Content Creator Storage Solution

[Beeeyeee]

Hello, I'm building a nice rig for gaming, livestreaming, and recording. I have an Intel 240g SSD for OS and games, and I want some kind of solution for storing all of my schooling, and my recordings and such. I would like to have a backup of everything at hand and as long as it's fast enough to record to and render from simultaneously, it's fine. Do you think doing a RAID of some sorts inside the case is the best solution? If so what kind of drives? Would some kind of external backup solution be best? please lost any solutions you can, including pros and cons:)

[thekeemo]

Your best option is raid 4tb drives

[MrBucket101]

Your best option is raid 4tb drives

 

3TB drives right now have a slightly better price/gb ratio.

 

I would look into a synology NAS. They're a bit pricey, but they come configured out of the box really. All you need to do is put drives in.

 

But if you are savvy enough to build a system yourself and configure the OS, then you should definitely do that as you will save a few bucks, not much, but some.

[Beeeyeee]

Your best option is raid 4tb drives

what kind of RAID? and what kind of drives?

[unijab]

what kind of RAID? and what kind of drives?

 

Depends on:

-desired number of drives

-desired protection from number of failures

-desired usable capacity

[Beeeyeee]

Depends on:

-desired number of drives

-desired protection from number of failures

-desired usable capacity

I don't have any preferance, I don't really know about them. what are your recommendations?

[MrBucket101]

I don't have any preferance, I don't really know about them. what are your recommendations?

well if you don't have a preference...

 

you should go get a quad cpu mobo with 4 12-core xeons with hyperthreading, 128gb of DDR4 ECC, 24 6TB hard drives, a 4U case with built in SAS expander, dual redundant 1400W PSU's, 2 identical RAID cards with failover support, and a 10 gigabit NIC...cause you only YOLO once.

 

seriously though. Decide on what you want and we'll help guide you towards a solution. If you just want nice drives to go in your rig, if you want a RAID card, if you want to build a NAS...you have to give us something to go off of.

[Captain_WD]

Hello, I'm building a nice rig for gaming, livestreaming, and recording. I have an Intel 240g SSD for OS and games, and I want some kind of solution for storing all of my schooling, and my recordings and such. I would like to have a backup of everything at hand and as long as it's fast enough to record to and render from simultaneously, it's fine. Do you think doing a RAID of some sorts inside the case is the best solution? If so what kind of drives? Would some kind of external backup solution be best? please lost any solutions you can, including pros and cons:)

 

 

Hey Beeeyeee,

 

It really depends on how much storage space you need, what speeds, number of drives and what level of redundancy or backup you would like to have.

A internal RAID sollution would bring you better speed, some redundancy and no backup. An external solution such as DAS or NAS would provide you with the safety of a backup but with little speed benefits. 

For RAID I would recommend using NAS/RAID class drives as they generally work better and safer in RAID environments. I could suggest checking out WD Red drives: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=FuttQw

 

Captain_WD.

[Beeeyeee]

well if you don't have a preference...

 

you should go get a quad cpu mobo with 4 12-core xeons with hyperthreading, 128gb of DDR4 ECC, 24 6TB hard drives, a 4U case with built in SAS expander, dual redundant 1400W PSU's, 2 identical RAID cards with failover support, and a 10 gigabit NIC...cause you only YOLO once.

 

seriously though. Decide on what you want and we'll help guide you towards a solution. If you just want nice drives to go in your rig, if you want a RAID card, if you want to build a NAS...you have to give us something to go off of.

How much would that cost? haha just kidding! Sorry i'm just new at this whole thing. What exactly is a RAID card, or NAS? I probably need about 4-8TB of storage. I have 6 hard drive bays in my case and two SSD mounts. What kind of drives would you recommend are best for that? Here is my build so far: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PcZC99

[handruin]

How much would that cost? haha just kidding! Sorry i'm just new at this whole thing. What exactly is a RAID card, or NAS? I probably need about 4-8TB of storage. I have 6 hard drive bays in my case and two SSD mounts. What kind of drives would you recommend are best for that? Here is my build so far: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PcZC99

 

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is an acronym used to describe different levels of protection and/or performance.  Not all RAID levels protect data and each one has pros/cons.  It should be understood that RAID is never a backup; RAID is for availability of your data.  A RAID card is a piece of hardware that connects multiple physical drives  to a controller chip which is able to offload the work of protecting a device that your computer will use.  RAID levels such as RAID 5/6 need to calculate parity in order to protect your data.  This can be burdensome on a CPU and rather than do that, the RAID card does that work for you.  One popular manufacture of RAID controllers is LSI.

 

NAS is Network Attach Storage.  Using your network interface you can remotely mount a drive using protocols such as NFS, CIFS, and/or iSCSI.  When you read/write to this device, your I/O travels over the network as ethernet packets to another machine that interprets them and stores them locally on their drive.  Think of it as a remote hard drive.

 

If you need to store 4-8TB of data, the next question will be what is your budget?  You can buy a single drive 8TB in size but it's costly.  You could buy 4 x 4TB drives and use them in RAID 10.  You could buy 3 x 4TB and run them in RAID 5.  I caution against this with a 4TB drive.  I'd recommend RAID 6 which means you would then be needing 4 x 4TB...but that puts you at the same efficiency as RAID 10 (so just go RAID 10).

[MrBucket101]

How much would that cost? haha just kidding! Sorry i'm just new at this whole thing. What exactly is a RAID card, or NAS? I probably need about 4-8TB of storage. I have 6 hard drive bays in my case and two SSD mounts. What kind of drives would you recommend are best for that? Here is my build so far: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PcZC99

It would cost more than my car probably lol

In short, all RAID does is let your data survive hardware related failures, and it pools your data into one big drive. If you have mission critical data then I would consider it. 

 

From a cost oriented perspective since all you would be storing is twitch recordings, I would probably just avoid it and get separate disks.

 

The 2TB drives have the cheapest $/GB ratio right now, and given that you have 6 available bays, you could just get 4 of them and save a bit of money. Then you'll have 2 extra slots if you ever need to upgrade. Some people don't like having that many hard drives in their rig, more drives make more noise. Some people don't care. If you only want 2 hard drives, then you could get 2 -4TB drives.

 

Here's a list of hard drives from manufacturers I trust. For the quietest drives I would look into the WD Caviar Green or WD RED. If you're wanting something with a bit more performance, then I would look into the HGST Deskstar, HGST Deskstar NAS, WD Blue, and the WD Black.

 

You can't go wrong with any of those drives, and I would just buy whatever fits your budget and yields you the most storage.

If you decide that you're data is worth protecting beyond hardware failures, then I would look into (on ebay) a dedicated RAID card. I would look for an LSI megaraid 9211 or 9240, they're going for ~100ish$.  If that is the router you choose, then the WD RED, or the HGST Deskstar NAS are the 2 drives you should look into considering.  

[Padunkadunk]

...cause you only YOLO once.

Wtf is this?

[MrBucket101]

Wtf is this?

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