Looking for raid system suggestions

[stanger89]

FWIW, Raidcore would let you set up a second array on the remaining 50GB of those drives, and IIRC would allow you to grow it once you replaced all the 250s. However Raidcore has had some serious reliability issues, and there's no way I'd trust them for anything.

[Blue]

I just wanted to make a note about OCE. Adaptec cards (at least) will not expand the array if the new drive is only a matter of bytes smaller than the existing drives. So, it's possible that you could buy the same capacity drive from a different manufacturer (or even a later revision of the same drives you have now) and it won't work.

Although I've used OCE successfully with my 2810SA, it's a scary process. I try to make sure I have backups spread around on older drives, and work on backing up to DVD+R whenever possible. Movie DVD rips I don't care about, since they are uncompressed and easily recreated, but I'd rather not lose all my TV show DVD rips that I spent a lot of time transcoding to xvid.

[lovingHDTV]

Taking advice from this thread I've spec'd a system to serve as my sage/file server. I'm soliciting feedback. I found most of the stuff at newegg, but will end up buying the RAID card elsewhere because newegg does not sell the card with the cables needed to hook up the drives (go figure).

Please provide feedback. I don't want to go justify this to the CFO (wife) and not have it be a good solution. Is it worth the money for a socket 939 mainboard and cpu? Not sure what I get for the extra $$.

The RAID card with stagger drive power-on spin up so I'm hoping that 430W power supply is enough.

I plan on using this as my SageTV server, two A180 cards. I play my files on a client machine elswhere, but would also like to be able to view tv on the server. I plan on running DirMon and SA on the server.

Case:
6 internal 3.5" drive, 2 external 3.5" and 4 external 4.25" bays for a total of 12!
430W power supply, two rear fans, 1 front fan, 1 side fan.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811138042

Mainboard/CPU:
Abit NF8-V Pro NFORCE3 socket 754
5 pci slots, optical sound, SATA
1Gb ethernet
AMD Sempron 64 3000+ CPU Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127219

Memory:
Corsair XMS 2x512 184 pin DDR400 cas 2 memory. I got this for the dual channel memory support.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145450

AGP card:
Cheapo agp card because I could not find optical sound, 1Gb ethernet and integrated video on the same board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814164024

RAID card:
3ware 9500S 8-MI card. This card seems to be well liked.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816116028

HDD:
Looking at 3x300GB SATA drives to start with. I'll then add drives later as needed.

Backup:
2x160 GB PATA XP software Raid 1 for backups. I don't plan on backing up videos files, just my pictures, tax, financial, documents, etc files.

OS:
XP Pro


Thanks!

[stanger89]

Looks good, the only reason to go 939, would be if you feel you need PCI-Express (which you really don't for this purpose).

Only comment I'll make is are you sure you want the multilane card?

[lovingHDTV]

OK, that is what I thought about the 939, and yes, I don't want/need PCI-express.

I'm not sure what a multilane card is. Basically I was looking for a card with support for 8 drives, OCE, and one that seemed to get good reviews.

Is multilane refering to the SATA connectors that require the special cables? Just guessing here.

If you have another suggestion as to a card that fits the bill, I'd like additional suggestions.

thanks,

[dvd_maniac]

yes that is what it refers to.

I have the 9500s-8 and it is a great card.

BTW I bought mine from ebay at 385.00 plus 12.99 shipping.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

I'm not sure what a multilane card is. Basically I was looking for a card with support for 8 drives, OCE, and one that seemed to get good reviews.

Is multilane refering to the SATA connectors that require the special cables? Just guessing here.

Yes, multilane is (I think) a proprietary connection to 3ware that caries 4 SATA connections on 1 cable. I thought, that it only worked between their card, and their SATA enclosures.

FWIW, the 9500s-8 (vs the 9500s-8MI) has 8 normal SATA connectors that use normal SATA cables.

[salsbst]

I don't think it's proprietary... at least Areca was planning to support it in a future version of their card.

After having to route and connect 16 SATA cables in my case where the backplane ports are very difficult to reach, I can vouch for its usefulness. I was cursing and sweating and ended up in a fight with my fiancee that night because I wouldn't come to dinner.

[Endymion]

Check this out: XBB.

Some quick calculating in my head says this can support up to at least 83TB or so per controller.... These are nice machines to work with too. Unfortunately, I believe it's a good $20,000 per controller not to mention the drives and drive trays.

Although I can't get my hands on this particular controller, I'm working on getting an older reclaimed controller and a couple of drive trays... I'm hoping I can get my hands on about 5TB worth...

[SHS]

Holy cow 83TB