RAID 1 Storage PC for Grandfather's Genealogy Work...

[thatguy321]

So my Grandfather is into genealogy and has his work spread out amongst a couple laptops (laptops since he uses them as he travels). I recently got him a 1TB external hard drive so he could compile everything to one place, but I'm also thinking of building a storage PC in a RAID 1 config for him to back everything up to so it wont be lost, we're talking thousands of hours of work here.

 

 

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9Q76dC)

 

**CPU** | [intel Celeron G1820 2.7GHz Dual-Core Processor](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646g1820) | $47.98 @ Newegg
**Motherboard** | [ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-h97manniversary) | $60.98 @ Newegg
**Memory** | [G.Skill NS Series 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f31600c11s4gns) | $28.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex) | $54.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex) | $54.99 @ Newegg
**Case** | [Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/deepcool-case-tesseractbf) | $27.99 @ Newegg
**Power Supply** | [Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx430) | $41.98 @ Newegg
 | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
 | **Total** | **$317.90**
 | Generated by [PCPartPicker](http://pcpartpicker.com) 2015-03-27 14:40 EDT-0400 |

 

 

My thoughts are to have a stand alone desktop, it wont be used for anything other then storage really. 1TB is probably enough as it's just text and image files (that are small since most are old scanned in photos), if it's not I'll adjust storage accordingly. The machine would most likely sit turned off most of the time, only to be turned on, backed up to, maybe manage/organize some files and then sit turned off again till the next back up.

 

Any thoughts/recommendations? Any tips on setting up RAID 1 config (this would be my first time attempting to run anything in RAID)?

 

[Kyuubixchidori]

go cheaper hardware, or possibly used. I have a old P4 machine that sits as a NAS, uses a whole 1-2% cpu load when its being accessed. so could get away with almost anything that supports SATA drives. 

 

that way you can get more storage, or get more redundancy. also it could be used for more then just his work

 

 

if your going sub 4TB, id recommend getting a WD nas. they are actually really nice, and I have both in my house. its cheaper and easier to use for your situation

[Eniqmatic]

How valuable is this data? If the answer is more than "somewhat valuable" then please don't skimp. Don't do RAID without at LEAST a hardware RAID controller, you're really asking for trouble otherwise. RAID 1 is also a big no.

 

I or probably a lot of others would be more than willing to help if you want to do it properly.

[thatguy321]

go cheaper hardware, or possibly used. I have a old P4 machine that sits as a NAS, uses a whole 1-2% cpu load when its being accessed. so could get away with almost anything that supports SATA drives. 

 

that way you can get more storage, or get more redundancy. also it could be used for more then just his work

 

 

if your going sub 4TB, id recommend getting a WD nas. they are actually really nice, and I have both in my house. its cheaper and easier to use for your situation

 

Price isn't too much of a concern as long as it doesn't get crazy. I wanted all new components just to play it safe (as safe as one can) and wanted something that COULD be used in other ways then just a storage PC should the needs of the system change.

 

How valuable is this data? If the answer is more than "somewhat valuable" then please don't skimp. Don't do RAID without at LEAST a hardware RAID controller, you're really asking for trouble otherwise. RAID 1 is also a big no.

 

I or probably a lot of others would be more than willing to help if you want to do it properly.

 

The data is fairly valuable, more so because of the time that went into it vs the potential for permanent loss of data, it's not irrecoverable should all things fail as he has most everything in hard copy. How was my build skimping? <<Serious question, like I said, don't know about RAID, nor have I tried to build a storage rig before

 

My thoughts was to give him a simple standalone PC to back up to, that had a fail safe in that it's setup in RAID 1. That way in order for all the data to be lost, his laptops would have to fail (in a matter that I couldn't recover data off the HDD's), the external HDD I gave him would have to fail or be lost  and both HDD in the new PC would have to fail all simultaneously.

 

What's wrong with RAID 1? Do I not want a mirror? What benefits do a RAID controller bring to the build? Feel free to school me on the subject.

 

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. The man is 77 years old now and isn't as sharp as he use to be. Simple is better, he understands basic, BASIC, computer usage so I didn't want to overwhelm him with anything new. I'm not even sure how much adding would be done to his current collection of files on genealogy either, but wouldn't want to lose any up his work up to this point.

[Kyuubixchidori]

Price isn't too much of a concern as long as it doesn't get crazy. I wanted all new components just to play it safe (as safe as one can) and wanted something that COULD be used in other ways then just a storage PC should the needs of the system change.

The data is fairly valuable, more so because of the time that went into it vs the potential for permanent loss of data, it's not irrecoverable should all things fail as he has most everything in hard copy. How was my build skimping? <<Serious question, like I said, don't know about RAID, nor have I tried to build a storage rig before

My thoughts was to give him a simple standalone PC to back up to, that had a fail safe in that it's setup in RAID 1. That way in order for all the data to be lost, his laptops would have to fail (in a matter that I couldn't recover data off the HDD's), the external HDD I gave him would have to fail or be lost and both HDD in the new PC would have to fail all simultaneously.

What's wrong with RAID 1? Do I not want a mirror? What benefits do a RAID controller bring to the build? Feel free to school me on the subject.

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. The man is 77 years old now and isn't as sharp as he use to be. Simple is better, he understands basic, BASIC, computer usage so I didn't want to overwhelm him with anything new. I'm not even sure how much adding would be done to his current collection of files on genealogy either, but wouldn't want to lose any up his work up to this point.

See here's the thing, if you just go WD nas its super easy. Click and drag, and can get a app to access it anywhere.

So easiest and simple(set up and usage) would be a WD nas(or Any brand really)

Or do you want flexibility? In that case you'd be building it yourself

[thatguy321]

See here's the thing, if you just go WD nas its super easy. Click and drag, and can get a app to access it anywhere.

So easiest and simple(set up and usage) would be a WD nas(or Any brand really)

Or do you want flexibility? In that case you'd be building it yourself

 

That might be a possible solution, I'll check it out.

 

Building would offer some flexibility and again I kinda wanted something that could be used in other ways then just a storage, should our needs change.

[NumLock21]

just buy a nas drive and he can save his data to that.

[Eniqmatic]

Price isn't too much of a concern as long as it doesn't get crazy. I wanted all new components just to play it safe (as safe as one can) and wanted something that COULD be used in other ways then just a storage PC should the needs of the system change.

 

 

The data is fairly valuable, more so because of the time that went into it vs the potential for permanent loss of data, it's not irrecoverable should all things fail as he has most everything in hard copy. How was my build skimping? <<Serious question, like I said, don't know about RAID, nor have I tried to build a storage rig before

 

My thoughts was to give him a simple standalone PC to back up to, that had a fail safe in that it's setup in RAID 1. That way in order for all the data to be lost, his laptops would have to fail (in a matter that I couldn't recover data off the HDD's), the external HDD I gave him would have to fail or be lost  and both HDD in the new PC would have to fail all simultaneously.

 

What's wrong with RAID 1? Do I not want a mirror? What benefits do a RAID controller bring to the build? Feel free to school me on the subject.

 

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. The man is 77 years old now and isn't as sharp as he use to be. Simple is better, he understands basic, BASIC, computer usage so I didn't want to overwhelm him with anything new. I'm not even sure how much adding would be done to his current collection of files on genealogy either, but wouldn't want to lose any up his work up to this point.

RAID without a dedicated controller means you are relying on the drives telling you everything is OK, when in fact they are lying. A hardware RAID controller is better to an extend (still not ideal) as think of this situation:

 

You're disks are in the middle of writing data when power is interrupted to them, when the disks come back on, how does the system know what parts of data were written to each disk? A hardware RAID controller with on board battery and memory stores what it was about to write until all disks have been completed, which can save you from sudden power off. Without a RAID controller with battery and memory, how is your computer to know where it was?

 

Hopefully that makes sense, it's not so easy to explain in depth over text.

 

Seriously though, if you take anything from this whole thread, do NOT store valuable data on a RAID depending on software. Hard drives are known to lie about their status and report incorrectly. If your going to build a NAS, go FreeNas with ECC memory. 

[thatguy321]

RAID without a dedicated controller means you are relying on the drives telling you everything is OK, when in fact they are lying. A hardware RAID controller is better to an extend (still not ideal) as think of this situation:

 

You're disks are in the middle of writing data when power is interrupted to them, when the disks come back on, how does the system know what parts of data were written to each disk? A hardware RAID controller with on board battery and memory stores what it was about to write until all disks have been completed, which can save you from sudden power off. Without a RAID controller with battery and memory, how is your computer to know where it was?

 

Hopefully that makes sense, it's not so easy to explain in depth over text.

 

Seriously though, if you take anything from this whole thread, do NOT store valuable data on a RAID depending on software. Hard drives are known to lie about their status and report incorrectly. If your going to build a NAS, go FreeNas with ECC memory. 

 

I understand what you're saying. Do you have a RAID controllers you'd recommend? Also, I figure WD Red drives would be favorable over Blues regardless of storage PC or NAS choice, right?

 

Not sure on a NAS, I think it might be too complex a solution for him. Having the PC and telling him it's just to backup to it every now (or maybe I'll back up every time I'm over), would be easier for him to understand and do/deal with. I'll have to talk to him, see what he thinks.

[brandishwar]

RAID without a dedicated controller means you are relying on the drives telling you everything is OK, when in fact they are lying.

 

Simple solution to this "the drives are lying" bit: turn off caching -- no read caching and make writes completely "write through". There's very little performance degradation doing that, and I had to do that with the onboard RAID on my mainboard because something about the caching kept screwing up. The chipsets providing the RAID on many mainboards are the same chips in many lesser-expensive RAID controller cards as well, but what he'd have will depend on the mainboard in question.

 

RAID controllers with a "battery" tend to be very expensive options as well. An uninterruptible power supply is a better option in what you're talking about -- though both combined are typically used in data centers. But again, turning off caching provides a little more safety, especially when talking about RAID 1 or RAID 10 since both provide for mirroring of data.

 

@thatguy321, given we're talking thousands of hours of genealogy research, redundancy will certainly be your friend. If you want RAID 1, though, a NAS might be overkill. You can buy drive cabinets that can do RAID 1 just as well: I have a Mediasonic cabinet attached to my wife's system (it's actually being used as her boot drive), and a couple months ago we had to go through the rebuild procedure on it, and it worked quite well (it does take a few hours though). If you want to shop around for options, you'll want one that very clearly has a rebuild procedure, that way you can recover the RAID setup should one of the drives die. I mentioned Mediasonic, but LaCie has options, same with WD, Addonics (recently bought a port multiplier from them) and several other companies.

 

Along with the external RAID 1 solution, get cloud storage into the mix as well. If necessary, pay for additional storage on OneDrive and/or Google Drive, possibly both for, again, redundancy. There's a reason many companies pay for off-site backups: you don't want to have all of your eggs in one basket, or in this case, all of your backups under one roof.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Why not just use cloud storage for this kind of stuff?

1. It is cheaper (by a lot)
2. Professionals make sure it is save
3. Access from everywhere is easily possible
4. no App needed for access, but also possible

[Eniqmatic]

I understand what you're saying. Do you have a RAID controllers you'd recommend? Also, I figure WD Red drives would be favorable over Blues regardless of storage PC or NAS choice, right?

 

Not sure on a NAS, I think it might be too complex a solution for him. Having the PC and telling him it's just to backup to it every now (or maybe I'll back up every time I'm over), would be easier for him to understand and do/deal with. I'll have to talk to him, see what he thinks.

 

NAS doesn't need to be complicated - far from it. It can be complex in the background however easy for the main user. You can just map a drive to the NAS from any computer and it's just as functional, yet extremely safe in the background.

[Eniqmatic]

Simple solution to this "the drives are lying" bit: turn off caching -- no read caching and make writes completely "write through". There's very little performance degradation doing that, and I had to do that with the onboard RAID on my mainboard because something about the caching kept screwing up. The chipsets providing the RAID on many mainboards are the same chips in many lesser-expensive RAID controller cards as well, but what he'd have will depend on the mainboard in question.

 

RAID controllers with a "battery" tend to be very expensive options as well. An uninterruptible power supply is a better option in what you're talking about -- though both combined are typically used in data centers. But again, turning off caching provides a little more safety, especially when talking about RAID 1 or RAID 10 since both provide for mirroring of data.

 

@thatguy321, given we're talking thousands of hours of genealogy research, redundancy will certainly be your friend. If you want RAID 1, though, a NAS might be overkill. You can buy drive cabinets that can do RAID 1 just as well: I have a Mediasonic cabinet attached to my wife's system (it's actually being used as her boot drive), and a couple months ago we had to go through the rebuild procedure on it, and it worked quite well (it does take a few hours though). If you want to shop around for options, you'll want one that very clearly has a rebuild procedure, that way you can recover the RAID setup should one of the drives die. I mentioned Mediasonic, but LaCie has options, same with WD, Addonics (recently bought a port multiplier from them) and several other companies.

 

Along with the external RAID 1 solution, get cloud storage into the mix as well. If necessary, pay for additional storage on OneDrive and/or Google Drive, possibly both for, again, redundancy. There's a reason many companies pay for off-site backups: you don't want to have all of your eggs in one basket, or in this case, all of your backups under one roof.

I'm going to have to disagree with the caching, drives will still lie and report false information. Also, that's not the only reason to use a hardware RAID controller just one scenario. What about bit rot? 

 

RAID controllers don't have to be expensive either, just have a look around. 

 

Freenas is still the best solution IMO, it uses ZFS file system which does a lot in the background to protect you against corruption. You can do RAIDZ1 which allows for one drive to die, RAIDZ2 allows 2, RAIDZ3 allows 3 and so on. 

 

I agree about off site backup, cloud probably best solution.