Help me with some storage recommendations

[fzkl]

I have an nForce 790i ultra based system which I use primarily for browsing, gaming, torrents, music and movies. I have a single 1.5 TB HDD for OS and storage and that's almost full and and I am looking for some internal drive upgrades and need some suggestions on this front. I have a 1TB WD My book USB Drive that I use to lug around some of my data.

Factors affecting my decision:
1) I need to get some drives quickly before I run out of space and also fear of losing a lot of data.
2) My system is a power hog and I am thinking I need to build another system just for watching movies and browsing. If I take this route, the drives I pick up now for my current system should aid this transition without adding too much cost. (I am thinking of building this system about 6 months down the lane).
3) RAID 5 with 3 drives Vs RAID 5 with 4 drives Vs SSD performance
4) Cost. With the SSD thrown in I will have to shell out quite some amount here. So I have to be wise about the returns in terms of the final storage space and performance.

Here are the options I have thought of:
1) Get a single SSD and 2 more 1.5 TB HDDs. Install OS on the SSD and do a RAID5 on the 3 X 1.5 TB HDDs
2) Get 2 more 1.5 TB HDDs only and do a RAID5 with 3 HDDs and use this for storage as well as OS. Don't buy SSDs.
3) Get 3 more 1.5 TB HDDs and do a RAID 5 with 4 X 1.5 TB HDDs

Questions:
1) What would you recommend and why?
2) How does RAID 5 performance scale on moving from 3-4 drives?
3) Will I be able to get RAID 0 read performance with a RAID 5 setup?

Thanks

 

[Rifter]

I would wait a few months for 2TB drives to fall in price and go with them, maybe spend the $70 on a 1TB drive now to get you till then. I would not go SSD for now as IMO its not worth it in a price/GB viewpoint. Raid performance will be good on RAID 5 on any amount of drives as long as your RAID card is a good one and up to the task, all the opnboard RAID chips are not good, they use the CPU to do all the work, dont have backup batteries or onboard cache. They are fine for simple RAID setups like raid 0 or even mirroring but you will see much better RAID 5 performance on a Real RAID card(think 3Ware, Adaptec, etc) my .02c

 

[fzkl]

Has anyone had issues running RAID5 with software RAID? Can anyone provide some perf data for a motherboard like the nforce 790i?

 

[Blain]

RAID 5 requires 3 HDs minimum.

 

[RebateMonger]

I wouldn't put an SSD disk on a storage server. It won't affect file transfer rate and boot speed of storage server isn't going to make any difference.

Because of the speed limitations of a Gigabit network, the type of disk array on the storage server won't make much difference, speed-wise. RAID 5 will have slower writes than other possible disk configurations.

 

[fzkl]

The system I have now is not going to be a storage server. For the moment since this is the only system I have and I need storage space I am planning to buy some large capacity drives. Later I will build another system (the HTPC + Storage) and migrate all these large capacity drives . The question is: Should I do a SSD OS + RAID Storage on my current system and move the RAID to new system later on or if should just do RAID now and move it later to a new system.

 

[Blain]

Moving a RAID array, using a hardware controller card isn't going to be a problem.

 

[fzkl]

Do you think a RAID 5 can provide read performance close enough to that of an SSD to negate the value of purchasing an SSD right now?

 

[SolMiester]

Do you think a RAID 5 can provide read performance close enough to that of an SSD to negate the value of purchasing an SSD right now?

No way any RAID array will come close to SSD read performance period...

 

[PUN]

My setup is perfect

SSD for OS/Apps
2TB RAID 0 for Movies/Music/Pictures/Documents
500GB WD AAKS (synctoy backup of Docs/pictures from Raid0)
750GB WD External (synctoy backup of Movies/Music from Raid0)

I don't trust any external drive for important files so my docs and pics goes to internal 500GB.

I prefer to synctoy than Raid1/5

 

[Red Squirrel]

I would build a basic Linux server (does not need to be a power house) and use software raid. Raid5 is probably best bet. Put in some 1TB drives or even 2TB drives as they have gone down in price big time, last I checked they are under 200 bucks. (need at least 3).

I always laugh because I could build a storage array the size of our san for like 1% of the price they paid for it. Crazy howHDDs have gone down in price.

I personally would not buy a SSD yet. Too expensive per GB. So you get better benchmarks, big deal, really. For day to day use the difference is probably small. They also wear out over time so depending on how you are a power user you'll have it fail sooner then a spindle drive will. (I've seen spindle drives last 10+ years)