Socket 1150 mini-ITX motherboard with Raid 5 support

[Lil'John]

Title states it.

CPU is starting off as a 4570S(65W) and going toward a 4570T(35W).

I bought a ASRock B85M-ITX and wasn't paying attention to the raid support

The case is a small SilverStone Sugo Series SG05W-LITE.

I'm going with three Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB drives (all the case will support)

The computer is only going to be used for movie watching(local mpg, DVD, and netflix type), file storage, and maybe Facebook type games for the wife. No BF4 I have no intention to overclock.

I've found the following that support Raid 5 in miniItx form:
ASRock H87M-ITX @ $94 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157386
GIGABYTE GA-H87N @$104 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128660
ASUS H87I-PLUS @ $110 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813132032

I'm not limiting myself to the above three but I'd rather not break the bank on the motherboard. Number of SATA ports is somewhat unimportant as I'm limited to three drives.

Historically, I've always done ASUS motherboards and only had one problem(RIVE )

I just did the noted ASRock board and was disappointed they provided a bad driver on their install disk

I'm not familiar with Gigabyte. But the theory of dual lan is intriguing/tempting.

So what do you recommend?

 

[Batmeat]

I'd run with that Gigabyte board simply for the dual lan.

 

[Lil'John]

Batmeat, that is what is tempting me on it. The 4 sata ports doesn't bother me.

As sort of a followup question, instead of a new motherboard, would it be better to get a PCI-E raid card?

 

[Emulex]

I'd not use SATA RAID-5 it would be so poor in performance without a decent write back cache option and only HP has that option with intel ERSTe with 512 BBWC.

You'd be better off just using JBOD mode with multiple drives since raid-5 is not going to be very fun without very fast drives.

You can get an x8 m5014 IBM clone for pretty cheap (minus the new battery) - probably $200-300 (higher price after battery). It is not cheap to have real raid with solid quality battery back write cache (or super capacitor)!.

 

[Lil'John]

Emulex,
Thanks for the input.

As you stated, there is a performance hit to writing to the raid drives(not sure on actual hit)

I'm looking at a slight change in plans and going with an SSD for OS/programs.

The raid drive will be storing media(music, mpg, etc) and mainly being read from.

My logic for going with raid 5 is to prevent having to spend hours backing my media up again

 

[mrpiggy]

Emulex,
Thanks for the input.

As you stated, there is a performance hit to writing to the raid drives(not sure on actual hit)

I'm looking at a slight change in plans and going with an SSD for OS/programs.

The raid drive will be storing media(music, mpg, etc) and mainly being read from.

My logic for going with raid 5 is to prevent having to spend hours backing my media up again

RAID5 is not a replacement for backups. It simply allows you not to lose all your data if a drive fails. Problem is that when one drive fails, even after you replace it, there seems to be a greater chance of more drives failing sooner rather than later especially if they were all brought online at the same time. Basically, you still need to run backups of important data.

 

[Lil'John]

RAID5 is not a replacement for backups. It simply allows you not to lose all your data if a drive fails. Problem is that when one drive fails, even after you replace it, there seems to be a greater chance of more drives failing sooner rather than later especially if they were all brought online at the same time. Basically, you still need to run backups of important data.

Thanks for a better clarification that I've highlighted red. I am definitely NOT using the RAID 5 for backups but more of a loss protection.

The only thing that is going to be on my HTPC is movies/music that I have original disks for. So while the data isn't important/irreplaceable, it would take a LOT of time to recreate.

My general understanding of RAID 5 is it gives a speed advantage during reads but is penalized during writes.

From the standpoint of outputting media, this sounds like exactly what I "need": I write a movie to my disk once but read it many times.

 

[Emulex]

raid-5 without a real raid controller and real nearline drives are going to be horrible as far as writes. think 10x-20x slower than 1 drive to write since you have to do a read/write/read/write to compute the checksum and write it back out for every block update.

As I said before it would be easier to just rsync your data across many drives (1:1).

raid-5 is intolerant to failure (power,crash,etc) - it will fail you quick if you think about that reset button or not powering down the system properly (say opposed to UPS not shutting down gracefully).

You'll learn - that's for sure, just make sure you backup backup backup, since raid-5 is not meant to replace backups! Let us know how it works out

 

[dac7nco]

One of the main reasons you want JBOD is that RAID-5 will use all discs euqually; however many discs you have in the array, they'll all spin-up. RAID basically maximizes the probability that multiple discs will fail within the same time frame.

If a single disc fails, you will NOT sleep well during the rebuilding process, even after you've stressed through getting a replacement drive. You NEVER watch videos or play music from the RAID... you let it sit there.

Another thing to consider is if you have another disc fast enough to feed a decent RAID.

 

[Lil'John]

raid-5 without a real raid controller and real nearline drives are going to be horrible as far as writes. think 10x-20x slower than 1 drive to write since you have to do a read/write/read/write to compute the checksum and write it back out for every block update.

As I said before it would be easier to just rsync your data across many drives (1:1).

Very good point on the issue with write speeds and the impact of RAID 5 on them.

I did consider the write penalty when I was thinking raid 5. As a media storage device, the simplified use model is "write once, read lots of times". That use model seems what raid 5 was built for.

raid-5 is intolerant to failure (power,crash,etc) - it will fail you quick if you think about that reset button or not powering down the system properly (say opposed to UPS not shutting down gracefully).

You'll learn - that's for sure, just make sure you backup backup backup, since raid-5 is not meant to replace backups! Let us know how it works out

This is an interesting point I didn't consider. Would this "failure intolerance" only apply during writes?

Learning is what I like to do thus a lot of questions/discussions right now

One of the main reasons you want JBOD is that RAID-5 will use all discs euqually; however many discs you have in the array, they'll all spin-up. RAID basically maximizes the probability that multiple discs will fail within the same time frame.

If a single disc fails, you will NOT sleep well during the rebuilding process, even after you've stressed through getting a replacement drive. You NEVER watch videos or play music from the RAID... you let it sit there.

Another thing to consider is if you have another disc fast enough to feed a decent RAID.

This is another interesting point about JBOD. For me, the secondary benefit of the RAID is the single logical drive. That is accomplished by the JBOD. I think the concern for me with JBOD is if one drive fails, the whole logical drive is hosed.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to accomplish here, so I'll ask...

Is this a build meant for a fileserver or regular desktop usage?

For regular desktop usage consider getting a NAS instead for file storage, and an SSD for your desktop.

If you need more storage space locally, then what an SSD can provide consider getting a 3.5" 4TB HDD instead (the case can fit one 3.5" drive). With an additional 4TB external HDD for backup.

Anything above RAID-1 should not be used in a regular desktop computer. Unless there is a very good reason.As already pointed out RAID-5 has very little fault tolerance, and should definitely not be used as a system drive. If you need real fault tolerance you should be using RAID-6 anyway, and even that is in no way foolproof nor can it replace backups...