w00t! RAID 5 is installed and cables are done

Fullmetal Chocobo

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My machine blog is doing quite a good job at serving as a history for the work being done on my machine. My server has received a few upgrades, and I got all of the power supplies sleeved, and added some lighting. I decided not to go with watercooling, so I'm going to be getting a lot more fans to replace the ones that are in here right now... 1TB RAID 5 is done, next will the window mods.
Tas.
 

Bona Fide

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I've always wondered...what is a RAID 5 array? Its purpose?

RAID 0 - Data striping - Faster performance...turns two identical hard drives into 1.
RAID 1 - Data mirroring - Security...copies everything to both hard drives
RAID 0/1 - ???
RAID 5 - ???
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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RAID 0 / 1 (also know as RAID 1+0, 0+1 (depending on how you set it up), or RAID 10. RAID 10 is a mix of 0 and 1. You stripe one, and mirror them, or you mirror them, and then stripe the mirrors. It offers redundancy, and some increased performance, but it requires 4 drives, and you get 1/2 the capacity, as 1/2 the drives are being used for mirroring.

RAID 5 is a modified form of RAID 3. In RAID 3, you have three drives minimum, and it write data to the first two drives, but a parity bit is written to the 3rd drive, so if a drive goes down, the array can be rebuilt. RAID 5 is a distributed parity array, which means the parity bit is spread around: on the first write, is goes on drive 1; on the second write, it goes on drive 2, etc. It offers redundancy, and also offers good write speed and excellent read speed.
Tas.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Oh yea.... I was trying to decide between it and a 3Ware card, but 3Ware cards only do 64-bit/66MHz, while this card goes all the way up to the max, 64-bit, 133MHz. It's a fvcking wicked card. I actually migrated a 3-disk RAID 5 array to a 5-disk RAID 5 array, and I was using the stuff on the RAID array the whole time....
Tas.
 

Gamingphreek

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Wow... that is impressive.

Imagine if that was a U320 SCSI array.... ooooooooh. That SATA array though is putting up some impressive numbers at any rate.

-Kevin
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Well, at $599 for a 300GB SCSI here, it would cost about $3600 for a 1TB RAID 5 array, as compared to this $1000 setup. I did consider it though, as I do agree, it would have been damn sexy. :) Although with all of the RAID 0 haters around here, I'm thinking about trying out a little 10k rpm SCSI RAID 0 array instead of 3 36GB Raptors in RAID 0. I'll just have to see the prices on that. :)
Tas.
 

Jeff7

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Jan 4, 2001
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Nice. RAID 5. Damn fine stuff. Speed and redundancy, what more could you ask for?
 

Elcs

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Originally posted by: Jeff7
Nice. RAID 5. Damn fine stuff. Speed and redundancy, what more could you ask for?

More speed? :p

You've always got to want more speed :)
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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More room? Hmmm. I think we might be on to something here. I wonder what will happen if I add three more disks to it. 8-disk RAID 5 array... That might be interesting.
Tas.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Well, I was going to add three 36gb Raptors in RAID 0 for scratch disks and the like, but I'm thinking about just adding three more 250s to this RAID 5. Waddaya think? Or just 250's in RAID 0 maybe?
Tas.
 

Sy

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Do both... Max out your raid array with 8 250. Add 2 raptors in raid0 and use that as your boot drive. Loose the 120...
~Sy
 

tw1164

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I have a quick raid 5 question. If I have 3 disk array, and want to add more disks; do I have to rebuild the array?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: Sy
Do both... Max out your raid array with 8 250. Add 2 raptors in raid0 and use that as your boot drive. Loose the 120...
~Sy

I would, but I refuse to use anything other than a drive connected to the mobo for boot. It's too much of a pain in the arse, as I don't have a floppy drive, and I refuse to put one on the server... And I can't have anything but IDE on the mobo...

Originally posted by: tw1164
I have a quick raid 5 question. If I have 3 disk array, and want to add more disks; do I have to rebuild the array?

Depends upon the controller. The controller I have, it can actually migrate from a 3-disk to a 5-disk RAID 5 array, or from a RAID 0 to RAID 5 array. It takes a while, due to initilizing a RAID 5 array though. But for a lower end controller, yes, you would have to destroy the array, and then recreate it...
Tas.
 

Gamingphreek

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Mar 31, 2003
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I would not get raptors for boot drives. Especially the 36gig ones. A nice 7200RPM drive will beat the 36gig Raptor.

I would simply add on to your RAID 5 array.

-Kevin
 

Geomagick

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Really nice work there.

Always fancied doing a RAID 5 myself, now I think I'm one step closer to falling to temptation.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: George Powell
Really nice work there.

Always fancied doing a RAID 5 myself, now I think I'm one step closer to falling to temptation.

Woohoo! A convert!! Would that be to the dark side, or light side? I guess light side, as most consider RAID 0 to be the dark side. *eg*.
Tas.