If I was to build a Home MultiMedia server, should I use SATA HDDS or IDE HDDs in RAID

[KDOG]

Starting to plan my multimedia server and was wondering is there a terrible difference between IDE raid and SATA RAID as far as this server. Looking to save a few $$$ if I can, but not if the performance is crappy. IF the difference is negligible, what IDE RAID setup would you recommend?

 

[Twsmit]

excluding the WD Raptor, IDE raid and SATA raid are nearly identicle.

I suppose performance differences will be noticed if you have native southbridge Raid or PCI raid. (either SATA or IDE)

IMO there probably wont be enough of a performance increase from 1 drive to Raid 0, but if you go with Raid ), make sure you have natiuive support for either SATA or IDE.

 

[KDOG]

I need a add-in PCI RAID card, whats a good one to get? Looking for up to 4HDDs setup for 2/2 ( I guess that would be RAID 0, 1 ? ) I haven't done RAID before so I'm kinda new at this..

 

[KDOG]

Damn those PCI ATA RAID cards are expensive, $83? I don't think so, I think I'll just get one of those 250GB Western digitals and hope it doesn't die on me...

 

[SpunkyJones]

If your talking about the Raptors for sata, you'll see a difference. What are you looking for in Raid? What do you want or expect from a raid array? Do you want or need redundancy or just pure speed?

What do you mean by multimedia server, what will it be doing specifically? I run a gaming rig with two raptors in a raid 0 array, but I'm not concerned with data protection for that system.

If data loss concerns you, raid 1 would protect you but at the cost of 50% of your hard drive space.

 

[CZroe]

Remember that the cost difference is cumulative. If you're going to make a 6-drive array, you'd better factor even a small difference.

The amount of storage capacity you can get for your money is also more important than the interface used. For instance, 120GB WD1200JB drives were $39 last week. Try building a 1TB fileserver for cheaper with anything else.

Because of network bottlenecks, media servers do not need so much speed as they do capacity, but with higher capacity comes the risk of loosing a lot more files and shared important data. Because capacity is important, RAID1 does not seem very compassionate to your poor wallet. With RAID5 you only lose one drive's worth of data. The only decent RAID5 card I could find decided the SerialATA vs. ParallelATA debate for me as it is only for ParallelATA drives. The Promise SuperTrak SX6000 is upgradable to 256MB SDRAM cache memory (With BIOS update) and has six channels. The FastTrak SX4000 supports 256MB cache but only supports four drives and does not have a dedicated CPU (Only XOR assist hardware). This means VERY high CPU utilization. Their newer SerialATA version of that also only supports four drives and has high CPU utilization. Don't ignore CPU utiliation and dismiss it as acceptable like it is for standard RAID0 or 1 cards. I saw a news post on the Anandtech main page about some tech review site using RAID5 cards without onboard CPUs as system CPU benchmarks! You can install a server OS and do software RAID5 for free at a tremendous cost to CPU performance, but if the server is only serving for the network the CPU will probably remain underutilized anyway. This way, you can add as many drives as you can connect!

Choose a RAID level then choose a card and let that determine the interface your drives will be

 

[Pariah]

Any reason in particular why you are even looking at RAID? Unless your network is a gigabit LAN, you're not going to get anything out of RAID except a higher chance of data loss, which would seem like a poor reason to pay more for something. If 250GB is all you need, just buying a single 250GB drive is the way to go.

CZroe, if KDOG is turned off by a bottom rung $83 RAID card, I don't think he's interested in a $200+ card or anything RAID 5 related.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Any reason in particular why you are even looking at RAID? Unless your network is a gigabit LAN, you're not going to get anything out of RAID except a higher chance of data loss, which would seem like a poor reason to pay more for something. If 250GB is all you need, just buying a single 250GB drive is the way to go.

CZroe, if KDOG is turned off by a bottom rung $83 RAID card, I don't think he's interested in a $200+ card or anything RAID 5 related.

It's cheaper to buy the card and several cheaper drives than to buy higher-capacity hard drives. That was my point Not only is it cheaper, but you have a performance and fault-tolerance benefit. The SX4000 Lite is kinda cheap. SX6000 can be had for much less than the cost of one very large hard drive. Instead of a 250GB drive, two 120GB drives can be had for $79. Keep going and get six for $239. Keeping capacity low in excahnge for a high drive count also means you will loose much less capacity to protect the array (That's why an SX6000 is more deisreable to an SX4000). In exchange for fault-tolerance, what's better? Loosing an expensive 250GB of capacity from four total 200GB drives or loosing a cheap 120GB of capacity from six total 120GB drives? Prices are NOT proportional.

Large arrays really are entering the consumer media server level thanks to abundant cheap drives

 

[Pariah]

I don't know where you shop, but 120GB drives are around $85 at online retailers. Any rebates are likely not applicable to more than one drive if you even want to deal with them in the first place. That's $170 for 240GB or $185 for a 250GB drive. Add in the cost of the RAID controller for lower capacity, and you're not saving any money, you're losing it. The SX4000 is around $150 which you could buy another 200GB drive instead.

4x 120GB ($340) + SX4000 ($145) = $485 for 360GB useable

2x 250GB ($370) + 160GB ($90) = $460 for 660GB useable

I don't see where the savings are.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Pariah
I don't know where you shop, but 120GB drives are around $85 at online retailers. Any rebates are likely not applicable to more than one drive if you even want to deal with them in the first place. That's $170 for 240GB or $185 for a 250GB drive. Add in the cost of the RAID controller for lower capacity, and you're not saving any money, you're losing it. The SX4000 is around $150 which you could buy another 200GB drive instead.

4x 120GB ($340) + SX4000 ($145) = $485 for 360GB useable

2x 250GB ($370) + 160GB ($90) = $460 for 660GB useable

I don't see where the savings are.

That's what I'm saying... You've really gotta shop for the best price:capacity deal and for the last year that's been the 1200JB. I started buying 120GB drive last summer. Literally every other week and sometimes months at a time there would be a new set of rebates I would again qualify for. They started at $69 and have fluctuated between $59 and $79 all along. All last week, they were $39 and I expect them to average near that for some time. After all, I felt bad buying my last of six 120GB drives for $69 months ago when there was a 160GB 1600JB drive for $49 that week but I didn't have time to work out a trade with anyone. I couldn't resist the $39 drives and got three more for a total of nine. Only six can be implemented at once so I can't even use them for hot spares but I've actually got a better plan... Trade massive, but cheap, capacity for a Hitachi Deskstar 7k400 drives. I go through the rebate hassles and take an overall capacity loss to increase the capacity of the array for WAY cheaper than a bunch of 7k400 drives would cost. This would also ensure that I get identical platter densities.

I've never had to wait more than two weeks for another $59-69 deal to pop up and now that has become $39-49. I'm sure nearly everyone has a few family members in the same town for handling rebates. Even at ~$59 a piece I couldn't afford more than one or two at a time anyway so I was waiting for my next check on the weeks when there were no rebates.

Got 'em all at Circuit City, Best Buy and OfficeMax. Some were advertised, some were not.

 

[Pariah]

I made that mistake a few years ago when I loaded up on 40GB drives that were discounted. Now they're too small for any real storage, and just lie around collecting dust. They're also out of warranty, which makes them a terrible option for a RAID array. If one of them died I certainly would not go out and buy another 40GB drive at this point. Had I not been so cheap and opted for larger drives, I'd still be using them now. Live and learn. It's only fewer larger drives for me now, rather than a collection of smaller drives.

 

[KDOG]

The only reason I'm looking into RAID is for redundancy. I'm going to have all my music, recorded TV shows, pictures, etc. And I don't want to lose it all should a drive crap out. Now some would say just get a DVD burner and back up my stuff, but I'd rather put that money into the HDD capacity.

 

[KDOG]

Also, 120GB hdds are around $85 at newegg which isn't bad. And if I have to get that $85 RAID card to do what I want, then I guess I just have to suck it up and buy it. So now its a matter of "bang for the buck" as far as capacity goes. So can anyone suggest a IDE RAID card? Newegg has a promise one for 85 bucks that looks ok, any other suggestions?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: KDOG
Also, 120GB hdds are around $85 at newegg which isn't bad. And if I have to get that $85 RAID card to do what I want, then I guess I just have to suck it up and buy it. So now its a matter of "bang for the buck" as far as capacity goes. So can anyone suggest a IDE RAID card? Newegg has a promise one for 85 bucks that looks ok, any other suggestions?

just get dual 120s and have a script back up the data from one to another every day.

 

[Cerb]

Performance differences are minimal for servers, not counting the Raptor. Chipsets and drivers make a bigger difference than the drives. SATAs tend to do better bursts, hence a good showing in office benches, but the difference will be nothing for a server.
For IDE RAId...not WDs. Don't know if it's just the WD800JBs, but I'd stay away from Caviars RAID at the moment.
Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi should all be fine, and the Samsung and Hitachi can be set for performance/quiet, where the new Seagates are stuck from the factory.

If you're using GbE, go hardware RAID. 100Mb, software is fine.

Also, get double what you use right now for storage . It doesn't take long for it to start filling up.

 

[KDOG]

What about Koutech Raid cards? I see newegg has it for 21 bucks, in the review section it seems to do pretty good even thought they say it will only do RAID in winxp. Thats fine since thats all I'm using it for....

 

[Cerb]

It's basically software RAID. A little logic used from the controller, IIRC, but nothing more special than normal software RAID in peformance or utility.

 

[KDOG]

just get dual 120s and have a script back up the data from one to another every day.

What kind of utility can do that?

 

[CZroe]

Heh, well he's not talking about WindowsXP's software RAID1 but WindowsXP Pro has free software RAID 1 & 0. Only thing is it can't involve the boot drive in any way. Go to the Microsoft Management Console and load the Storage/Disk Management snap-in. Right-click, convert to dynamic discs, and start up a RAID 1 volume.

I used it for a little while. On a storage-only computer, who cares about CPU utilization, right? Of course, that's a TOTALLY different kind of CPU utilization when compared to RAID5 :Q

 

[Pariah]

Windows XP Pro cannot create RAID 1 arrays, only RAID 0.

If all you want is a backup copy, I wouldn't even bother with RAID. Just buy 2 drives and occasionally ghost one of them. The data on a media server shouldn't really be frequently changing, nor is it particularly vital data either. You'd also be much better off going with 160GB over 120GB. 120GB are around $85, while 160GB are around $90.

 

[Cerb]

Just do RAID. Occasional ghosting WILL get you in trouble with Mr. Murphy. That's all there is to it.
RAID 1 takes all the rest out of it, and it's just done.

 

[KDOG]

Yeah, I saw Newegg has Samsung 160g hdds for 91 bucks, now to decide to either do 2 of them in Raid 0, or 4 of them in RAID 0, 1...

 

[Cerb]

I though this was a server...RAID 1 is all you need.
The performance difference, particularly over a network, will not be noticed at all.

 

[bigshooter]

Kdog, you don't want to ever use raid 0 by itself for anything other than performance reasons. You'll hear this a lot, but raid 0 isn't raid. There is no redundancy in raid 0. Raid 0+1 or 1+0 is ok, because you'll still have redundancy.

Just remember if you buy 4 160gig HD's and put them in a 0+1 array, you will only have 320gigs of useable space. Add in the card you will need for 0+1, and you're hitting a minimum of $400 for a very small amount of useable space. You should probably just spend the extra money to get a raid controller that will do raid 5. This way you only lose the space of 1 drive. You could even go with 4 120gig drives if they cost less and still have more useable space than 0+1 using 160gig disks.

 

[KDOG]

Thats fine. I think 320g is plenty for me. I may even just start out with 2 drives and then get another 2 drives later....