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External Closure or Computer Case for Raid Setup

harobikes333

harobikes333

Platinum Member
I'm looking to get a Raid 1 going and eventually add some drive possible to turn it into a Raid 5.

Not looking for crazy speed. Just backing up huge amounts of video that I no longer want on clumsy DVD's, etc.

I've looked at quite a few NAS enclosures but they seem geared towards mutiple users at once ( which isn't the case here ). The Raid capable External Enclosures I've reviewed seem a bit "generic branded" ?

Any advice? I was looking to start with two of these HDDs
Seagate STBD6000100 6TB SATA


I plan on building a new computer in the near future and am contemplating putting them in the computer case..? An option / what do you guys suggest?
 
Build a ghetto computer and use drive pooling software. It's the cheapest and simplest. Apparently Windows 8 has this feature built in. I don't have Windows 8, so I can't comment. My system uses Windows 7 and DrivePool, which is found here for $20
https://stablebit.com/
There's a 30 day trial so you can see if it does all of the things you're wanting to do.

The cool thing about drive pooling software is that it does not require special formatting. You can take any random drive, any size, and it will work. It doesn't need to be a special RAID drive. My system has something like 5 drives in it, most of them different sizes, different speeds, from different eras. It's not even clear which drive is used to backup data on another drive. Suppose I have drives A, B, C, D, E. Some of the files on A might be duplicated on B, some of them are on C, some of them are on D, some of them are on E. My personal documents are important, so I have those set to exist on at least 3 drives at one time. I can take one of the drives out of the system and see all of the files on that drive; it's not like a RAID or JBOD where drives require other drives to be present.

I just like the idea of being able to throw random drives together. You can even pool USB drives.
 
it all depends on how much data you will be looking at in the end. Expanding as you go could limit your choices as well given some cheaper devices do not support array expanding easily.

Best to look at the end game and work backwards.
 
harobikes333 said:
I plan on building a new computer in the near future and am contemplating putting them in the computer case..? An option / what do you guys suggest?
Click to expand...
Single drive, with backup. Then, move to RAID 0 or JBOD, as needed. I see no good use for parity or mirroring.

P.S. There are quite a few cases, even MicroATX, that can hold 5+ drives comfortably, so no need for an external non-backup copy.
 
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If for backup, then external so you can physically detach the array from your computer when not backing up. That's how I use my RAID array.
 
I have it from Stablebit-CoveCube tech-support that you can create more than one drive-pool, and you can dismount and remount such a pool.

If you have a Windows server box (using a Windows OS like WHS or Win 8) you could manage your backups this way. Or you could create a RAID array if you could easily mount and dismount it.

This issue has always stymied me to some extent. I really don't want my backup drives to be spinning all the time. But scheduled backups within the OS would almost seem to require it.

Worse than that, you can't use imaging software for backups of a "virtual disk" drive-pool. With Stablebit, you need to back up each and every component drive with such software.

Then I discovered "RoboCopy." I am humbled by the fact that this command-line feature was built-in to Win Vista and later, but I never discovered it. Apparently, you can create scripts to selectively backup specific folders on the server. It will also selectively copy only files which have changed since the last backup.

This leads to a GUI available at MSDN/TechNet/Microsoft, called "RichCopy 4.0." I've now chosen to use it for backing up specific parts of my drive-pool.

I could go on to explain how I've re-deployed my old StarTech Hot-swap IDE drive bay and caddies. Each caddy contains a 500 GB Hitachi drive -- all identical. The sorts of things I want to back up from my 8TB server are distinguishable groups of folders and files:

-- Volatile data of a priority nature -- with frequently added and frequently changed files
-- libraries of files that change less frequently
-- relatively non-volatile folders and files
-- Client Computer backups

Each of these components requires less than 500GB of backup storage.

Until my server files and folders grow to such a point that any given category consumes more than 500GB of space, I can squeeze more usage out of these 500 GB IDE drives. I can run Richcopy weekly for some categories of data, and monthly for others. I don't have to schedule the backups to occur automatically. All I need to do is to load the appropriate "profile" after assuring the appropriate disk is mounted, run it and "fahget about it."
 
Cerb said:
Single drive, with backup. Then, move to RAID 0 or JBOD, as needed. I see no good use for parity or mirroring.
Click to expand...

You would recommend RAID 0 but see no use for parity or mirroring? For storage of DVD rips?

Can you explain? I can't think of a worse idea than RAID 0.
 
Cerb said:
P.S. There are quite a few cases, even MicroATX, that can hold 5+ drives comfortably, so no need for an external non-backup copy.
Click to expand...
It seems like NZXT makes the best cases for this. If I filter newegg results by 8 hard drive bays, almost all of the results are NZXT. This one only cost $40 + shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...75&ignorebbr=1

If for backup, then external so you can physically detach the array from your computer when not backing up.
Click to expand...
This is a good idea for the most important data. RAID will not protect you from viruses and trojans.
 
smitbret said:
You would recommend RAID 0 but see no use for parity or mirroring? For storage of DVD rips?

Can you explain? I can't think of a worse idea than RAID 0.
Click to expand...
Yes: that you don't need availability. RAID 5 would offer URE protection, but backups will give you a good data copy, too, and that's going to be a rare event anyway, for write-once data.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37028612&postcount=80

Now let's say some fluke event similar to that happens. In the end, I lost one basic Skyrim install to start again with the mods, and two recent album rips (5 discs, though :\). If I had a RAID 1, but not a fairly recent backup of the files, that would have been more than being lightly pissed at NMM devs (now, Wrye Bash devs and maintainers? I'd let them write life support system control software); instead, full on, "OH NOES! MY DATA!"

If your data spans more than what one drive can hold, backups can become...interesting, if you don't use a NAS for a local one. But, backups cover data loss scenarios that aren't just the drive failing, and they happen. Never when you're expecting them.
 
When you build your new computer turn your old machine into some sort of storage/backup box. Personally I'm fond of ZFS for several reasons including bit rot protection.

BTW The 6TB size is not the most cost effective per TB. 3TB or 4TB drives cost less per TB.

I've got a 6 drive ZFS array set up so that any 2 drives out of the 6 can go bad with no data loss, the drawback is that there is only 4 drives worth of usable space.

With RAID 0 you loose all your data if any one of the drives goes bad. Not sure how great of an idea that is... Also you said speed is not an issue so I can't imagine RAID 0 being a good idea for your application.

How much data do you need to backup?
 
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