computer hardware Raid guru's help?

[Randal Stevenson]

I run Linux, so I am looking for a true hardware solution.

Anyone know of a small hardware raid card, for a mini itx, NAS box? (home use)

Thanks

[Jeff Caskie]

I run Linux, so I am looking for a true hardware solution.

Anyone know of a small hardware raid card, for a mini itx, NAS box? (home use)

Thanks

I can't help.. but there is some good RAID info on a site & forum by the name of SmallNetBuilder dot com

[RickT Harding]

Honestly, I'd just go software raid. I do that on my home linux file server. The cost of a non-software raid card is going to be a nice chunk and the software raid works pretty well. I run it with 5 400gb disks in my box. I strongly suggest keeping a single smaller drive as your system's main boot drive. Then just mount the raid section as /nas or something. That way recovery, if the system goes boom, it is a mdadm --scan away.

[Brad Wood]

why are you looking for a hardware solution? I'm not a linux guy, so I've nuttin' for you there... but, in the Windows world we do RAID cards mostly for performance purposes.. so the processing gets offloaded to the card.
Unless you are doing some intensive I/O, why take the expense?

[Randal Stevenson]

Honestly, I'd just go software raid. I do that on my home linux file server. The cost of a non-software raid card is going to be a nice chunk and the software raid works pretty well. I run it with 5 400gb disks in my box. I strongly suggest keeping a single smaller drive as your system's main boot drive. Then just mount the raid section as /nas or something. That way recovery, if the system goes boom, it is a mdadm --scan away.

Never messed with software raid. Heck, never messed with raid. Always had backups, but drives are getting SO much larger then cost effective backup medium......
Any good read me's , your aware of on software raid?

Planning on two 1tb, SATA drives, and using an ide to CF, or SDHC adapter, with the os on it. (boot drive copied to a bootable usb drive, and ghosted onto the Raid drives)


why are you looking for a hardware solution? I'm not a linux guy, so I've nuttin' for you there... but, in the Windows world we do RAID cards mostly for performance purposes.. so the processing gets offloaded to the card.
Unless you are doing some intensive I/O, why take the expense?

The board, is the dual core version, of a netbook board (1.6gb atom). I was hoping to make it simple, verses having to learn all the software issues with raid, then causing poor performance of the machine for my uses. (Nas box, but I want to stream my music through either my network, or stereo.)

[Neal Clayton]

the network i maintain for my family's sign shop runs a 3ware SATA controller on their file server with these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707156) enclosures.

been running for ~3 years now 24/7. had to run a rebuild once after a power surge popped a drive, otherwise no issues.

they're running an ancient version of slackware (like 10.0? maybe even 9.1, i forget, i never mess with it :p).

[Phil Thien]

Always had backups, but drives are getting SO much larger then cost effective backup medium

RAID is not about backup, it is about uptime. I get 2-3 recovery jobs per month that are RAID systems that were inadequately backed up.

I'm not advising against RAID. But even if you do RAID, you still gotta do some sort of backup.

[Randal Stevenson]

RAID is not about backup, it is about uptime. I get 2-3 recovery jobs per month that are RAID systems that were inadequately backed up.

I'm not advising against RAID. But even if you do RAID, you still gotta do some sort of backup.

I know technically what your saying, but:

It depends on how you look at it. Uptime and mirroring are a method of backing up my home network. (Nas box contains files needed from any of my pc's, as well as things like drive images, mountable iso's, etc).
Even with Raid, I still plan on backing up. (both dvd burn method, and usb external drive method) Blue Ray isn't cost effective for home use yet.

[RickT Harding]

First, raid != backup. It does help in the case of a single drive failure. It does not help if the whole box is fried. They're all still connected to the same power supply, motherboard, etc. These things can cause spikes/failures to each drive connected. It only protects in the case of a single drive failure. That's it.

Backups to external and offsite locations are still required.

On to the raid stuff, you didn't mention what OS you were running so here's what I keep bookmarked.

http://delicious.com/deuce868/mdadm
http://delicious.com/deuce868/raid

HTH

[Prashun Patel]

Just buy a NAS with RAID built in. I set up a Buffallo Terastation @ work, and am extremely happy with it. I'm running WindowsServer2003, but the TStation is Linux, which is a mild pain for me (in terms of setting permissions) but since yr running Linux, you won't have that pblm.

[Frank Hagan]

Watch out, RAID has its price. I relied on the embedded Intel RAID controller in my Dell computer, and it did save me when one drive went down sounding like R2D2 in heat. But later, it bit me when the raid controller failed and destroyed the MBR of both drives. Took me quite a while to recover my data from the second drive after I reformatted and reinstalled XP on the first drive (and I could only do that because it was RAID 1; had I been using RAID 5 I doubt I would have recovered much.)

The consumer grade of raid cards and software raid solutions are often the cause of heartbreak for those that thought they were getting a solution like they have at work ... but those SCSI RAID cards at work are pretty pricey. My IT guy said if you aren't paying several hundred dollars for the card, don't trust it.

I have a back up system now that is (IMHO) better than my old RAID solution. I put a 1TB drive in the case as a secondary drive, and do a weekly image of the primary drive with daily incremental images. I keep 5 weeks worth of images on that drive, and the software deletes the oldest images each week. I'm using ShadowProtect Desktop, but Acronis and Ghost also work well. ShadowProtect is a bit faster, and with daily incrementals, speed was important to me.

Once a week, I copy the full image file over to an external hard drive. At first, I was doing it manually, but now I have a batch file that determines the day of the week and, if its "full image day", deletes the external hard drive file and copies that day's just completed image over to it.

[Neal Clayton]

ouch. i've never had an issue with intel's matrix raid, i run it on my home PC for about 2 years now.

[Prashun Patel]

I agree; nothing better than doing yr own backups. However, you are vulnerable between backups - and unless you got it scheduled, it's easy to forget. For a home solution, though, I DO agree that RAID is probably overkill. Unless you LIKE I.T., you'd do better to KISS.