software-RAID. At least in linux, the SW-RAID is pretty darn refined, supporting pretty much everything except expansion of RAID5 arrays (which is coming).

Converted 07/2005.
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intlplby
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2006-11-29, 16:47

ok, so i was thinking....

could i make my own big enclosure with:
1)drilled sheet metal to hold the drives more compactly than buying a desktop tower
2) multiple old computer PSUs (one for every 5 drives)
3) multiple firewire bridgeboards such as this
4) large whisper quiet fans


i.e. create a 20 drive enclosure with 4 PSUs, 5 bridgeboards daisy-chained together internally with one FW800 cable coming out the back.

what would be the best RAID to use? RAID 5?

how would using apple's software RAID affect system performance? could i just plug in the enclosure and it be recognized on any OS X Tiger system?

this seems a LOT cheaper than buying a RAID array that supports that many drives.

how much space would 20 500GB drives yield?


what about a solution that used a MoBo and RAID controllers? would that be cheaper? what would be the fastest way to get data off it? firewire?
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kretara
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2006-11-29, 17:13

How about one of these.

NORCO DS-1220 3U 12-bay Hot-swap Rackmount eSATA RAID Hard Drive Storage Subsystem $839.99

or

NORCO DS-1210 Black Steel 3U 12 bay Rackmount Firewire Hard Drive Storage Subsystem $569.99

I've been lusting after the firewire model for a while now, just don't have the funds.
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intlplby
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2006-11-29, 17:43

yeah, i saw the esata one

i was just about to post and ask how to connect 4 sata drives to my MBP

didnt see the firewire one

now i don't have to

sweet
thanks
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709
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2006-11-29, 17:46

intlplby, if you're going all out for a 20 drive RAID setup I'd seriously consider SATA. You're going to get at least 2X the throughput of FW800, and probably more likely 3X-5X depending on how you stripe the drives.

Building your own box is fine, the computer PSUs sound fine, but I'd replace each of the FW boards with something like this from Addonics. There's a pretty great (and very informative) review on AMUG as well. Worth a read.

After that, you'll need a card that supports port multiplication. I'd personally recommend the Tempo E4P from Sonnet. RAID 0 will give you the greatest performance, but with that much space I'd go with RAID 1 myself, and just mirror 10/10 drives. That way if one drive goes out you're not going to lose any data.

So it goes.
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709
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2006-11-29, 17:50

Ah, we were posting at the same time. I didn't realize you were working from a MBP. In that case, I'd cut the RAID down from 20 to 10 drives and get one of these from Sonnet. You could still stripe all 10 in RAID 0 or 5/5 in RAID 1. Either way, it'll be screaming fast.

So it goes.
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intlplby
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2006-11-29, 18:50

the biggest problem i have seen with SATA is connecting lots of drives to a MBP..... i have only seen expresscards that give you 2 SATA connections

is there a way to use SATA with the MBP that way?
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2006-11-29, 19:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by Yonzie View Post
Naw, just been burned. Twice even. 600 gigs the first time, 750 the second (not striping, LVM (AKA JBOD))

On economy, I've found that the cheapest possible route is not a dedicated NAS/FW box, but some ultra-cheap case with cheap but decent MB (with enough SATA/IDE channels) and RAM and the cheapest CPU available.
Compared to your NAS box, it will have oodles of horsepower for RAID so it should be plenty fast. All this for less than $150, less drives. You are however limited to ~5 drives due to the PSU.
You can also buy flash drives to boot on making it extremely similar to ready-made NAS solutions.
Are you talking a XP box? I'm looking to dome something similar as intlplby with all my drives, plus I keep adding more. Could you give a little more detail on this idea for me? Thanks.

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709
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Join Date: May 2004
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2006-11-29, 21:44

Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby View Post
the biggest problem i have seen with SATA is connecting lots of drives to a MBP..... i have only seen expresscards that give you 2 SATA connections

is there a way to use SATA with the MBP that way?
The Express 34 card from Sonnet that I linked to supports port multiplication. You can connect 10 drives (5 drives per connection) to it as long as you have your drives attached to a like controller (like the Addonics).

So it goes.
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Yonzie
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Join Date: Sep 2005
 
2006-11-30, 01:48

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle2472 View Post
Are you talking a XP box? I'm looking to dome something similar as intlplby with all my drives, plus I keep adding more. Could you give a little more detail on this idea for me? Thanks.
Linux. Might be a bit scary.
The concept is more of an economy thing. I found that you can buy huge expensive cases and nice 700W PSUs for lots of drives, but it's not cost-effective. The cheapest way to go is a ultra-cheap case with 300W+ PSU, generic MB (preferably onboard graphics, LAN), CPU, RAM (512MB is way overkill), a small system drive and 4-5 300GB drives. 500GB is probably the sweet spot by now. Then SW-RAID the drives together and share the huge drive (SMB, NFS, FTP, whatever)

Converted 07/2005.
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intlplby
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2006-11-30, 01:57

see, i find gigabit ethernet still too slow after being used to firewire and stuff

i also find the filename restrictions with moving from HFS+ to some other system like CIFS to be a pain in the ass

i want an HFS+ setup... apple, why don't you make this yet in an affordable form factor?
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intlplby
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2006-12-13, 17:06

just in case anyone was interested:

http://www.cooldrives.com/8hadrusb20ra.html

they have no plans for a firewire version, but fwdepot said they are working on one.....

i'm gonna hold out for a firewire one... that thing would be perfect
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turtle
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2006-12-13, 17:30

Yeah FW would be great. Keep us (or just me) posted.
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Ebby
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2006-12-13, 18:01

It is only RAID 0. No redundancy there. Although you could still create Software RAID's in Disk Utility.

It is actually a nice box if you have all sorts of old drives laying around and no place to out them.

^^ One more quality post from the desk of Ebby. ^^
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