NAS or pc raid?

[cuti7399]

I'd like to have a centrol storage. I'm debating whether I should a NAS (D-Link 323) device and drives or build a pc just for that. I plan to use the raid on the mobo if I build a pc. Any input is appreciated.

How fast and reliable is mobo (DFI ultra-d) raid? Plan to stream video to other places in the house.

 

[Crusty]

Don't use onboard RAID under any circumstances. You are far better off using a software raid solution. If your motherboard dies, or you need to upgrade for a various reason you will have a very very hard time getting your new board to recognize the old raid array.

 

[kevnich2]

I would agree, if you're using raid, go with software. Although, if this is for home use and uptime isn't a factor, don't even bother with RAID. Just schedule a backup to a USB hard drive either every few hours, days or once a week. That's what I did with mine. RAID is NOT a backup and shouldn't be used as one. Where RAID comes into play is with uptime. In a business environment, uptime is absolutely critical, if a drive dies, they still want access to the data 100% of the time. In a home environment, you can afford to have a few hours of downtime while you replace the hard drive and do a data restoration from backups.

 

[JackMDS]

NAS or pc raid?

This is correct language wise, but it a nonsensical question technology wise.

It like asking Hat or Sandals?

If One has few computers and in need of Independent source for Backup and File storage One should use NAS (BTW, the NAS itself can be RAID).

If One needs ongoing 100% Uptime on specific computer One uses RAID.

If functional computing is not a factor, and One just want to be cool so he can tell his friends that he uses RAID, onboard RAID is an inexpensive choice.

 

[cuti7399]

so raid 1 is not safe for data? I'm using a 250g nas right now and kind of like it because i don't need any pc to be on to have access to the files and i can stream files to other places in the house. I paid $70 for this. Now i want to expand the storage but don't know if NAS would be better price then a dedicated pc.
the Dlink would cost about $150 + 2x500 drives (for raid 1) $90 each = $330
where as the pc would cost about the same but i have a pc

 

[kevnich2]

It depends what you want to use it for. Just for file access: NAS. Myself, I wanted to use mine as much more than just file access so I went with a dedicated PC/server.

 

[spikespiegal]

How fast and reliable is mobo (DFI ultra-d) raid? Plan to stream video to other places in the house.

The motherboard / PC will be significantly faster, have more options, and be more reliable. Throw Win2K or Linux on it and off you go. I trust consumer NAS boxes as far as I can hit them with a baseball bat.

Don't use onboard RAID under any circumstances. You are far better off using a software raid solution.

There are a lot of servers out there using onboard RAID that don't have a problem, and while I've used software RAID in a clutch, the write penalty with Windows based RAID is *severe*. Even cheap, psuedo RAID cards like the silicon image based ones I prefer that aren't entirely hardware based are light years faster than Windows software RAID.

There is also an extreme difference in terms of the fault tolerance between RAID 5 (total crap and needs to be banned) -vs- RAID 1. If your RAID 5 card, SANs or motherboard takes a dump, you can often plan on spending a weekend restoring the entire logical drive(s) because of parity corruption. RAID 1 however can take pretty significant hardware corruption because there is no parity to deal with. If anything, RAID 1 corruption is only marginally more subject to problems than a standard drive controller under the worst case scenario, and in my experience quite rare (unlike RAID 5).

In a home environment, you can afford to have a few hours of downtime while you replace the hard drive and do a data restoration from backups.

I agree.

so raid 1 is not safe for data?

It's actually safer for data than any other RAID topology, save for maybe RAID 10 in some scenarios. RAID is simply not a back-up solution and *only* safeguards you against HD failure.

 

[cuti7399]

thanks for all of the good info and inputs. I think I'll try the pc to see how that go. Probably setup a raid 0 with frequent backups. I do have old pata raid card, would this be faster the onboard? What's best backup software?