RAID 10 Network Storage help needed

[puregreen59]

Hi there

 

First of all, I have followed linus tech tips for a while now and love it! But this is my first post and I thought where better to post it!

 

So let me tell you about my current set up, I have 8 drives (All different sizes) running in Windows Storage spaces as raid 5

config is

Windows 8.1 (64bit)

asus P7P55D LE

8gb DDR3

ATI 7970 (it was spare and sometimes i use this machine for lan party's as its in my room anyway)

1.2kwat power supply

 

But its not really up to scratch with write performance, I have a XBMC/kodi media PC set up on my network and if im watching something from the server (witch is mostly everything) and someone decides to copy some large files over to the server Read speeds will be Very slow, and will cause the media to pause/buffer, read speeds on there own with no write going on is fast, i never thought of it this way but i guess it makes sense, so im in need of a different setup.

 

i have been looking at setting up a raid 10 because parity drives even though i can loose any one drive just seems to slow for the stress im putting it under

 

My experience with computers is quite high but i have never messed around with raid/raid cards etc, Storage spaces was my first!

 

Iv been looking at a few options, one of witch is to just use my built in raid controller on my motherboard but i have read that the built in ones can be a pain and don't always support all raids and may have a storage limit in place

 

i have been looking at the highpoint rocketraid 2720sgl With 2 mini SAS connects that i should be able to get 4x sata cables for each SAS socket and support 8 drives, witch will have to be all the same size i believe if im using Real raid?

 

My questions are is this really necessary and what are your thoughts,

also lets say i hit my storage limit, and i want to slowly replace my drives with bigger ones or add more to a raid 10 can this be done or would i have to remove all data from the drives and destroy the raid and then rebuild the array

 

Any idears/help would be great, i have thought about getting some form of a pre-built NAS, and did actually have freenas set up on the same machine before but im a sucker for windows GUI and as for drobo they sound great but sound expensive to set up, and i have a spare PC sitting around that has a core i7 so i feel i can put it to some use

 

Is there a better way of doing what im trying to achieve, am i making it over complicated?

[puregreen59]

bump

[Mark1268]

Hey (=

 

I don't really know much about this topic but I might have a tip for you:
Have you seen Linus' video about the insane compact NAS? It features the asrock C2740D4I, a mini-itx mobo mit 12 SATA ports for 420$.

Maybe this is something for you. In case you haven't seen the video: 

 

I hope this helps

[puregreen59]

thanks mark,  Will cheak it out. should have known to cheak linus's youtube ;D

[unijab]

[Aphala]

ALL CAPS Do you NEED IT?!

[ChineseChef]

For a RAID 0/1/10 array, onboard is usually plenty if you are not needing any fancy features.  The only usual limitation is the number of ports you have. 

 

RAID cards offer more expandability usually, and the option to move the card to a new system and bring the array with you.  (it is usually advised to simply build a new array, lots of risk with moving.)  But it does offer the nice feature of replacing the raid card if it dies, as apposed to the entire mobo.